Alternative Visions - Are US Unions at a Strategic Impasse, Part 3? - 12/18/13

Jack Rasmus continues the discussion series on the topic ‘Are US Unions At a Strategic Impasse’, interviewing long time, experienced grass roots union leaders on the state of union strategy today. Topics raised include unions ‘Organizing’, ‘Industrial-Bargaining’, ‘Political’, and ‘Community Alliances’ strategies. Jack welcomes today, as his latest guest in the on-going discussion, Ray Rogers, originator of the ‘Corporate Campaign’ strategy approach developed first in the 1980s in organizing and industrial-bargaining fights with corporate giants, J.P. Stevens and Hormel & Co. foods—as well as in corporate campaigns that continue today against Coca-Cola and other corporate behemoths. Jack and Ray discuss how a ‘corporate campaign’ strategy approach challenges current union approaches—and how a corporate campaign might be implemented today in current union worker struggles at Boeing Corp. and Verizon.’

 

‘Ray Rogers is a union activist and lead organizer for dozens of corporate campaigns since the 1970s, across many industries in the food, insurance, airlines, paper, textiles, and various New York City public sectors, including Coca Cola, RJ Reynolds, International Paper, Hormel, JP Stevens, American Airlines, NY city transit authority, Brooklyn Gas and others. For more on the corporate campaign strategy as alternative to current union organizing-industrial/bargaining strategies, see his website at corporatecampaign.org