Elton LK: [00:00:00] You are listening to class, an official podcast of the Democratic Socialists of America National Political Education Committee. My name is Elton lk. This has been an important year for the labor movement and for DSA workers are seeing the value in forming a union. Using the credible threat of a strike to win better pay, working conditions and political power, our world is unraveling for our eyes.
DSA believes the only solution to the culture wars, the ecological crises, and the various economic crises is democracy. The collective power of the labor movement is necessary in order to stop the capitalist. Which is why I am excited to say that this year, DSA took important steps towards becoming a true working class organization.
Today we are speaking with three past and present members of [00:01:00] DSA and National Labor Commission, also known as the NLC. The National Labor Commission has several campaigns underway. We have talked about the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee or Ewok. On this podcast a number of times,
Today you'll hear from DSA members, Aisha L, working for Starbucks, workers United and Sean Orr, A UPS Steward for the Teamsters Local 7 0 5. You'll also hear from Sarah Heard, who has been active in DS a's Strike Ready Campaign. Okay, let's hand things over to our guests.
what happened in Labor News in 2023 that you're excited about?
Sean Orr: 2023 was a big year for, uh, the labor movement. for a, a number of reasons. I mean, I think that a lot of the longstanding I. Issues of stagnation, uh, in organized labor have really started to crack through, right? [00:02:00] Um, we went through the long period of decades of concessionary contracts and business union leadership in the highest ranks of our unions., You know, coming through the period of, uh, the Great Recession coming through, all of the hardships of, uh, the Covid pandemic rank and file workers, um, I. We've all known have had enough of it, but it started to take an organized form and things have started to change and they started changing very quickly. , we saw a big breakthrough in the Teamsters in 2021, uh, but we saw an even bigger breakthrough with the United Auto Workers, uh, this year, uh, in 2023. , Sean Fain and the UAW members United. basically, you know, they ran a Hail Mary and they won it. You know, uh, we got a majority of, uh, militant reformers at the top of one of the most storied unions in the American labor movement. militant [00:03:00] reformers. Uh, we got a comrade, a member of DSA to be on, uh, the International Executive Board of that Union. Uh, and they, uh, led. Uh, one of the most inspirational, uh, strikes and labor actions that I've ever seen in my lifetime. At the same time as that we had the big change over with the teamsters that led to the UPS contract fight. And while that did not end in a strike, immobilized hundreds of thousands of workers across the country in a way that directly, uh, inspired and led to a lot of the activity that we saw in the UAW and a lot of the things that we're starting to see, uh, bubble up around, uh, the labor movement right now. I think that this really was the moment when the labor giant woke up in this country. Uh, and I'm very proud to say, that DSA has been at the heart of that awakening from the very beginning and has been, uh, playing a key role in leading the development of a new labor movement, but of also really [00:04:00] building this movement out and bringing in. Tens of thousands of young people, people who are energized, who have been fired up over the previous, uh, several fights that we've had on the electoral realm, on the social realm. Now we're bringing it into labor. Um, and I think that, uh, we have a lot more exciting moments to come. And, uh, I'm excited to see what comes next.
Ayesha: uh, 2023 for me comes on the heels of, a really exciting year in 2022, which, you know, saw the rise of the Starbucks Workers United, which is, you know, a very, Exciting thing to see all these young people coming into the labor movement, to see, you know, an industry that was thought not to be able to be unionized, um, workers saying, no, we are going to come together and we are going to fight back against this giant, you know, Goliath of a company. Um, and, you know, they inspired so many people. Um, and that includes me. I, I was a, a worker at Starbucks five years ago. Um, and I'd already been in DSA [00:05:00] back then, but really like, didn't. Imagine something like this happening or maybe I imagined it, but just like couldn't, you know, see how it was gonna happen. but all those workers in Buffalo, just started talking to each other, started, um, organizing, you know, a lot of them came from, uh, places that they had organized before that small regional coffee chains. Um. But what was really exciting was just seeing how they helped workers in other places to organize.
So this was happening, you know, during the height of Omicron and people were, you know, terrified to, to go to work. they would go to work and they would try to protect each other as much as they could, and then come home and go on Zoom and help workers like in Portland. And, um, uh, my own sister works at a store in New Jersey and she learned. From the Buffalo Partners, like every night on Zoom, how to organize her store. And then helped workers in other places like Chicago actually, um, talking to workers there. So the beginning of the campaign was very like, [00:06:00] you know, building the plane as they fly it. Um, and I tagged in as a DSA member who knew how to, you know, get community members out for different things, you know, because of, uh, the work that our chapter had done around immigration organizing and Medicare for all organizing. So we use that to build community support for, um, the local workers, uh, including my sister's store. and then through that, like just learning more and more about the organizing process. Our chapter had done, some work like, you know, getting trained with Ewok and like starting to, to try to organize some of their jobs.
