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The Future of the USA Labor Movement

hydrarchist writes....The SEIU split from the AFL-CIO to establish the Change To Win group during June raised surprisingly little discussion on left radical sites. Below you'll find an article written by a trade unionist in Oregon with a very polemical and ideological tone. I post the link to the full article on Anarkismo here because it attracted interesting comments (attached to the article) from libertarians active within trade unionism in the US, which are more nuanced and articulate the problematic in more practical terms. Given that there are important similar discussions taking place in Europe, Australia etc in relation to precarity/casualization and biopolitical organization, this piece is germane to both contexts.

The future of the USA Labor Movement

Patrick Star, Northwest Anarchist Federation

The proposal for restructuring the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization

This decline in union membership across the USA is being felt through the decline of the standard of living. Wages have not kept up with the increased cost of living. There is a crisis in the labor movement and workers are going to have to devise strategies that will lay the foundations for the eventual upsurge in organizing at work.

The Ivy League labor aristocrats at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) think they can solve workers problems. Their proposal called for a restructuring of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO). These proposals may seem radical and pushing towards creating an upsurge in the labor movement, yet, all it really means is a bureaucratic restructuring of the labor movement.

Read the full article and commentary here.