Reflections on Labor Notes 2022

I recently attended my first Labor Notes Conference in Chicago, IL. This year’s conference was far larger than the last one hosted in 2018, with more than 4,000 people in attendance. A friend of mine and veteran conference attendee attributed the increased number of participants to a buildup due to the COVID-induced pause, as well as the growth of unionized and/or union-curious education workers over the past four years. Demographics on conference attendees would be helpful. What unions were present at the event, and was there an increase in membership attendance from previous years? How many attendees were part of a union and how many were “unorganized” (like myself)? How many were gig, part-time, or otherwise precariously employed? Were the unemployed sections of the working class represented? The mood of the conference was lively and positive. There were many young people present, especially those involved in Starbucks and Amazon unionizing. There was a strong sense of community and belonging, and I was provided with a visceral reminder of how we crave community and a sense of belonging. A revitalized labor movement can provide a community for millions of alienated and lonely people. 

Labor Notes, founded by Kim Moody and others in the late 1970s, has historically been a meeting place for the left and left-adjacent working class (colloquially referred to as “troublemakers”). The drawbacks of business unionism (top-down, bureaucratic, hand-in-glove with the Democratic Party, eeking out a few dollars more for the employee and nothing else) are generally understood. The extent to which workers present at Labor notes agree that rank and file unionism is the solution can be debated. I’d like to think that a growing number of workers accept class struggle unionism, but I have no real evidence besides a few anecdotal accounts (one person, for example, said that he never heard anyone talk about the SEIU). A helpful description of the three main approaches to union organizing (see below) can be found in Joe Burns’ latest book, Class Struggle Unionism. 

 

My interests are in theory and history, so I gravitated towards panels with an international perspective. Below, I’ve written short descriptions of the most stimulating panels. 

 

Chinese Workers Under the Pandemic

 

Description from program: Chinese authorities have used their tremendous centralized power to lock down society during the pandemic...and simultaneously accelerated the suppression of any form of worker self-organization. This panel will explore how workers as diverse as food delivery drivers, sanitation workers, domestic workers, and white-collar tech workers have faced censorship, surveillance, arrests, and incarceration as they organized to protect themselves. 

• Aidan Chau, China Labour Bulletin

• Eric Chen, Chinese labor organizer 

• Junyue Qian, researcher

• Facilitator: Michelle Chen, Belabored

 

Junyue Qian focused her discussion on child, maternal, and elderly care workers. The care industry is heavily privatized and made up of mostly migrant women. Care workers complete a variety of tasks, including caring for other people and serving as general housekeepers. Many care workers live in the homes they service. The work is precarious and highly exploitative. Many care workers were exposed to COVID due to the fact that they live in the homes they service. Care workers, according to Junyue Qian, have a high level of solidarity and often help each other find employment by using text messages and other social media services.

Aidan Chau explained how the delivery food sector has been booming due to pandemic conditions, with an astounding ten million people taking delivery services jobs between 2020-21. Delivery companies exploit their workers and drive down prices in order to gain market dominance over the competition. In early March of 2021, the central government stepped in to give workers a meager wage increase in the face of an all-out price war between businesses. China Labor Bulletin and the indispensable blog Chuang have described the plight of delivery workers in excruciating detail. 

Eric Chen described the plight of construction workers and sanitation workers in urban areas. China’s ability to build hospitals in one day during the pandemic was premised on the highly precarious migrant labor. Construction laborers were overworked and underpaid (if paid at all), and many became sick. Unable to receive care from the very hospitals they built and kept from staying in the cities (due to the internal passport system, perhaps?), they slept in rubble and on roadsides. Appeals from migrant workers to the local government in whatever area they work are often dismissed, and most workers lack a formal employment contract to hold the contractor accountable for unpaid wages. Workers in China face intense repression and lack independent labor organizations, resulting in what Chen described as an inability to generate worker power domestically. In 2015, the state cracked down on labor NGOs for organizing workers and “inciting subversion of state power.” As a result, surviving NGOs (with predictions of impending extinction) advertise services towards “migrant children” instead of domestic or migrant workers. 2018 saw a highly publicized case of state repression against Marxist students who had attempted to organize workers. 

When asked about the future, Chen stated that workers (especially those “chased” by automation) will find it increasingly difficult to act alone and will be forced to band together. All three presenters acknowledged a future of increased unrest devoid of any institutional support. There is an increasing fear of working to organize labor, and students “don’t understand what the labor movement looks like.”

