Occupy Wall Street and Organized Labor
by Julia Tomassetti, UCLA Department of Sociology
The relationship between the budding Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) and Organized Labor in the United States has ranged from easy to fraught, and from casual to engaged. OWS at first received a mixed reception from many labor leaders, who were concerned about publicly allying with what they felt might become a radical fringe movement. Also there were evident cultural and demographic tensions between Organized Labor and OWS. Unionized workers tend to be older and hold conventional jobs; the mostly younger OWS activists tend to be casualized workers who, for legal and institutional reasons, are often excluded from unions.
Several of the country’s largest unions eventually endorsed OWS and offered support. On October 5, 2011, thousands of members from the Transport Workers Union (TWU), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Federation of Teachers, United Auto Workers, and other unions marched with OWS participants in New York.[1] Unions have since participated in many OWS marches and rallies. They have donated cash, and provided protestors with amenities like blankets, rain ponchos, shower facilities, first-aid tables, and flu shots.[2]
Labor organizations have also participated in, and supported, OWS in civil disobedience and direct action. Unions lobbied and demonstrated against the evictions of Occupiers in New York and Los Angeles.[3] TWU bus drivers refused to transport OWS arrestees.[4] And, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry was arrested with OWS activists in the October 5 action.[5] In New York, OWS and several labor-affiliated groups have cooperated in occupying foreclosed homes.[6]
Likewise, Occupiers have brought the OWS tactic of creative disruption to the union picket line. In November, Occupiers joined forces with Teamsters who worked as art handlers for Sotheby’s, an upscale art auction house in New York City. Sotheby’s had locked the workers out of their jobs in August. Occupiers interrupted the auctions, blocked the entrance, and trailed Sotheby’s board members.[7]
Union leaders are taking heed of what makes the OWS movement so popular and salient. Some have begun to adopt OWS tactics, including the confrontational disruption, extensive use of social media, and messaging of “the 99%.”[8]
Some have suggested that the two need one another: As a young movement, both in terms of its recent historical advent and the age of its participants, OWS could benefit from the labor movement’s organizing experience. Likewise, OWS can contribute an egalitarian structure, strategic agility, and incorruptible social critique to the bureaucratic structure and outlook of many unions. OWS’ sweeping analytical and active denunciation of inequality, financial speculation, and corporate political influence — and its ability to shift the national debate from deficits to inequality—provides a context that could enable unions to mobilize around particular organizing, electoral, or policy goals. Unions could also help unify and channel the social concerns enunciated by OWS into concrete action plans.[9]
Despite apparent demographic, cultural, and political differences between union members and Occupiers, OWS has helped to swell the ranks of union membership in the U.S. and increase unions’ popular esteem. In the week following the OWS protests across the country in early October, the AFL-CIO signed up a record 25,000 recruits.[10]
The potential for symbiosis also creates conflict. OWS’ premise that the system is fundamentally broken, and that neither business nor government leaders are willing or able to accede to demands for its transformation, is at odds with many labor leaders’ concern with achieving what seems politically feasible in the short-run.[11] Further, OWS’ perspective — a combined critique of war, environmental degradation, globalization, inequality and corporate greed — sometimes conflicts with unions’ focus on protecting members. For example, several construction unions support the oil and gas industry’s campaign for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and use the OWS rhetoric of ‘the 99%’ to argue that the project will create jobs. However, many Occupiers oppose the pipeline on the grounds that it will create environmental damage and provide a relatively small number of low quality jobs.[12]
Similarly, OWS’ resounding commitment to nonpartisanship conflicts at times with Organized Labor’s allegiance to the Democratic Party. This conflicts with what is perhaps the most central demand of OWS — to get money out of politics.[13]
Last month’s West-Coast Port Shutdown put these conflicts between organized labor and OWS into sharp relief. On November 22, OWS activists shut down the Portland, Longview, and Oakland ports in an effort to show solidarity with port truckers in Los Angeles who have been unable to unionize and to publicize a Longview terminal operator’s decision to replace longshore union (ILWU) members with cheaper workers. The ILWU did not officially support the shutdown and accused Occupy Oakland of costing its workers a day of pay. Occupiers criticized ILWU leadership for narrowly interpreting worker interests, for example, by disregarding the costs of port pollution to surrounding working-class communities. Despite the mutual accusations, some suggest that ILWU leadership was not opposed to, and perhaps welcomed the shutdown. ILWU’s no-strike clause legally forbade them from supporting the shutdown, but their respect for the picket line suggested strategic complicity.[14]
As a broad populist movement, OWS has focused attention on the enormity of inequality in the U.S., a concern that resonates with union members and nonunion workers alike. Its emphasis on economic insecurity — whether as a debt-laden college graduate, a displaced manufacturer, or a war veteran — is creating a new sense of class cohesion. While the fate of OWS remains to be seen, it has already formed the basis for new alliances, new strategies, and new forms of political engagement.
