We need more, not fewer, strikes

The debate for strengthening unions relies on union democracy where union members control the union and engage in the militant strike struggle. Burns takes us through key examples of past successful strikes with members’ democratic control.

Chapter 5 “Why organizing cannot solve the Labor crisis” is important for the debate on new strategies.

Despite union leaders successfully shifting resources to organizing the un–unionized sectors from the 1990s until now, Burns argues overall this strategy has failed to revive unions.

“In fact, the idea that the labour movement can resolve its crisis simply by adding new members - without a powerful strike in place - actually constitutes one of the greatest theoretical impediments to union revival (p95).”

Burns does not reject the practice of increasing union density and organizing in the industry of competitors. He argues it is not sufficient without the effective industry or pattern-bargaining strike and the ability to have sufficient power at work to force the collective agreement.

Unions may succeed at times with skilled or professional workers able to control the supply of labour. But with the low levels of unionization continuing, union leaders - and I was one of them – just advocating organizing the unorganized is not good enough.

Even when union density increases, the power to beat the employer does not necessarily follow. In the US, the labour laws allow aggressive employers to wage successful anti-unionizing drives and to defeat union elections. In Australia employers similarly have many legal weapons to defeat unionism.

Burns argues that even with the proposed labour law reform in ‘The Employee Free Choice Act’ making it easier for workers to unionise and bargain, such a reform is not sufficient for revival.

In any event, President Obama - despite promising unionists - failed to even look like delivering.

Burns gives historical examples of militant strikes that had surges in workers joining unions. In 2011 during the Wisconsin struggles many workers joined unions.

Burns criticizes the organizing model goal of union reformers as “abandoning the goal of creating the type of labour movement capable of transforming society (p113).”

I will not here go through the details in Chapter 6 of the US system of labour control.