USWA's $40m

[james withrow]

Charles Brown: "Does the long range of your plans include an end of
employers and employment as 
we know them ? This is the definition 
of class struggle trade unionism. The class struggle is not permanent.
It comes to an end when the working class wins it. 
Does your approach envisage this. ? 
In other words, do you have a maximum 
plan to go with your minimum plan (or program) ? 
Charles Brown
  Detroit 
Workers of the West, it's our turn." 

Charles, 

     Here at Unions-R-Us, we leave the long range plans up to you.  We
can do it either way.  It can be anything from a simple plan of raising
solidarity in the workplace all the way up to the first step in a grand
scheme to overthrow capitalism.  Again. just be aware that we may have
to charge extra for customizing.

     You're probably thinking that this is all hypothetical on my part,
but let me assure you that I've done it both ways and everything I'm
about to tell you is the god-honest truth with no jokes.  

     The first union election at a Borders Books (and Music) was at my
store in downtown (we call it Center City) Philadelphia.  I chose the
union and with help got the cards signed for an election.  We had about
50 employees and 31 signed authorization cards to ask to  be represented
by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).  That would be the
Wobblies, of course, and yes indeed their long-range goals include the
general strike and abolition of the wage system.  After a hard-fought
battle, with both union & management showing more respect than we see on
this listserver, the tide swung against us in the last few days and the
give-the-company-a-second-chance argument won out by a vote of 25 to 20.

     Starting a couple months after that, I began contacting other
unions to see if a mainstream business union  might be a better vehicle.
The UFCW local in this area was extremely interested in our situation
and based on that I suggested to employees at the Lincoln Park Borders
in Chicago, who had been working with the SEIU, to seek out the UFCW
there and see what they had to say.  The employees in Chicago felt the
UFCW was more interested and they rounded up the cards there for an
election, which they won by a good margin.  After that, there were three
more UFCW wins in other stores and... well this is a long story.  My
store never could get enthused about UFCW representation and the IWW was
out for other reasons.  But I was able to help out on the national
campaign a bit, so I've carried the ball for both those types of
unionism.

                                James in Philly        
P.S.  The "it's out turn" slogan-- I've seen it proposed before and I
still like it.