New Labor

Josh Marshall asks if a strong labor movement is a prerequisite for progressive politics. The Duke asks a higher-level question -- how can labor be strong in today's global economy? The first challenge is to figure out how to unify workers across jobs, locations, and industries. Since people now change jobs roughly 10 times in a career, the age of the 30-year gold watch is fast disappearing. Imagine the power of a labor movement that was able to secure portable health care, portable pensions, and portable worker safety standards, not just from one individual's job to job, but across industries and even national boundaries. The old organizing mechanism of company or plant votes is probably not the way to achieve that. (The Duke is pro-business, pro-trade, and pro-technology, but also pro-labor -- the National Labor Relations Board and the rules governing union elections have been so gutted that it is both hard to organize and -- even worse -- hard for rank-and-file members to hold union leadership accountable).

The Duke is intrigued by the debate between AFL-CIO head John Sweeney and Andy Stern of the SEIU, but they are only scratching the surface. The Duke predicts that -- without more rapid change -- a new labor movement will arise completely outside of the boundaries of the AFL-CIO, and it may not even call itself labor.