But this really like turbocharged it. and I think that. DSA really threw down across the country and, you know, some small chapters that didn't imagine that they, you know, were gonna be, witnessing like part of this upsurge of, of labor. Um, were able to see it like in their backyards and were able to come out and say like, I'm a socialist, I support, uh, what you're doing here.
And then that really set up, up for success for both the teamster [00:07:00] fight and then with UAW.
Sarah Hurd: Yeah. Well, I might, uh, take on the trend of going backwards in time instead of forwards in time, and kind of talk about what I think set us up really well for being able to seize the moment of, uh, Starbucks and the kind of solidarity as brewing campaign that we did. Alongside of it, which was actually back in 2019.
Uh, DSA had a convention that summer where there was kind of a big debate between, um, should we focus on doing new organizing or should we focus on organizing people who are already in unionized industries, um, to try to, you know, become shop floor militants in their union. Um, and after, you know, a lot of online and in-person debate, the people that had supported
Let's focus on new organizing. Voted in favor of, a proposal for us to adopt the rank and file strategy as kind of a force for our work. Um, and the people who had supported. Let's focus on . Shop floor militants and existing unions, you know, endorsed this idea of let's start doing new organizing, which then [00:08:00] meant in 2020 when the pandemic hit, we were well positioned to, um, start our project Ewok, which is a collaboration, United Electrical Workers Union.
Um, that has taken what I think one of the most important resources that, that we have that's special in DSA, which is our volunteer power. and use that to jumpstart people organizing. in places that I, I don't even think DSA will ever actually get credit for all of the people who learned how to organize through Ewok and whether they want a union at their workplace through that drive or not.
They learned these valuable skills and they also developed this really important class consciousness that I think has like planted a lot of seeds. Um, and, and also during that time, because . DSA started talking louder and louder about the rank and file strategy. I think it also really shifted a lot of people who had been radicalized by the Bernie Sanders campaign into thinking, oh, maybe I can, get a normal person job, but use.
My [00:09:00] position in that job, to, to keep this momentum and, and this movement going. And so there were a lot of people who, in those years, between 2019, uh, and 2023, that started this very, like, it's a, it's a lifelong project of, uh, getting a job in a strategic industry, getting to know your coworkers.
Starting to talk to them, start starting to try to take on leadership roles and, and organize to make your union better. Um, we were doing that kind of new organizing and organizing within existing unions, like simultaneously. Um, and I think we were really able to see them. Inform and support each other.
Um, and then something that I think was really exciting that kind of burst onto the scene in the past year was, um, making DSA kind of the center of solidarity work. So people, if they're not in a position to do new organizing or organize within an existing union. Can still play a role, um, in this labor upsurge, uh, through, [00:10:00] uh, you know, through our strike ready campaign, through solidarity as brewing.
and through the kind of solidarity work that we hope that they'll be continuing to plug into in their chapters, uh, for years to come.
Elton LK: And can you speak to DSA Strike Ready campaign? What? What is
Sarah Hurd:
Sean Orr: so Strike Ready was a campaign that DSA set up at the start of 2023, and the idea was a pretty simple one. We saw two big, uh, labor struggles on the horizon. UPS in August and, uh, the big three auto companies in September. And our game plan was to get the entirety of DSA, our chapters, our national leadership and our national bodies to be strike ready by August 1st to support UPS and by September 14th to support, uh, the big three auto companies. Uh, and so it was essentially What we did was we took, uh, the, uh, model of organizing in the labor movement of getting [00:11:00] a group of coworkers to be strike ready, and we simply applied that to DSA, right? we wanted to be in a position where if these, uh, struggles, Took on a public forum, whether it was practice, pickets, rallies or strike activity, we wanted as much of DSA as possible to be ready to go and support those workers in struggle to expand their struggle and to help them win. Um, this wasn't a, uh, a plan to, you know, direct the fight and to lead it as DSA, but for DSA to be led by the workers in struggle and to say, look. We're here to help. We're here to provide the, uh, solidarity that you need to make sure that you can stay out one day longer than the bosses. Uh, so strike.