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Notes
[1] Steven Greenhouse and Cara Buckley, “Major Unions Join Occupy Wall Street Protest,” The New York Times, October 5, 2011, sec. N.Y. / Region, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/nyregion/major-unions-join-occupy-wall-street-protest.html.
[2] Steven Greenhouse, “Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics,” The New York Times, November 8, 2011, sec. Business Day, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/business/occupy-movement-inspires-unions-to-embrace-bold-tactics.html.
[3] Mark Brenner and Jenny Brown, “At Sotheby’s and Beyond, ‘Occupy’ Movement Boosts Unions,” Labor Notes, November 10, 2011, http://labornotes.org/2011/10/sothebys-beyond-occupy-movement-boosts-unions.
[4] Michelle Goldberg, “Unions Join Occupy Wall Street,” The Daily Beast, October 4, 2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/03/occupy-wall-street-transport-workers-union-seiu-to-join-protests.html.
[5] Miranda Neubauer, “What Organized Labor Could Learn From Occupy Wall Street,” Techpresident.com, December 13, 2011.
[6] Justin Elliott, “Occupy’s next frontier: Foreclosed homes,” Salon.com, November 30, 2011, http://www.salon.com/2011/11/30/occupys_next_frontier_foreclosed_homes/singleton/.
[7] Mark Brenner and Jenny Brown, “At Sotheby’s and Beyond, ‘Occupy’ Movement Boosts Unions.”
[8] Greenhouse, “Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics.”
[9] Ibid.; Neubauer, “What Organized Labor Could Learn From Occupy Wall Street.”
[10] Greg Sargent, “What if working class Americans actually like Occupy Wall Street?,” The Washington Post – Blogs, October 17, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/what-if-working-class-americans-actually-like-occupy-wall-street/2011/10/17/gIQAniVzrL_blog.html.
[11] Mark Brenner and Jenny Brown, “At Sotheby’s and Beyond, ‘Occupy’ Movement Boosts Unions.”
[12] Justin Elliott, “Keystone XL splits unions and Occupy Wall Street,” Salon.com, November 7, 2011, http://www.salon.com/2011/11/07/keystone_xl_splits_unions_and_occupy_wall_street/singleton/.
[13] Paul Quinlan, “Occupy DC distances from Democrats. Or does it?,” Salon.com, December 2, 2011, http://www.salon.com/2011/12/02/occupydc_distances_from_democrats_or_does_it/singleton/; see also, Greenwald, Glenn, “Here’s what attempted co-option of OWS looks like,” Salon.com, November 19, 2011, http://www.salon.com/2011/11/19/heres_what_attempted_co_option_of_ows_looks_like/singleton.
[14] Loftis, Emily, “Occupy vs. Big Labor,” Salon.com, December 9, 2011, http://www.salon.com/2011/12/09/occupy_vs_big_labor/; Lee Sustar, “Organizing for the port shutdown,” SocialistWorker.org, December 8, 2011, http://socialistworker.org/2011/12/08/organizing-for-the-port-shutdown; Malia Wollan and Steven Greenhouse, “Occupy Oakland Angers Labor Leaders,” The New York Times, December 13, 2011, sec. U.S., http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/us/occupy-oakland-angers-labor-leaders.html?_r=3&hp.
This article appeared in the GALS Newsletter (December 2011, Vol. 11, No. 3) of the UCLA Globalization and Labor Standards Project (University of California Los Angeles). Katherine V.W. Stone ­ is Editor and Project Director.
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