What can be done to support workers in China? Junyue Qian described the importance of building cultures of empowerment in which workers feel they have the power to voice their demands. Social media is a popular way to pressure individual workplace managers. Qian described the frequency with which managers will respond to workers who make complaints about social media. Whenever a manager responds to a social media post - be it with acquiescence or retaliation - the worker understands that she has an impact on the employer. Qian also described a recent trend called tangping ( “laying flat”), in which younger workers “opt-out” of the hyper-capitalist labor ethic. 

Hong Kong: Unions Dissolved, Democracy Abolished: Now What? 

 

Description from program: The world watched in amazement as the people of Hong Kong sustained a full year of massive street protests in 2019, and brought to birth a New Union Movement which generated dozens of unions in never-before-organized sectors. But the pandemic, followed by the imposition of virtual authoritarian powers through the National Security Law, led to the dissolution of major labor unions and workers' organizations in a heartbeat. This panel will explore these dramatic events, and how activists are strategizing to sustain the movement. 

• Sallie H., New Union Movement Research Group 

• Ming Lam, Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor 

• Facilitator: Promise Li, Lausan Collective

 

The labor movement in Hong Kong faces an “existential threat,” explained the presenters. The state has destroyed the New Union Movement and the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (160,000 members strong) following the 2019 protest wave with charges of subversion, foreign collusion, and terrorism. Many leaders are in jail or have been forced to flee to Britain and elsewhere. The labor movement has returned to small and decentralized struggles. The National Security Law (NSL) has broken the connection between labor movements and social movements, thereby making social movement unionism all but impossible. The Hong Kong Teachers Union was targeted and destroyed because of the prevalence of student protests in the 2019 actions. Many of the remaining unions are voluntarily self-censoring for fear of crossing the “arbitrary red line” of violating “national security.” 

Mexican Unionists Transforming Their Unions and What it Means for the United States

 

Description from program: In the past few months, independent unions in Mexico have notched big victories at General Motors and other factories. Hopes are high that more genuine, democratic unions can displace the corrupt “protection” unions that dominate the country’s labor scene and have worked hand-in-glove with multinational employers to lock in low wages, long hours, and poor working conditions. Hear from Mexican labor activists on the frontlines of this battle and discuss how we can strengthen cross-border solidarity. 

• Hector de la Cueva, CILAS Labor Center, Mexico 

• Adriana Urrea, leader of the Notimex union, SutNotimex.

• Israel Cervantes, Casa Obrera del Bajio, fired General Motors worker

The Mexican government is Janus-faced, explained Hector de la Cueva. On the one hand, it presents itself as progressive on international policy. For example, the country was not presented at the most recent Summit of the Americas. On the other hand, it maintains many of the old policies and many of the old leaders from years past. Independence from federal oversight is not welcome, as proven by the prevalence of state-controlled unions (“ghost unions”). Unions in Mexico are notoriously corrupt and pro-employer, and while the government’s ability to control unions (the two went hand-in-glove) may have waned since the end of the PRI’s 70-year rule, worker independence is no less difficult. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says he is “of the people,” yet the armed forces are stronger than ever. While conditions have slightly improved for workers under the Mexican government, it is well understood that the state is no friend of labor, as experienced by Adriana Urrea and her fellow workers at Notimex. Urrea is the leader of the Notimex union, SutNotimex. 

Founded in 1968 to broadcast and document the (soon-to-be-notorious) Summer Olympics, Notimex is the Official Mexican news agency with 68 offices across Mexico and a staggering 30,000 employees. Adriana and her colleagues have been on strike for a staggering two years, during which time Notimex has remained closed. The strike was triggered by wrongful terminations, the closure of correspondents’ offices, cyberbullying, and other abuses that went ignored by management. Notimex is led by an appointee of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, signifying yet again how the long arm of the Mexican state reaches into many supposedly democratic institutions. The president, according to Adriana, shrugged his shoulders in her face after she and her colleagues received death threats and were nearly run over by a car while camping in protest outside of the National Palace. 

