Background from this guy is helpful: Where Militant Unionists Come to Plan (excerpt)
Nelson Lichtenstein, The American Prospect , April 25, 2024 Members of organizations with a left-wing pedigree or internal reform movements, including the United Electrical Workers, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, plus a series of reform movements in the UAW, and the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, have long had a presence at Labor Notes. But union dissidents are no longer the main source of Labor Notes attendance. Beginning in the years after the Great Recession, a number of important unions began to subsidize increasingly large delegations, often as a consequence of having a more militant leadership or facing a looming contract fight. Thus, the NewsGuild, a division of the Communications Workers of America, sent more than 100 members to last week’s conference; the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, gearing up for a contract fight and possible strike at American Airlines, subsidized 90 members, while other airline unions sent another 60. There were at least 200 UAW members there, with many from the newly expanded ranks of academic workers, largely from the East and West Coasts. There were dozens of teachers from Massachusetts, where affiliates of the National Education Association conducted a series of illegal strikes, and 25 undergrads from the University of Oregon organizing a union there. A cross-craft, cross-union caucus of railway workers, energized by the 2023 UAW strike and President Biden’s suspension of a 2022 rail strike, had a large presence at the conference. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a union not known for much of a left-wing past, sent at least 65 members, and the 30,000-member International Association of Machinists District 751, facing its first Boeing contract fight in a decade, sent their president and a few others. There were 100 Amazon workers and at least 30 from Starbucks. Notably absent from the Labor Notes workshops and plenaries was any discussion of electoral politics. Indeed, the only politician to address the conference was Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, whose short talk largely emphasized his roots in the Chicago Teachers Union, whose reform leadership has made frequent appearances at Labor Notes conferences. Nothing was said about the elections this November or the prospects for a more potent labor engagement in electoral politics and governance, a topic absent from virtually every workshop and talk I attended—with the notable exception of one convened by labor lawyers, who were terrified of a Trump-dominated National Labor Relations Board. https://prospect.org/labor/2024-04-25-where-militant-unionists-come-to-plan/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30095): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30095 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105754902/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
