Open Source Unionism?

What do you think?

"How Common is Union Busting?
Via Nathan Newman, an organization called American Rights at Work has just released a new report showing how widespread union-busting is among American employers. Some of the findings:

30% of employers fire pro-union workers.
49% of employers threaten to close a worksite when workers try to form a union.
51% of employers coerce workers into opposing unions with bribery or favoritism.
82% of employers hire unionbusting consultants to fight organizing drives.
91% of employers force employees to attend one-on-one anti-union meetings with supervisors.
As Nathan says, a majority of American workers would likely join a union if given the option. Most aren't given the option. ARW argues that major changes to labor law are needed to change this—including establishing "card checks" as a process for union organization, whereby a workplace would be unionized if a majority of workers simply signed a card, plus much tougher penalties for any employer that violated labor laws. But there's also something of a catch-22 here: Effective pro-labor legislation will be very difficult to pass in Congress without a strong labor movement agitating for it, but it's hard for the labor movement to become strong so long as the law is biased against unions.
So what to do, what to do? One of my favorite "out of the box" labor proposal comes from Joel Rogers and Richard Freeman, who have argued that "open-source unionism" is the way forward:

[Right now,] workers typically become union members only when unions gain majority support at a particular workplace. This makes the union the exclusive representative of those workers for purposes of collective bargaining. Getting to majority status… is a struggle. The law barely punishes employers who violate it, and the success of the union drive is typically determined by the level of employer resistance. Unions usually abandon workers who are unsuccessful in their fight to achieve majority status, and they are uninterested in workers who have no plausible near-term chance of such success.
Under open-source unionism, by contrast, unions would welcome members even before they achieved majority status, and stick with them as they fought for it--maybe for a very long time. These "pre-majority" workers would presumably pay reduced dues in the absence of the benefits of collective bargaining, but would otherwise be normal union members. They would gain some of the bread-and-butter benefits of traditional unionism--advice and support on their legal rights, bargaining over wages and working conditions if feasible, protection of pension holdings, political representation, career guidance, access to training and so on.

And even in minority positions, they might gain a collective contract for union members, or grow to the point of being able to force a wall-to-wall agreement for all workers in the unit. … Joining the labor movement would be something you did for a long time, not just an organizational relationship you entered into with a third party upon taking some particular job, to expire when that job expired or changed.

I don't really know what the upsides and downsides of this proposal are—it looks like all upside to me, but it's certainly worth debating, rather than waiting around hoping that pro-labor Democrats will ever regain power and fiddle with the law.
Posted by Bradford Plumer on 12/07/05 at 01:15 PM"

Alinsky, Myles Horton, Movement

they were friends, did you know that?
Both looking for movement.

I am trying to solidify, articulate, tune my thoughts on what a movement looks like before it reaches that point where it swells up and boils over so there's no doubt about it.

Myles says that those people using what they call the Alinsky Method got it all wrong. Saul was a good organizer because he had a sense of humar, brilliance, and disregard for what other people said about him. Could have used any method and would've worked.
Saul thought if he put the leaders he developed in power they would help make other leaders and go organize other communities. But once they got in power and stoped being poor they stayed put and didn't share their power. This upset Saul very much.

In times like these
where we are in some kind of valley
where not only are we NOt getting any closer to that line on the horrizon but we are backtracking (previouse victories rolled back)
the progressives huddle up for warmth and talk only to eachother and feminist thinking keeps evolving in a tiny circle that doesn't seem to grow. -a bubble more than a movement.

Organizing that is effective in repealing oppressive laws won't nessissarily educated anybody to do anything or follow it up - nessisary ingredient for the multiplication of leaders inherrant in MOVEment.

Myles said if he had to choose between acheiving an objective or using the struggle to develope and radicallize people he would let the goal go and develope the people. says only the little victories that are calculated toward a structural change lead to valuable learning. Little victories of limited reform, they only teach you to look for small goals to reach.

So which reforms will get the ball rolling?