Alternative Visions – Union Veterans Speak On ‘Labor’s Strategic Impasse – 08/30/14

Jack Rasmus invites back union veteran guests he has interviewed over the past year for a roundtable discussion of ‘what can be done’ by union labor to break out of its strategic impasse of organizing-membership decline, collective  bargaining, and political action. Jack provides a brief recap of Unions’ decline in membership, bargaining ineffectiveness, and political results in recent decades, and then turns the discussion over to union veterans to share their views’ on specifics on what should be done to reverse the strategic dead end for union labor today.  Jack welcomes union veterans, with more than four decades of experience each: Steve Early, of the Communications Workers of America, Greg Shotwell of the United Autoworkers, and Jerry Gordon, of the United Food & Commercial Workers. They join together in a lively discussion of how union labor might resurrect itself, starting at the grass roots, by engaging in new ways of organizing, of bargaining, and new initiatives in independent political action.