The reason this is the main prize is that given existing labor law and employer power, if you don't have organizing rights your chance of winning an nlrb eleciton after the whole boss fight goes down are maybe 30% at best, but if you succeed in tying the employers hands workers will choose to form unions and win the nlrb election more like 95% of the time. That's why winning natiowide card check is central to rebuilding the labor movement, working-class economic power and a mass left in the united states.
The reason they're able to get the employers to give in to something they know will almost certainly result in the workers successfully unionizing, is that in the campaign we go after all of em at once, so in an industry with very low margins (like janitorial services or homecare) workers at Firm A winning a dollar raise won't put Firm A out of business because Firm B is non-union and a dollar cheaper. Then say maybe you get all the major downtown prop firms organized at once except the biggest one which holds out and then you turn all your might on them, and all the other companies have an economic incentive to see that they get organized too, so they stay neutral in that fight or maybe even help a little behind the scenes. Then the 'biggest worst' caves. Then you start to expand outwards from the major downtown firms, picking up residual units and companies that do the suburban office cleaning work, then eventually you have a majority of the whole industry organized in the region so its just a time-consuming process of moppin up the rest. Eventually you wind up with 32BJ new york city, sixteen bucks an hour to mop floors or hold doors, no co-pays on docs visits for CNAs, best-paid service workers in the country. Twenty years from now being an x-ray tech or custodian or security guard will be like working in a steel mill used to be, the awesome high-paying blue-collar job you can support a family on and stick with for life if possible and don't vote republican to protect.
The media and liberals, meanwhile, don't see any of the machinery that goes into the fight, so read the situation romantically as a brave group of underpaid janitors who heroically took the first step in asserting their rights to a union to collectively bargain up their miserable wages. Which indeed they are. But in terms of big picture battlefield strategy there's so much more to it, and thank god the liberal media is so vapid and un-sophisticated in their understanding of workers struggles.
Of course, seiu's national media department plays up romantic struggles like the houston janitors and the u or miami hunger strike for messaging purposes- they are wonderful stories that move the public at large to a pro-card check position with their almost storybook drama. But possibly even more strategically important card check victories are taking place in hospitals in florida, nursing homes in ohio and hotels nationwide right now we, just don't do nationwide press on em.
>
>
> > Nov. 20, 2006, 9:37PM
> > Houston janitors reach deal to end strike
>
> So, anyone know how this happened? Houston doesn't seem like the
> friendliest venue.
>
> Doug
>
>
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