Thoughts on strikes and unionism

Kurt, an old usej/switch person who is now OSWP and vote yes, thinks that AWDU and CLEW fetishize the strike, so I want to share my thoughts on that here. (not with Kurt bc he's a troll and I'm not spending that energy...)

First off, just to add nuance and make it clear that AWDU and CLEW were/are not homogeneous groups I want to emphasize that there were and are differing positions on strikes, for example I remember that in the past bargaining the AWDU team had at least two tendencies I was aware of. Those who saw the strike as just a strategic tool to use to get our demands. Then there were those who thought striking itself had a pedagogical or consciousness raising experience to it and that we needed to build for a strike no matter what we were offered.

Second, as Burns explains in Reviving the Strike there's different types of strikes, and the labor movement has adopted the more neoliberal version that's about market forces and costs of replacement workers, and forgotten about the mass strike that's about disruption. So a more nuanced discussion should address what kind of strike a union is building.

Third, a strike can be the most powerful weapon that labor has. So if it seems like we are strike obsessed that's because it's imo both a super powerful tool and it can build class consciousness. In Teamster Rebellion author Farrell Dobs mentions how he had voted republican, and then a little while later went on strike and that experience showed him that workers and bosses had different interests, that police and the state supported the bosses, and he was totally radicalized and became one of the US's leading Trotskyists.

Finally, and this is super important to my analysis, strikes alone, even among majority or super majority unions don't automatically win. Let's take the most iconic example of a losing strike - PATCO, the air traffic controllers who went on strike in the early 80's but Reagan used the national security clause of Taft Hartley to break the strike. PATCO had great participation. They didn't lose because it was a minority strike. They were ill prepared for Reagan to crush their strike. They were a notoriously conservative union of professionals, they had endorsed Reagan just shortly before! Their unionism didn't build connections with the broader working class, and definitely not oppressed groups within it. Their endorsement of such a conservative was a big fuck you to these groups. So when Reagan brought down the strike they were isolated and easily went down. They had refused to do the on the ground work of showing others that PATCO had their back and as such when it came time no one had their back. Why would they? So sacrificing solidarity work to build membership numbers makes sense if you think all that matters is having a strong majority strike. But I think PATCO shows that the power of a union is beyond its membership, like a tree no matter how thin or thick, when a strong wind blows what matters is how deep and how far it has spread its roots.