One of the largest obstacles to independent working-class organizing in Mexico is the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the largest confederation of labor unions in Mexico and one of “the essential pillars” of the 70-year rule of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). In 2018, Israel Cervantes and others formed a group called Generando Movimiento, or, Generating Movement (GM). In 2019, Cervantes and his coworkers were fired from their jobs at General Motors (GM) in Silao, Guanajuato for engaging in the indepdent organizing. At the same time, Mexican workers had been striking in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the United States. Israel went on to organize a drive to join an independent union to fight the “three-headed hydra” of GM, the Mexican Government, and the CTM. Under the rule of the CMT, union elections were a widely-known farce. In 2021, he and his comrades made history by decertifying CTM and joining a newly formed independent union, SINTTIA. While the role of US Trade Representatives was acknowledged in helping to bring pressure on GM for fraudulent elections, it took the hard work of Israel and his comrades to win others to the idea of joining an independent union. The victory of SINTTIA has been called an event as significant as the 1936-37 Flint Sit Down Stike in Flint, MI.

An Organizing Approach to Austerity and Colonialism in Puerto Rico

 

Description from program: The imposition of a fiscal control board on the people of Puerto Rico has had devastating effects on workers. Draconian cuts and austerity measures have left workers in many sectors, including health care, public education, and public higher education in a constant state of emergency as they rapidly lose hard-won rights and protections, reasonable salaries, and dignified retirement benefits. Lately, these fights have targeted the so-called “Debt Adjustment Plan.” Several members of the Puerto Rican labor movement will discuss these struggles and their commitment to securing the labor rights and protections that Puerto Rican workers deserve. 

• Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo, Union of Workers in the Electricity and Irrigation Industry (UTIER) 

• Vanessa Contreras, Solidarity Trade Union Movement (MSS) 

• Ángel Rodríguez, Asociación Puertorriqueña de Profesores Universitarios (APPU) 

• Facilitator: David Galarza, United Union Employees of New York

 

Worker struggles in Puerto Rico are inseparable from the country’s colonial status. Passed in 2016, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) allows for the appointed (ie, unelected) Fiscal Control Board (FCB), known colloquially in Puerto Rico as "la junta," to restructure the countries debt (ie, destroy ever social good in the name of paying creditors). The total authority of the junta (including corruption) and the impact of austerity have been described by many others, especially after Hurricane Maria. Ángel Rodríguez and his colleagues in the University of Puerto Rico system have been working to organize teachers and the especially militant student body against budget cuts to higher education. Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo has been working to organize Pepsi-Cola workers. Both have been supported by the work of Vanessa Contreras and the Solidarity Trade Union Movement (MSS). All the speakers acknowledged the importance of women in leading many of the struggles against austerity, including a recent demonstration against closing public beaches and selling the land to private investors. One popular slogan during that movement was, “one beach for one peso.” Most workers in Puerto Rico are in the private sector, and few are unionized. One obstacle to worker organizing around social issues is the conflict between environmental destruction (the clearing of wetlands, for example) and demands for a job (ie, an income for basic necessities) at any cost. 

 

When We Fight: Film Screening and Discussion 

Description from program: When We Fight is a short documentary about the Los Angeles educators' strike of 2019, highlighting the stories of some of the women who led it. The film will be followed by a discussion led by Arlene Inouye of United Teachers Los Angeles. 

• Yael Bridge, director/producer 

• Yoni Golijov, director/producer 

• Arlene Inouye, United Teachers Los Angeles

 

I had participated in the strike as a supporter and member of the ISO. Yet, I knew little about how it was organized and had next to no appreciation for how strikes are actually planned on the ground. Filming began six months before the strike. Teachers in different schools would gather together with coworkers during lunch breaks and talk with them about the 1.3 billion dollar surplus available to the school, all while class sizes averaged around 39 students and many schools were without nurses, librarians, and other support staff. Of note: during teacher strikes across the country and the “Red for Ed '' movement, principals in LA were tasked with counting the number of red shirts worn by staff and reporting numbers to superiors each morning. Austin Beutner, the now-former superintendent, was fond of excusing worker hardships by saying there was no available money. Once a tentative contract had been reached, many strikes needed to be convinced that they were getting the best deal possible. I am not in a position to judge the quality of the deal or say if the teachers should have stayed out. The agreed-upon three-year deal expires this year. The extent to which things have improved for LAUSD teachers and students since the strike depends on who you ask. The LA Times has at least one article describing conditions as more or less the same, while UTLA’s official position declared (and seems to still declare) a victory. The UTLA members in attendance were fired up and combative. They encouraged teachers in other states like New York and Miami to work toward strike no matter what the law says is legal or illegal. A NY teacher states that the strength of the strike determines the extent of legal repercussions.