Marshall Ganz's new book about the lessons of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers is superb, and I only wish this discussion group had even more time to examine all of the points it makes--one of which is that David, after having defeated Goliath, can easily fall prey to the same delusions and hubris that weakened Goliath. (Chavez started as a David but undid many of his achievements once the UFW became a minor Goliath.) For example, now that the Obama campaign, which started as a David, has become a Goliath in the form of an Obama White House, how does it retain the qualities of David that made it thrive in the first place?

But I can't ask everything, so instead I'd like to focus on the topic of labor supply, since unions today are weak and income gaps in the United States are as wide as they've been in many decades. Ganz makes it clear that tight labor markets in the country were integral to the success of Cesar Chavez in organizing the United Farm Workers (or its precursors) in the 1960s and 70s. This isn't to say that tight labor markets guaranteed the success of the UFW--strategic mastery was essential to capitalizing on the opportunity--but they set the stage.

What I wonder, then, is how much of a shot someone wishing to follow in the path of Cesar Chavez today would have of replicating the successes of the UFW. The United States currently has a nearly limitless supply of inexpensive labor, a supply that has been steadily replenished by undocumented workers, who currently number an estimated 12 million. The prevailing approach among U.S. labor unions today has been to try to welcome immigrants into their ranks regardless of their legal status, in an attempt to foster collaboration rather than competition. But a union that's a million workers strong isn't necessarily very helpful to its individual members if only a thousand jobs are available. If limited demand meets unlimited supply, then, surely, there's only so much a union can do.

So let me pose two questions to the group: 1. How, at a time when unskilled labor is in oversupply, does David credibly take on Goliath? Does he take the SEIU approach and look for as broad a coalition as possible and find strength in numbers? Or does he seek measures that will tighten labor markets, effectively excluding workers who'd like to enter them? 2. More fundamentally, for those who wish to see the lot of American workers improved: whom, today, should we see as David, and whom should we see as Goliath? Is David all of the low-paid hourly workers in the United States? Or is David just low-paid hourly workers who are U.S. citizens? Is Goliath the employers of the service sector and companies like Wal-Mart? Or, from the perspective of a U.S. worker, is Goliath also the hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers from around world who arrive in the United States each year--both legally and illegally--in search of a limited supply of jobs?

(And, while I'm at it, what would Cesar say?)