Ready. Got set up In early 2023, um, by, uh, the end of July as the UPS strike, uh, reached, uh, the UPS struggle reached a tentative agreement. We had [00:12:00] 110 chapters actively engaged in the campaign. We had over 250 comrades acting as solidarity captains on the ground, uh, day in, day out, in touch with the campaign. Working with, uh, rank and file Teamsters on the ground, working with their union locals on the ground. Uh, we were, uh, going out to practice pickets with the teamsters. We were organizing rallies in the communities. We organized, uh, DSAs electeds, uh, over, uh, 90 Comrades who hold elected office to sign a solidarity letter in support of the fight, uh, comrades here in Chicago. Uh, led an effort that led to a unanimous solidarity resolution being passed through the city council and through the Cook County Board of Directors, um, uh, board of Commissioners. And, we saw, a lot of other similar, fights like that happen around the country. Uh, this was, largest mobilization DSA has had on a national level since, uh, the Bernie campaign in 2020. [00:13:00] And for a lot of comrades, this was their first, uh, serious Experience in the labor movement, and they loved it. Our comrades got a valuable experience out of it. And more importantly, as a UPS worker, my coworkers got a valuable experience out of it because they got to see that they had friends out there that they didn't know they had. Uh, I, you know, as a driver, as a UPS steward, I talked to coworkers around the country and I had coworkers talk to me about the fact that they were meeting DSA. Uh, out at, there's practice pickets. Uh, they're going out to DSA events. Uh, there's teamster locals now that have a working relationship with, uh, their DSA chapter around electoral work, around strategizing, around getting pro-labor candidates elected in their local areas. And this isn't just New York City and Chicago. We're talking about, uh, places like Kansas City. We're talking about Indianapolis. We're talking about in, um, small, uh, towns up in Northern Alabama. [00:14:00] I mean, we have had a, an incredible reach as a result of this. And you know, I think that for decades, the issue, the la that the left has faced in this country is that we've been separated from organized labor.
We've been separated from the working class and there's been strategy after strategy, banging our heads against while trying to figure out how do we bridge that divide. And I think that Strike Ready was an, an honest attempt at bridging that divide and one that really did pay off. Um. And that was just talking about UPS.
We didn't even go on strike at UPS when the UA Eaw struck big 3D SA chapters who had been involved in strike rate, were ready from the get go. Uh, we had chapters provide picken line support every single day of the strike. Uh, we had other chapters, uh, organize caravans to go out to picket lines. We organize food drives.
We organize getting supplies out to the, to the locals.
I think that this was, uh, uh, this was a huge success. Absolutely huge success, and I think a model that DSA and [00:15:00] Comrades should be looking to for how we can build a material solidarity with workers in struggle and help them win.
Ayesha: like Sean said, we started the strike ready campaign in the beginning of 2023 looking, you know, down the road to potentially UPS going on strike and UAW. And while UPS didn't go on strike, they did a lot of practice pickets and, uh, DSA members came out, built relationships with them, and also built with relationships with other people who came out. and I think we also learned a lot of patience through this campaign because, you know, you, you don't know if you're strike ready, that means like you're ready in the event of a strike. But also, you know, in the event of, um, a strike not happening. And I think. That's something for all of us to learn too, is some patience. and none of us could have predicted that, you know, UAW was gonna do this standup strike, which was, just such a delight to see every week, more facilities, more, uh, parts distribution centers going on strike. But the folks [00:16:00] inside those facilities and inside those parts distribution centers did not know, you know, if they were gonna be going on when and if they were gonna be going on strike.
And so. Us being prepared and having that patience, but also being ready, made it so much easier for us to respond to this new, you know, revolutionary strategy that, um, the, the Fanc came up with. And I think everyone in DSA is a, is a fanc now.
Sarah Hurd: I feel like everybody in the country is a fanc now. He's, and, and I think that's what's been really amazing about those two campaigns specifically, is that I was hearing about . The UPS and the UAW campaigns, like on normie radio stations. And I think that in terms of like, I think DSA has had an ability to, you know, cause effects within those campaigns that were positive.
And then I think those campaigns have been able to reach a whole population that, um, DSA still hasn't really figured out how to tap into, but it's all kind of part of our. Bigger project. And I think that [00:17:00] Sean mentioned something earlier about how, you know, for years and years, socialists have been trying to kind of like redo the merger, get, get the socialist movement and the labor movement back together or together for the first time in terms of like our lifetimes.
Um, and I think that. The strategy that we had with this was really like letting, letting the workers lead and letting those relationships develop first before coming in with all of these big ideas that we have about, you know, how to change the world and like without doing any pressure to, um, try to get certain things into that contract or trying to get certain people into our organization in, in an aggressive way.
Um, and I think that that strategy is in itself kind of an example of the lessons that . We have all learned leading up to this. And then I think through this process, um, we've also managed to continue that process of learning and taking this new information and being flexible. And like Aisha said, patient, [00:18:00] um.
And I think that that has been a really valuable process for, for people in chapters all over the country, some of whom, um, have been doing solidarity work that, you know, it doesn't just come down from the national level and then everybody like goes to work. Uh, in many cases it comes, you know, bottom up.
