“Labor Power and Strategy” by John Womack Jr., edited by P. Olney and G. Perusek, 2023
Has your boss ever told you that, while he doesn't know what you do, you do a good or poor job of it? He has revealed that many bosses don't know what keeps a shop or business or factory running. Only 'their' workers do. This is a secret strength of labor. This book takes it a bit farther.
Womack is a Harvard historian of the Mexican Revolution who turned his attention to labor issues, most notably how to gain power in the work-place. His insight is to concentrate on 'strategic' areas and jobs within a business, a sector or even a nation. He doesn't think unionizing Burger Kings or Starbucks will lead to more labor power, much as that might help those specific workers. Nor does he endorse concentrating on 'the most oppressed' for the same reason. He also makes the point that community movements inevitably fade, something we have just seen around Gaza and before that, BLM.
These are shibboleths of reformists, ultra-lefts or anarcho-syndicalists, who'll go to the point of trying to organize tiny non-profits. He does think those with 'independent contractor' precariat jobs could be key too, as they are waged workers really. While mentioning the 'technical' side of any job, perhaps due to his age, he neglects to highlight the 'choke point' role of techies who run software systems in nearly every workplace. As Juan Gonzalez points out, the capitalists are aware of this pivotal role and pay high-end techies more, making them more resistant to unionization.
Womack's outlook is looking for various 'choke points' in a business, sector or nation, for key leverage, the weakest link, a bottleneck, a disruption, a node, the job or jobs that can shut it all down.
Womack mostly concentrates on logistics workers and mentions by name truckers, warehouse workers, dockers and crane operators – all blue-collar occupations, mostly connected to ports or retail like Amazon and Wal-Mart. He then goes on to describe how janitors in a building could bring a skyscraper or building to a halt; how teachers can disrupt a whole state or geographic area in the field of social reproduction, as they did in West Virginia. Womack looks carefully at the UAW's attempt in Canton, AL to unionize that plant, and points out 4 failures that go beyond these 'choke' point issues. So the clarity of his own view of 'strategic' unionism is muddied a bit. He discusses the ideas of sociologist Eric Olin Wright about the 'associational' power and 'structural power' of labor, leaning to the latter. The former relates to proletarian ties within and without the workplace, the latter the dominant position in the production or distribution system.
Womack is some kind of socialist or anti-capitalist, but nearly all of this book is relegated to unions and union power. He does not place unionism in the normal functioning of a capitalist welfare state, which it is. He has almost no political or organizational tack outside unions for the U.S., though once he mentions the need to work in either the Democratic Party or a new Party of unspecified nature. He clearly endorses Sanders but only as aside. He makes a weird crack about Trotskyists who talk about 'the point of production' in the singular - as if they meant that to be a granular statement. He considers the USSR to have been revolutionary until 1927 or 1933, so perhaps he is a Bukharinite or old CP in outlook.
THE TEN + TWO
After the interview by Olney, 10 prominent labor activists share their perspective on his idea of 'strategic' unionism. The introductions by Olney and Perusek say mostly common, anodyne points that are overly familiar and have yet to raise labor. Perusek even praises Ray Roger's 'corporate campaign' of consumer 'power' during the P9 strike here in Minnesota, which actually signaled the defeat of that strike. Most of these organizers have differences with Womack, which shows how the official labor movement is all over the map. At least they agree on some form of class struggle, broad labor movementism over business unionism.
#1 – Bill Fletcher, Jr. (Former AFL-CIO organizer). After making a point about how Mao Zedong sought out the peasantry instead of the working class, Fletcher seems to say that work-places are only part of a broader community struggle, and that 'choke-points' could be outside them.
#2 – Dan DiMaggio (Labor Notes). DiMaggio puts an emphasis on 'reviving the strike' and emphasizes the point that seeing sources of real leverage outside of workers is a dead-end.
#3 – Katy Fox-Hodess (Sheffield professor). Fox-Hodess maintains that associational power is more important than strategic power, citing examples of dockers who were not able to leverage their position until they gained solidarity. She also mentions the role of the state in clearing 'key' bottlenecks.
#4 - Cary Dall (ILWU-BMW organizer). Dall supports a comprehensive strategy where port and rail workers meet, but cites the important role of socialist organizers among workers in the face of the backwardness of union officials.
#5 - Jack Metzgar (CP-Roosevelt U professor). Metzgar insists that the question of either 'associational' or 'structural' power is a non-starter, a non-dialectical approach, as both relate to power. He thinks 'non-strategic' workers should still organize and you can't really tell them not to. Not sure that is what Womack is saying.
#6 – Joel Ochoa (DSA-Immigrant organizer). Ochoa supports labor forming alliances with immigrants, youth, women, minorities, as was done in LA by the ILGWU and Justice for Janitors, along with work in non-strategic sectors.
#7 – Rand Wilson (OCAW organizer). Wilson agrees with Womack on the vulnerability of capital when it reorganizes or introduces new tech. He especially highlights IT workers, who are excluded from many union bargaining units but are crucial to shutting down a business. This was a point made long ago by Hardt and Negri on the 'cyber proletariat.'
#8 – Jane McAlevey (Health worker organizer). McAlevey highlights the role of women workers and social reproduction 'choke-points' run by health workers and public sector teachers.
#9 - Melissa Shetler (Cornell Labor outreach director). Shetler puts the emphasis on education inside trade unions and as part of union campaigns.
#10 – Gene Bruskin (UFCW Organizer). Bruskin tells the story of how Smithfield Foods was unionized over years, highlighting the strike activity of 90 stockyard workers out of a total workforce of 5,000 that sparked victory.
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| Smithfield Foods in North Carolina |
All these organizers seem to be drawing on their own particular sectoral experiences, without much references to theory or revolutionary ideas. Womack responds to some perhaps 'mulish' comments by restating a Marxist insight into capitalism, which is that surplus value created by labor is it's primal, motivating force. So an effective shut-off of production results in the most pain for capital. He does not address the point that capital will forgo profits sometimes to bully labor. He references how his studies of the Mexican Revolution showed the proletarian power of key groups like electric, machine and rail workers who then led broader working-class struggles. His point about 'technical' strengths relates to tools, not tech – though computers are also tools.
Womack repeats that not just any site or matrix will do. He links the peasants of Russia or China to the the urban U.S. 'peasants' of the precariat and 'self-employed' - though an urban and rural precariat has existed since capital developed. He looks at how the Bolsheviks organized key groups of workers and mentions developments in China. His emphasis on revolutions – in Mexico, Russia and China – seems to be the dividing line between the small-bore reformism of most U.S. unionists and Womack's vision. However Womack ignores any transitional demands, any advocacy of a revolutionary party, a revolutionary front, a labor party, the state or independent political action. He does mention 'workplace councils' several times, but with no content. So his singular emphasis on union power, accurate as it is, is insufficient in a larger, revolutionary context – which seems to be his real focus.
Womack takes short shots at all 10 contributions. Of note, Womack reminds us that the heroic but isolated Mexican EZLN guerrilla movement has essentially failed. This is a useful book for unionists as to debates within labor, but ultimately it's pretty damn sad given the repetition of the same-old, same-old by most of the participants.
Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: "Eric Olin Wright," “labor movement,” “unions,” or 'strikes.'
And I bought it at May Day Books, which carries lots of labor books./
Red Frog / January 8, 2025
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