-life is what happens to u while ur busy making other plans
-never give up, hang in there baby! just do it
-u miss 100% of the shots u dont take
-dance like nobody is watching
-if life gives u lemons make leomnade! YOLO!
-turn that frown upside down
- The labor movement is a vast and varied place, with everything from your classic white male driven and chauvinistic unions, to more progressive and militant ones, to straight up company unions selling out their members. It varies also significantly by local (the CTU in Chicago is not representative of the AFT nationally for example).
- There are valuable skills and tools that the left can learn from labor. I very much think that any serious left party or organization should adopt the comprehensive campaign model on whatever issue it wants to apply it to. This necessarily involves "real politics" or engaging with people who don't necessarily think like you do. It means reforms but it doesn't have to mean reformism. Reforms can be achievable campaign milestones on the path to a more revolutionary future. That last bit, revolutionary vision, is what all unions are lacking.
-Successful campaigns are long, even with significant resources to expend. Meaning years. This is why I think having a dues structure is important because you really aren't going to get volunteers to slog through a six year campaign without it affecting their ability to hold a normal job. At the same time dues payers expect results from their money and in general this can serve as a democratizing element.
- The skills necessary to do these things can all be taught and people can participate at levels they are able to or comfortable with. There is nothing exclusionary about it.
- Committee structure. Learn it. Love it. Live it.
I'll post more later but now I have to run. Ask me more specific questions and I'll try my best. Maybe I'll post some publicly available resources on corporate research and campaigns. Idk. Do it live as the man said.
You put community organising as a key ingredient, what connections between unions and communities are there, would these have campaigns that they'd support each other out in say?
xipe posted:What kind of info do you look for in a company and how do you find out out?
As a preliminary question, you want to figure out if the company is publicly traded or privately owned. You can quickly figure this out by typing the company name into Google Finance or something similar. If there's a stock ticker for the company, it's public, which means that the company has to file with the SEC. The SEC EDGAR https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html website is where you can put the company/ticker in and pull up all their filings. Key documents include:
- The 10-K, an annual filing that includes the most comprehensive overview of the company including financials, risk disclosure, competition, regulations the company may be under, a brief history of the company, etc. This is the first place to look.
- The 10-Q is less detailed, but filed quarterly.
- 8-K filings are issued when a special event happens (bankruptcy, major change in ownership, etc.).
- The DEF 14 is a proxy statement filing. This is important because it includes information about the upcoming shareholder meeting. Maybe you can bring workers/community members to the meeting? Shareholder meetings are where important decisions are voted on by shareholders, such as board member elections. Think about the possibilities here. You also get an overview of the company's policies as approved by the board of directors, like related party transactions. Is the company CEO giving contracts to his brother-in-law? This might show up here, and you will also be able to figure out who approved those transactions. Executive compensation is also detailed here, and post-Dodd Frank exec compensation (edit) has a lot more rules about disclosure and how shareholders can vote on it. For illustration, here is the recent Yahoo DEF 14: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1011006/000119312516599017/d154982ddef14a.htm
Homework: What can you learn about Yahoo's executive compensation from this DEF 14?
Anyway, that's just a sampling of some information sources. Another big one to keep in mind is bankruptcy. If the company went bankrupt, there's going to be a boat load of data released publicly in the court system. This includes private companies that don't file with the SEC! You can use PACER or a similar source to get these documents or the court may have a public website. For example, Prime Clerk hosts the dockets of many bankruptcies. For example, here's the Gawker bankruptcy docket: https://cases.primeclerk.com/gawker/Home-DocketInfo
Important bankruptcy documents include the Voluntary Petition (the very first filing by the bankrupt company), the Disclosure Statement and the Plan of Reorganization. If the bankruptcy is contentious with creditors fighting the debtor, you may want to look at the attachments to the motions filed by creditors. They may contain exhibits with interesting information.
Anyway, from a strategic standpoint there are really four questions you want to ask when you want to map out a company. The answer to these questions can help you figure out weaknesses in the company and points of leverage that can be exploited:
1. Who are the decision makers? It may seem like the CEO has the power, but who actually owns the company? If it is a diversified publicly traded company, then yes the CEO and Board of Directors are at the helm most likely. But what if the company is 80% owned by a particular investor? What if the company has split ownership between two private equity companies? Ownership data can usually be quickly pulled from Yahoo Finance.
