But in the past couple weeks, some very serious people high up, who are not the type to talk idly, have been quietly telling their senior staffs in social settings that efca is actually and really a done deal, and to prepare themselves for a strategic and methodological shift once we get it. Word is, the first three months of an Obama administration would be the most fruitful for us, and that immediately after he takes office we will be running an intense mobilization campaign for efca and universal healthcare, and that we will be getting efca at least (healthcare I guess would be a broader can of worms). Those same people have also been saying that when it does pass, the organizing gains we get from it are predicted to probably be limited to the first six months we have it--- and that after that, the business community will find some sort of counterattack solution.
So, what I'm telling friends and comrades of mine that sometimes talk about being interested in working in labor in some fashion, but have never got around to it, is: if efca passes, that is the time you go work to build the labor movement, period. Like, you need to show up at the door of the nearest local with a good organizing program the very morning after it passes, report for duty, and get ready to work your ass off for six months.
I am still skeptical it will happen, but this increased buzz about efca is plausible for several reasons besides the possibility of 60 senate seats. Here's why, I think:
-Obama is viewed as actually commited to legal reforms that empower organizing and institutional power growth for his base and working/ poor people (the clintons, by comparison, were committed to building their base in the suburbs, the 'new' economy, finance and professionals--- through the policies of rubin). His teams' engagement with efca is vastly more specific and meaningful than the clinton teams', who in private meetings were always fairly disinterested in labor movement growth. Bill and then Hillary always made it somewhat clear they were not committed. Obama has made the opposite clear in such meetings.
-Obama has to deliver something to his base. But, he will not be willing or able to deliver much of anything that costs $ from the government. EFCA, essentially, will cost corporate america, not the USG, and so its a more plausible gift to the base than many of the other things they will clamor for that cost Obama's administration dollars they don't have. (this is not to imply corporate america will not keep feeding at the bailout troughs, or that obama won't produce some costly new social spending on healthcare and energy. he'll do those things, but many other things the base wants, it won't get).
-The business community is a mess right now. Their a-team (the republicans) have crumbled, their businesses are all facing a recession in which many will go bankrupt, and their public credibility is at an all-time post-WW2 low. When the recession starts to seriously harm the public's living standards, the public will be in no mood for a counterattack on 'big labor'. The public hates the business class right now, viscerally. If millions upon millions lose their jobs, houses, cars, etc, the anger I think would be volcanic (by US standards).
-With a huge victory likely for obama, and a possible deeper electoral realignment tied to that, plus a recession/depression coming that will impact all people, and a likely substantial increase in government influence on the economy and regulation and a massive increase in spending and gov debt coming, the Obama team is probably doing some big-picture thinking about what a FDR-style social and political and economic realignment would look like in the year 2009. Efca, and the increased institutional power at the base for the dems it would bring, may be part of those calculations.
Having said all that, I'm still skeptical. There are also reasons to doubt whether efca would be 100% positive for the labor movement. For instance, most unions' external organizing strategy and programs are frankly incompetent. A legal reform that suddenly gives bad programs the means to win, could cause a lot of unions to learn the wrong lessons and grow the wrong way, and essentially add members but not power. If the CWA and the steelworkers use efca to pick up members in lots of industries other than communications and manufacturing respectively, and if a bunch of shitball operations like Homer Simpsons' local union of jazz dancers, pastry chefs and nuclear technicians use it to add more members that dilute their focus and power even more, then efca would simply enable the failed non-strategy of general unionism and bad organizing practices to get worse, and in the long run cause more problems than it solves, maybe. Also, it comes at the worst possible time. SEIU would be hamstrung from being able to exploit a possible 6-month efca window if it's bogged down occupying UHW-W, which it will be, tragically. Furthermore, seiu's credibility as a leader in organizing is somewhat diminished in the broader labor movement these days, and existing problems in seiu will get much worse when anna burger succeeds to the presidency. A Burger SEIU would be trying to be more like facebook and AARP and less like a labor union, at the exact moment when the possibilities for genuine labor unionism would be skyrocketing.
On the positive side, altho change to win has not produced the hoped- for breakthrough organizing gains, it has gotten a few unions (ufcw, the laborers, and the teamsters) to start to build a serious organizing program with a meaningful focus on industrial density, so it wouldn't just be seiu and unite-here using efca to build workers power in a serious industrial way. And if the economy truly unravels into the first depression in this generation's lifetime, there is at least a chance that that will cause the sort of actual large-scale rebellion by working people that happened in 30-36, but has been absent from the past few decades of working-class economic defeat. Altho that is hardly a foregone conclusion (I fear a move to the right is actually more likely, particularly on immigration and energy. If in six years unemployment is huge and gas costs 7 bucks a gallon, the average american consumers I know would probably support mass immigrant deportation and outright occupation of mideast oil producers if they thought it would bring back the halcyon days of F-150 trucks and free cash from your mortgage for vacations and jewelry), and hard to envision for the year 2009 (try to picture the bottom-up rebellions of 1932 happening in today's society--- it's quite hard!), if it does happen, then a sudden ability of unions to actually win broadly at new organizing during such upheaval could potentially change class politics in the US for the better in a massive way and produce real struggle and gains on a larger scale than any of us have ever seen firsthand.
In short, I am a grumpy pessimist, but am guardedly preparing myself for the challenges the next few years may present leftists, which may be rather different and higher-stakes than our pathetic showing so far during my lifetime. Thank god we will win this election cycle so big, and pray to god these wins produce legal reform that empowers worker organizing and pray to god the unions implement and utilize such gains in a meaningful way that turns this country around. A new New Deal is not around the corner, but something big surely is, and I think we should get ready.