UE Convention Resolutions
Organize the Unorganized:
The National Organizing Plan
Organizing is where the fight begins. The historic plant occupation at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, a bold and courageous act of worker resistance that captured headlines worldwide, began with a UE organizing campaign five years earlier. The inspiring struggle of our para-educator members in Connecticut to win health care coverage this year was preceded by a UE organizing campaign. Our groundbreaking work to advance human and workers' rights in the South began with an organizing drive in the 1990s. UE's deep roots in the nation’s factories, from General Electric to Allen-Bradley to Sargent Lock, started with organizing drives in the 1930s.
We have always known that organizing the unorganized leads to more justice for working people, more strength for our union and more promise for the labor movement. We know the reverse is true as well: the less we are organized, the more we will be exploited.
Today, the obstacles to organizing are more formidable than ever. When workers seek a voice on the job, 91 percent of all bosses hold mandatory anti-union meetings, 75 percent hire union busters, 57 percent threaten to close up shop, 51 percent offer bribes, and 34 percent fire at least one union activist. A landmark study released this year by the Economic Policy Institute shows that things are getting worse, with employers now twice as likely to use negative and coercive tactics as they were in the 1990s.
But if the obstacles to organizing are growing, so too is the need to organize the unorganized and build labor’s strength. Despite a slight increase last year in the number of US. workers who belong to unions, the percentage of all workers represented by unions remains at only 12 percent, barely a third of where it stood a half-century ago. Not surprisingly, as the portion of the workforce with union representation has declined, there have been matching declines in pension and health care coverage. Wages have stagnated or declined as well, with a typical working family today seeing thousands of dollars shaved off its standard of living in the last ten years alone.
In our union-wide Freedom to Organize Campaign UE maintains that despite the many obstacles we face, organizing makes more sense today than ever before. Not only do the polls show that nearly six in ten workers in this country desire union representation, but those who succeed in getting it earn 30 percent higher wages, get almost a third more vacation time and are more than twice as likely to have a guaranteed pension. The latest government statistics show that median weekly earnings for union workers are approximately $200 higher than those of non-union workers.
Putting more workers in unions and more money in workers' pockets would also provide a boost for the beleaguered US. economy, now mired in the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Because three quarters of our economy is built on consumer spending, new money in workers' pockets can be like fuel to propel the economy forward. In fact, history shows that union organizing and growth helped our nation recover from the depression years of the 1930s and made sure the fruits of economic recovery were shared by all segments of our society. It was during those recovery years that UE experienced its formative organizing surge and greatest membership growth.
Forging an organizing plan that can help us grow in the years ahead means taking note of that history, even as we take stock of the challenging organizing climate we confront today – a climate defined by growing employer lawlessness and deep, lingering recession. We must start by fighting to expand workers' rights protections and working to identify the workplaces we will organize once we do; these are the twin goals of our continuing Freedom to Organize Campaign.
But we must also have an organizing plan that contemplates immediate new campaigns in both the public and private sectors. These campaigns can be developed by reemphasizing strategies that have worked for UE in the past two years – and by adding initiatives that point us toward new areas of job and workforce growth. Our new targets should include "green" jobs and industries, such as those emphasized in the Obama Administration’s economic recovery plans, as well as industrial and service jobs in which growing numbers of immigrant workers face exploitation, such as in the transportation, warehouse and logistics industry in the Midwest and elsewhere.
Our organizing plan must be true to the bold, aggressive tactics that have long characterized UE organizing. It must be bold in scope as well. In today's tough economy we must do more; we must exceed the list of nearly 500 non-union workplaces where UE members and organizers probed for campaigns during the past two years. We must do that by first recruiting dozens more rank-and-file volunteers to join the hundreds who have helped UE organize and grow in recent years.
Organizing is the process of bringing justice and democracy to the workplace. It betters our jobs even as it betters our society. It is our lifeblood as an organization. It is how we sustain ourselves, how we replace members lost to the churning of our global economy, how we attain the critical mass of membership necessary to wage an effective fight for better conditions and better lives. It is how we generate the great struggles that define us as a union. It is where the fight begins.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 71ST UE CONVENTION ADOPTS THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZING PLAN TO BUILD OUR UNION:
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UE will organize across the industrial, public and service sectors of our nation's economy, uniting workers from a wide range of occupations in the common pursuit of justice through the practice of our unique brand of democratic, member-run unionism;
- UE will build its ranks primarily in existing UE base areas, seeking to expand our power and influence in geographic areas and types of workplaces where the union has an established presence and giving top priority to areas where the existence of viable organizing targets (including sister shops), the availability of staff, the active support of our members and community allies, and other key economic or strategic factors, including recent organizing victories, enhance our prospects for success;
- UE will involve its rank-and-file members in organizing whenever possible, including through local and regional organizing councils and schools, and we will encourage locals to recruit volunteer organizers, negotiate for better union leave provisions and authorize payment of lost time to make possible greater membership participation in building the union;
- UE will explore and develop organizing initiatives in the growing "green" sector of the economy, probing prospects for union growth among workers employed in manufacturing "green" energy products, such as solar panels or wind turbines, or "green" construction materials, such as energy-efficient windows, as well as workers who produce or package organic foods or eco-friendly consumer products or work in recycling or other "green" industries;
- UE will continue to build rank-and-file unions among state, county and municipal employees in states where public employees are denied the right to collective bargaining, making the fight to repeal old laws and win new laws respecting this basic right a main feature of our ongoing organizing through UE's grant-funded International Workers Justice Campaign and other advocacy efforts;
- UE will continue to organize and battle for justice and dignity for immigrant workers, including through our new Warehouse Workers for Justice Campaign, an organizing drive focused on thousands of workers in the transportation, warehouse and logistics industry in the Midwest;
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UE will continue to test new organizing models and methods in all sectors, including alternative strategies for gaining recognition of the union as well as strategies aimed at building non-majority unions in workplaces where formal recognition cannot be achieved in the short term;
- UE will build its ranks through internal organizing wherever open-shop conditions exist, including in states such as Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska;
- UE will continue to develop strategic, cross-border solidarity links among workers at transnational companies that are unionized abroad and have UE contracts in the U.S., and we will maintain organizing alliances to strengthen organizing campaigns and promote workers' rights at home and abroad, including alliances with Jobs with Justice and other domestic organizations active in defense of workers' rights, and global alliances with the Authentic Workers' Front of Mexico (FAT), the National Confederation of Trade Unions of Japan (Zenroren), and with global union federations, including the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM), Public Services International (PSI), and with other relevant groups;
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UE will respect cultural and language differences in its organizing work and respond to divisive anti-immigrant and racist issues in workplaces and communities during organizing campaigns. We will reach into our ranks to find more volunteer organizers from diverse backgrounds, encourage locals to address racial and cultural issues in internal organizing, and make additional efforts to involve youth in the life of our union.