2. Where does the money come from? How much debt does the company have? Is it a lot relative to other companies in the industry? Is the company struggling to pay back its debt? Do pension funds like California Public Employees Retirement System have significant investments in a hedge fund that is lending it money? Is the company about to issue new debt or stock? Maybe the company is a private equity firm that gets its money from pension funds. Are they fund raising? If you started communicating with the pension fund about the private equity firm's high fees and poor performance would they get annoyed? Or maybe they have a poor environmental track record? Mr. Taibbi wrote a good article on the pension fund/hedge fund issue: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/looting-the-pension-funds-20130926
3. What is the plan to grow? As we know from M-C-M', companies need that sweet sweet surplus value and they need to grow. If you can find out how they plan to grow, you may be able to get in the way of it. Maybe they need to purchase a competitor and there are anti-trust issues? Maybe they need local zoning approval to build a new office?
4. Who are the regulators? It may be surprising to some of you but there are these things called regulatory agencies that sometimes attempt to enforce the rules. They are the EPA, the SEC, OTS, FTC, the Fed, CFPB, OSHA, etc. as well as various state and local level agencies like health departments. A lot of times unfortunately, these folks are asleep at the wheel and that can be to your advantage. Wake them up if you uncover something juicy and make it public.
There's a lot more to this and I would love to go into more detail but that should be enough to chew on for now. Private companies for instance, are a whole other beast.
You put community organising as a key ingredient, what connections between unions and communities are there, would these have campaigns that they'd support each other out in say?
Basically what Urbandale said but there are some good examples of unions and community groups working together. One of the key issues here is to build genuine solidarity. A lot of times in the past unions have been really bad at reciprocating solidarity, so they'd pick up a community issue when it suits them and then never come back to it when they get what they want (like a contract or card-check neutrality agreement). We still have to perfect this and it is really hard work. I wish I could be more specific but there are lot of things happening currently that I can't really speak to. But one good example might be the CTU strike from a few years ago. The union there has had a persistent and strong stance of embedding itself in community issues and it made it very clear that the strike was about more than just the workers but the whole city. I think that's the main issue. You have to understand as a union that improving the lives of your workers at work is great but if they go home to a neighborhood full of vacants and a hostile police force, it doesn't mean much. So it really is about taking a holistic approach and going back almost to an IWW-style mentality about what unions are and should be, rather than just narrow-minded and focused on the next contract or whatever.
Edited by statickinetics ()
to straight up company unions selling out their members
How does this kind of thing happen? Are there particular methods that company owners use to capture or de-radicalise unions? Or is it more likely these unions were always shit?
Makeshift_Swahili posted:to straight up company unions selling out their members
How does this kind of thing happen? Are there particular methods that company owners use to capture or de-radicalise unions? Or is it more likely these unions were always shit?
Yeah it's more likely the union was shit to begin with. You unfortunately have some unions and locals whose leadership just wants to collect a check and go home and for whatever reason they are just really hard to uproot in elections. There are some unions that have seen their main industries collapse or decline and then in a desperate attempt to get members will sign sweetheart agreements with companies in completely unrelated industries to shut out other more radical unions. Sometimes strikes fail and the union leadership gets challenged by company friendly candidates and loses. All of this is to suggest that there is a significant amount of union members who really don't know anything about their union, have never seen a rep or staff person from the union, and don't have a clue what their dues are being used for. This is simultaneously a huge bad mark on the labor movement as a whole but it represents a major opportunity for grassroots membership rebellions.
That being said, like I said earlier there's tremendous variation. The same national union might have a number of radical or militant locals at the same time other locals follow the old business union model. It really depends. And I have met plenty of radicals who have been struggling to reform their orgs for a long time so again I don't like to paint with a broad brush.
statickinetics posted:Makeshift_Swahili posted:
to straight up company unions selling out their members
How does this kind of thing happen? Are there particular methods that company owners use to capture or de-radicalise unions? Or is it more likely these unions were always shit?
