Labor Day, EWOC, Bidenomics and more
NLF Highlights for Labor Day 2024
This Labor Day, it’s worth asking a simple question: does the labor movement need new methods and organizational vehicles to meet workers’ demands to unionize? The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee seems to think so. EWOC is an organizing project launched by the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Union and the Democratic Socialists of America in March 2020. Initially just a Google form, the project has now become a national organizing project reaching thousands of workers, supporting workplace collective action, and connecting workers who want to unionize to unions who want them as members.
Labor scholar Eric Blanc recounts the origins, strategy, and achievements of EWOC in the forthcoming fall 2024 issue of New Labor Forum. Blanc pays particular attention to the scalability of its low-cost use of online communications technology and its largely volunteer-based model. You can read his article here.
And in the latest episode of Reinventing Solidarity, EWOC organizer Megan Svoboda speaks with New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht about the organization’s approach, including how the group functions, how its organizers see EWOC as part of the broader “alt-labor” current in labor, and why EWOC insists on the importance of “seeding” organizing opportunities widely without knowing which seeds will sprout. You can listen to the episode here.
Also from our Fall 2024 issue: given President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will serve only one term in the Oval Office, how should we assess Bidenomics? Labor economist Mark Levinson gives a broad overview, concluding that the biggest-ticket item in Biden’s domestic economic program was an enormous step forward for the American working class. You can read his article here.
- Reinventing Solidarity Episode 51- The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee
- The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee: A New Model for Worker-Led Organizing – by Eric Blanc, New Labor Forum
- Bidenomics: A Giant Step Forward for Workers – by Mark Levinson, New Labor Forum
Times change, in society, politics, and economics, but the labor movement rarely does. Which makes the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) a rare bird in US labor. New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht speaks to EWOC organizer Megan Svoboda about the project’s origins in the coronavirus pandemic and how it has grown to a major national organization to aid workers in any industry, anywhere in the United States to take collective action and, frequently, to unionize.
Listen here: SLU.CUNY.EDU/PODCAST
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee: A New Model for Worker-Led Organizing
Eric Blanc, New Labor Forum
Tens of millions of workers in the United States want a union at their workplace, but do not have one. This unfortunate state of affairs is normally blamed on external obstacles such as our country’s broken labor law regime. But there are also significant internal obstacles within the labor movement that prevent it from scaling up to meet the widespread demand for workplace representation.
Bidenomics: A Giant Step Forward for Workers
Mark Levinson, New Labor Forum
For the labor movement, the key criterion to assess economic policy is: how does it affect the relative strength of workers on the one side and corporate managers and capital owners on the other. Policy that weakens workers’ bargaining power will result in lower wages and greater inequality. Conversely, policy that bolsters workers’ power will raise wages and reduce inequality.
