Kevin Funk's essay on his experience with SEIU District 1199 raised some hackles, so I added my Editor's Introduction to it (see below).
When the Union Is the Boss by Kevin Funk Editor's Introduction It's no secret that there exists (1) a high turnover rate among entry-level organizers, many of whom are (2) young college graduates, rather than people recruited out of the communities that are organizing targets -- the interrelated problems that Kevin Funk's essay below illustrates. Daisy Rooks' qualitative study (based on interviews with organizers), "The Cowboy Mentality: Organizers and Occupational Commitment in the New Labor Movement" (Labor Studies Journal 28.3, Fall 2003), argues that organized labor is in denial about the toll that the dominant culture of organizing, which she calls "the cowboy mentality," takes on organizers and that "the cowboy mentality" contributes to a high turnover rate and less than desirable levels of racial and gender diversity among organizers. What is "the cowboy mentality"? Simply put, " a set of assumptions about organizing being more than a job, being superior to other forms of work in the labor movement, and being best experienced with an intensity resembling a military boot camp" (Rooks 33). That's the set of assumptions that justify extreme occupational demands such as long hours, extensive travel, unpredictability, and so on. Rooks demonstrates that "the cowboy mentality," while appealing to some, alienates and exclude others and that women and people of color, especially those who have responsibility for families, are "most likely alienated by the cowboy mentality." Can organized labor afford to continue to parachute young college-educated organizers into communities for short-term intensive campaigns here and there? Would it not simply chew up the new organizers and burn them up without building any enduring bases in working-class suburbs? Would it not be better to hire organizers and recruit volunteer organizers out of communities to be organized, so organizers with campaign experience will remain in the communities and build on it after the end of a campaign, whether it ends in victory or defeat? That's one set of questions that Kevin Funk's essay should raise. The second set of questions, implicit in the essay, concerns why SEIU isn't at the forefront of a single-payer health care campaign and whether SEIU's approach to organizing care-giving workforce -- setting up new government authorities that may facilitate organizing, without touching the foundations of privatized health care in the United States -- isn't at odds with the needs of the American working class as a whole. -- Ed. Full Text of Kevin's essay: <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/funk020706.html> -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