Yeah it's more likely the union was shit to begin with. You unfortunately have some unions and locals whose leadership just wants to collect a check and go home and for whatever reason they are just really hard to uproot in elections. There are some unions that have seen their main industries collapse or decline and then in a desperate attempt to get members will sign sweetheart agreements with companies in completely unrelated industries to shut out other more radical unions. Sometimes strikes fail and the union leadership gets challenged by company friendly candidates and loses. All of this is to suggest that there is a significant amount of union members who really don't know anything about their union, have never seen a rep or staff person from the union, and don't have a clue what their dues are being used for. This is simultaneously a huge bad mark on the labor movement as a whole but it represents a major opportunity for grassroots membership rebellions.
That being said, like I said earlier there's tremendous variation. The same national union might have a number of radical or militant locals at the same time other locals follow the old business union model. It really depends. And I have met plenty of radicals who have been struggling to reform their orgs for a long time so again I don't like to paint with a broad brush.
Here in Canada we have union brass making $400,000 a year and inviting Trudeau to speak at conventions, no joke
Red_Canadian posted:sure, but can you be sure it wasn't part of elaborate kidnapping plot? stop him in the middle of his speech, force him to turn over the army's weapons store...etc? i'm probably just an optimist.
Well he finished his speech and it hasn't happened yet. Plus yeah those $400k sallaries come from investment in foreign oil proxies which Trudeau is the head hitler of
Red_Canadian posted:sure, but can you be sure it wasn't part of elaborate kidnapping plot? stop him in the middle of his speech, force him to turn over the army's weapons store...etc? i'm probably just an optimist.
Epic this lol
Makeshift_Swahili posted:How does this kind of thing happen? Are there particular methods that company owners use to capture or de-radicalise unions? Or is it more likely these unions were always shit?
in addition to the failures and takeovers that have already been covered, sometimes a company will make up its own "union" stocked with corporate placebos from the very beginning, in practice simply another division of management, and that's the only union they'll ever know.
this often happens to head off a threat of organizing: oh, so this union says they'll advocate on your behalf but they want you to pay dues? well have you heard about this cool other union that we coincidentally happen to know of, they'll charge you only a fraction for the same service, and you won't even have to go to any boring meetings! we're just looking out for you!
shriekingviolet posted:Makeshift_Swahili posted:How does this kind of thing happen? Are there particular methods that company owners use to capture or de-radicalise unions? Or is it more likely these unions were always shit?
in addition to the failures and takeovers that have already been covered, sometimes a company will make up its own "union" stocked with corporate placebos from the very beginning, in practice simply another division of management, and that's the only union they'll ever know.
this often happens to head off a threat of organizing: oh, so this union says they'll advocate on your behalf but they want you to pay dues? well have you heard about this cool other union that we coincidentally happen to know of, they'll charge you only a fraction for the same service, and you won't even have to go to any boring meetings! we're just looking out for you!
Yeah it should be noted though that these kinds of explicit company unions are illegal under the US NLRA and other national labor laws. There are strict rules against employers providing any kind of material support to unions or their officials under the NLRA. Not to say it doesn't happen but it is more likely to have company friendly unions than explicitly company run unions.
Edited by swampman ()
statickinetics posted:Yeah it should be noted though that these kinds of explicit company unions are illegal under the US NLRA and other national labor laws.
wait but what if -
statickinetics posted:There are strict rules against employers providing any kind of material support to unions or their officials under the NLRA.
sure but on the other hand
statickinetics posted:Not to say it doesn't happen but it is more likely to have company friendly unions than explicitly company run unions.
wow it's almost like ... oh
shriekingviolet posted:Many countries have legislation against the practice yeah
so therefor let's pursue campaigns in non illegal unions
Keven posted:Well I'm not a rebel at all... I'm just a regular man trying to live his life. And that's damn hard enough, if you ask me.
Big Kev... I had a job interview today. I think it went well. Another day, another dollar, that's all I know.
Keven posted:I'm so sick of my job ... Screw having a job. I'm tied to "money chains"
If I get a job I think you have to quit your job, to keep "job equality"
