Just started reading a so far excellent book by Marshall Ganz called Why David Sometimes Wins (2009, Oxford University Press). The book looks at leadership, organization and strategy in the Californian Farm Worker Movement.
As you may have gathered, if you regularly read this blog, my twitter (@unisonroger), or my Facebook, I have what would very understatedly be called a passing interest in union organizing. You may have also noticed more than a passing admiration of the legendary organizer Cesar Chavez. This book by Ganz, a key aid of Chavez as well as a former Civil Rights organizer, uses the heroic struggle of farmworkers to tell a deeper story about organizing strategy and tactics.
As soon as I saw this book on the shelf and pulled it down, even before I even opened it's pages, it spoke to me of what we are now faced with as workers. We apparently shouldn't fight because we might inconvenience someone or put the Labour Part (god forbid) on the side of workers in struggle. Indeed resistance is apparently futile anyway because we have the whole might of the State (and the mass media) against us.
Now obviously I threw the thing about the Labour Party in there just because I felt like it but being told that the big and seemingly all powerful should not even be resisted is a common refrain facing trade unionists. In fact it's what we have always faced. It's what folks fighting for progress, whether in the workplace, the Civil Rights Movement, anti colonialism or, of course, against slavery, have always been told.
A number of times, even with right on our side (The Miners Strike of the 1980s), we lose. However, like David against Goliath, we can actually overturn the odds and win because we not only have right on our side but we have developed superior strategy and tactics using the biggest and most potent strength we have - our ability to organise.
I have a firm belief that our courage and ability to organise are our most potent weapons. How do I know this? Because it always has been!
0 comments:
Post a Comment