>On Behalf Of Michael Perelman
>
> I usually don't forward David Bacon's excellent reports, but this one
> raises a question for me: why do the janitors have so much relative
> success, while other unions that would seem to have fewer advantages
> have floundered? Of course, it is hard to move the janitorial jobs
> abroad.
Of course not being threatened with export of jobs helps, but that is true
in a lot of service and even many manufacturing areas where unions have
been far less successful. The answer is:
Organize, organize, organize...this relative success is built on two
decades of organizing. Many years ago, as janitors unions suffered the
same collapse as other previously unionized areas in the early 1980s, SEIU
decided to make a stand in that industry as a showcase for new organizing
tactics. (That Sweeney came out of locals representing that industry
added to that decision). Whole new areas of tactics (or at least their
revival) were deployed in the new Justice for Janitors campaigns, from
direct action to corporate campaigns to consumer boycotts.
And as David Bacon's article notes, the campaigns were fought not for
immediate economic gains but focused overwhelmingly on winning a stronger
ability to organize new workers, whether card check agreements or in this
case fighting to make sure contracts up and down the West Coast would come
up for renewal in the same year. The union decision was that in
individual strikes they probably could have fought for higher immediate
economic gains at points, but it would have been a pyrrhic victory as
nonunion companies took over the industry. Note that the LA janitors,
despite their relative success, are still making amazingly low wages.
This year is setup to be the "big bang" win that brings to fruition
decades of hard organizing.
That kind of long-term strategy for organizing was once almost unheard of
across the union movement; it's become more common and the most successful
unions today are the ones like SEIU and HERE that started making long-term
organizing strategy a priority early on.
-- Nathan Newman
