Marshall Ganz's Counsel to David Regarding Goliath
Since this is my final post and I've been addressed as Thomas Frank, one thing I should clarify is that Thomas Frank ("What's the Matter With Kansas?") is a Goliath, whereas I, T.A. Frank ("What's the Matter With My Rent Check?"), am rather more a David. I don't intend to take five smooth stones and fire them at Thomas Frank's head, but I wouldn't mind shifting the balance of power my way by peaceful means.
At any rate, Marshall Ganz has responded with interesting posts in the comment section of our entries, so be sure to check them out. Let me focus on one of them. Ganz notes that the tightening of a labor markets in the 1960s represented "the creation of opportunity as a result of one's resources suddenly becoming more valuable." But, he notes, important organizing also happened in the early 1930s, when labor markets were anything but tight. Given that we face similar circumstances today, we may need to think along similar lines.
Ganz suggests labor leaders start by evaluating three questions, and here I quote him:
(A) To what kind of resources does the labor movement have unique access?
(B) In what ways - if any - can this moment increase the value of those resources?
(C) In what ways does the opposition find itself weakened at this time?
With Democrats running the show in Washington and populist resentment on the rise, the moment is politically favorable to unions and suggests some obvious answers to question C and, to some extent, B. But question A is another story. Clearly, given the weakening of the labor movement over the past couple of decades, the answers people have arrived at for A--if they've even asked the question--have not been wholly satisfactory. That is to say: Either the resources uniquely available to labor leaders have been of little use, or else labor leaders have failed to recognize them or take proper advantage of them. We can only hope that there are present-day Cesar Chavezes who will remedy this.
One further thought on 'unique resources.
One such resource are all the youthful organizers recruited, trained, and developed by the Obama campaign, especially those with ties to the new immigrant communities. Not since the 1960s, have young people been such a source of potentially transformational energy (or the 1930s -- if you check out who the on the ground organizers tended to be). In addition to young people, it has often been new immigrants who are among the first to organize effectively, and not just in California agriculture.
Another resource is the capacity to mobilize across localities, but in support of a national strategy. Historically, the structure of our political institutions has privileged this kind of organizational structure. And just as politics created the critical wedge for the early organizing of the 1930s, when it comes to labor, it usually does. Without an ability to mobilize state power, unions are rarely able to develop enough shear economic and moral power to succeed. Passage of EFCA could be such a boost if labor is capable of making it happen.
And, finally, the thrall of the market on our economic, politics, and even moral philosophy, has been profoundly weakened; millions of Americans have experienced the consequences of relying on it for their own security; and are far more receptive to the claims labor has traditionally made; e.g., the public support for the window factory workers who conducted their sit in in Chicago.
The soldiers failed to recognize stones as a valuable resource, focused as they were on swords, shields, and helmets. American colonists recognized the ability to abstain from tea drinking to be a valuable resource. Gandhi recognized salt making. And the farm workers recognized grapes. Perhaps a new wave of labor organizers will discover their tea, salt, or grapes given the opportunity to try.
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