> The way you put it, tools of industrial struggles are either only
> available to workers who are already union members or workers who are
> seeking to have companies sign contracts with unions. What is a
> union, though? It's a group of workers who organize themselves to
> achieve the same goals, be they higher wages, more benefits, better
> working conditions, enforcement of safety rules, or reinstatement of
> fellow workers who are fired. All workers should learn and use tools
> of industrial struggles to achieve such goals, whether or not they
> are already in legally recognized bargaining units, whether or not
> they want to constitute themselves as such.
As it happens I read this just as I finished reading a most excellent book _Taxi!_ by Biju Mathew (New Press, 2005). I just posted the first book review to Amazon that I've ever attempted, I've pasted it in below.
john mage
[five stars]
"Taxi!" tells the story of the organization in the last ten years of a successful labor union - though never recognized officially as such - by NYC cab drivers. There had been an official AFL-CIO union but its leadership had (in the 70s) sold out the drivers coming into the industry in return for pennies for oldtimers, and a dues check-off. The union gave in to the corrupt local Democratic politicians who helped taxi "brokers" legalize a "leasing" system in which drivers make a daily cash "lease" payment before they can start work.
Under the daily "lease" system drivers as they set out each day have to make over $100 before they earn anything for themselves. In bad weather and traffic they can work 12 hour days for nothing. But supposedly they are "independent contractors" and so labor laws don't apply. By the 90s almost all the drivers were working under this kind of peonage. Subject to ever increasing levels of harassment by Giuliani's police, the many drivers with Islamic names were then hit full on with the pogrom atmosphere that followed 9/11.
Biju Mathew tells how the drivers collectively organized strikes (the AFL-CIO taxi union being moribund actually helped - all the drivers had to do was not enter into a "lease" that day!), organized legal services to contest rip-offs from brokers and racist harassment from the Giuliani administration, and organized to get their voices heard in New York City local politics. These immigrant drivers come from Egypt, Haiti, India, and Pakistan, and in the process of struggle overcame the divisions that have been used to set one against another. For anyone sick at heart over the impotence of US labor unions, it's a great, and heartening, read.