Um, and I think in the, in the case of the support that was done for the, the Writer's Guild and then the Screen Actors' Guild when they went out was, you know, . Hollywood Labor kind of emerged to, to serve this real need that there was, um, and did an incredible job of, you know, taking kind of these, these concepts of strike solidarity, um, and doing it in a very unique, regionally specific kind of way.
Elton LK: you mentioned Sean Fain and, and how, uh, much of a celebrity he has become. Can you, talk about. Who he is, where he comes from, and um, what the standup strike is.
Sean Orr: so he, he's been a part of the [00:19:00] UUAW for quite a long time. he's a rank of filer out of Kokomo, Indiana. Uh, got brought onto the international a while back, but really saw a need for a huge change in the UAW, especially, uh, after the, uh, Concessionary contracts were being organized at the big three auto companies. And then on top of that, the corruption scandals that riddled the UAW, that led to one member one vote, uh, being instituted in their international union for the first time. He then, uh, became involved in a reform caucus that got set up just a couple years ago. Uh, unite All Workers for Democracy, UAWD, which led the charge at the international convention just last year, uh, to institute a number of, uh, structural reforms and to put forward a slate of candidates for that year's international elections. Um, we had, uh, in UAWD, um. Just, uh, we've ran just enough candidates [00:20:00] for a one person majority on the international executive board if we won. and Sean Fein ran as president on that slate. you know, there Were conservative hopes that maybe one or two candidates would make it onto the international board.
And then the struggle for reform could continue and, you know, the long march to the institution, et cetera, et cetera. And then they swept the board. Um, and UAWD got a, uh, majority on the executive board Fain as president. Uh, he won by a squeaker thin margin, but he won nonetheless. and carried it forward, into, uh, negotiations at the Big Three Auto Companies, uh, which is four GM and Stellantis. their negotiations began, within, a month or two of, uh, the, uh, current e-board being, sworn in. Uh, so they had to hit the ground running. And the standup strike strategy was a pretty novel strategy, something that we haven't seen in the labor movement [00:21:00] before, which is essentially taking, uh, What they, they kind of flipped the, uh, traditional strategy on its head a little bit.
Right. You know, UPS is a example of a traditional strategy, right? Which is you want to get a group of workers to be a credible strike threat by contract expiration, and so you wanna scale it back based on the size of the place and how much work you need to do. Our contract campaign at UPS began a year Before the contract expired because it was over 300,000 workers, right? Uh, the big three auto companies, you know, there's over 140,000, uh, auto workers that are covered by that. They only had a couple of months before, before contract expiration when they finally took over and they led negotiations. Right. In most business union mindsets, it would be like, okay, well you just go in, get what you can get. All right, boys, this is the best deal we could get. You guys better vote. Yes. We can't get anything else, right? But they took a weakness and they made it into a strength, [00:22:00] which, uh, was essentially, uh, you know, they held a firm line on the contract expiring.
They had their main demands, which were, uh, militant demands, demands to reverse the concessions of the past 22 years. They hit contract expiration and they said, okay, the contract has expired, uh, starting in two hours. These three plants are on strike and everybody else is on standby because we're going to continue to call out more plants and more, uh, parts distributors on strike until this contract is settled. And so they basically Kept all the initiative in this, it it took, uh, a group of workers who had not been organized to the level that is like traditional in a contract campaign and led to inspiration, led to mass participation, mass engagement in the union that they had never seen before. To the point where by the time this, uh, strike ended, you know, they had won a deal that had 50% more money on the table than the last deal before [00:23:00] the contract expired. They reopened a plant that had been shuttered six months prior. That's something that's never happened before. I'm from the Midwest that know we take plant closures like a accepted reality of nature. It's like a tree dying. But they reverse that. Now this plant's gonna be reopened, thousands of jobs are going to be brought back. and, uh, the U AAW won the right to strike over plant Acri OERs in the future. Uh, so, you know, this was a novel approach. It shows that, you know, it doesn't just matter that we get new people at the top of, uh, of our unions, but we get new ideas in the labor movement. And I think that that. Is the key, uh, victory coming outta strike ready And something that I'm glad DSA has been involved in from the get go and, uh, involved through the whole, through the whole process.
Elton LK: This is Class, an official podcast of the Democratic Socialists of America National Political Education Committee. My name is Elton LK. Thank you to Casey [00:24:00] Stikker, who deserves a big thanks for sound engineering and theme music. Thank you to Palmer Conrad for editing.
if you're inspired by anything we've been talking about, if you think the system is rigged and democracy is the solution, join DSA. Become a member. I've put a link in the show notes to DSA's website. if you're already a member of DSA, please share this podcast with your local chapter.
Class is intended to be a resource for chapters and members to articulate, apply, and share socialist theory with DSA and the wider working class. Also, remember to rate and review us on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. As you know from listening to other podcasts, this is an important way to get out the word about class.
