Session 1 - Workers, Unions, and Class Struggle
Materials for Session One
Sections 1-4 of Labor 101: Socialism and the Labor Movement, 2021 by Fred Glass
Advance reading
“Step by Step” from Golden Lands, Working Hands, Part 1
Video shown at the beginning of the session
Excerpt from Norris-LaGuardia Act (Sec 2)
Text on screen or in copied handouts, read during the session.
Participants should be asked to read sections 1-4 before the first session. They can read online, or they could get a physical pamphlet (at the DSA office, at an event, etc.)
There are 55 minutes before a 5 minute break and 55 minutes after.
00:00 – 5 minutes
I. Arrival
00:05 – 10 minutes
II. Video: “Step by Step” from Golden Lands, Working Hands
Prompt: What points was the video making about the history of labor?
Key Points
Workers have faced many hardships, even death, to get employers to give them what they need to live dignified, good lives.
It is labor that has built the country, not the owners at the top
The history of labor was always multi-racial; the exploitation of indigenous, black and brown workers was a key part of building California.
Traditional history leaves out the workers.
00:15 – 15 minutes
III. Welcome and Introductions
Prompt: Name, pronouns, where you work and if you’re in a union, and one problem at your workplace.
Introduce yourselves as facilitators, give the prompt, and model a response by starting.
Each response should take about 30 seconds
00:30 – 5 minutes
IV. Overview
What Labor 101 is and its goals
Protocol for participating in discussion with Zoom or in-person
Ground rules
Agenda for 1st session
See Presenter Notes for more detail
0:35 – 20 minutes
V. Class and Unions
Large Group Discussion
Prompt: Who is the working class?
Ask for answers but also questions.
If it doesn’t come up, ask about students, retirees, working at home? Working contractors? Managers?
In this conversation, mainstream conceptions of class should be drawn out and compared to a socialist conception of class. You could introduce the prompt by listing some of the mainstream versions of class (income, education, etc.) and asking what a socialist conception of the working class would be.
Key Points
A worker is anyone who makes a living primarily by selling their labor power.
Class is not about income levels or position in the system but a group’s shared relationship to the means of production, distribution, and exchange.
Mainstream political conceptions of class differ from this socialist conception [ex: income, homeownership; education level, culture.] and divide the working class.
Many people whose economic well-being is based on wage-workers (children, students, retirees, people in informal employment) have most of the same economic, political and social goals and realities that workers do. This is why the working class is a large majority of society even though wage-workers are not a majority.
Prompt: What’s so essential about the working class?
Key Points
Workers create all real wealth; have the power to stop profits and all other production of goods and services; we are the majority in the US and the world now, are the ones who will most benefit from socialism, etc.
Prompt: Why do workers need unions?
If the session is behind schedule you could skip this prompt: the topic will come up again in the second half with discussion of the Norris-LaGuardia Act text.
Key Points
Workers are a class (just like capitalists, large or small), but only if they think and act like a class – a group with common basic interests – can they change anything in their own interests. Unions are a way workers have created to do this.
00:55 – 5 minutes
VI. Break
01:00 – 20 minutes
VII. What Unions Do Pt. 1
Breakout Rooms
5 minutes explaining the prompt, 15 minutes in breakout rooms
~4 participants per group
Each group should pick a notetaker who will present a 2 minute summary when we come back.
Goal: to think about unions, what they do, and their problems
Prompts:
What is a union? Are unions the only way workers organize?
What should a union's responsibilities be / what should a good local union do?
Unions aren’t always what they should be. What are some problems in many unions?
Skip this third one if there aren’t enough participants
01:20 – 15 minutes
VIII. What Unions Do Pt. 2
Small Group Report Backs and Discussion
You can use a whiteboard or if online a Google Jam Board to note responses to each part of the prompt.
Key Points
A union is workers coming together to take collective action to improve their lives in the workplace and beyond.
Unions are a way to organize collective action and class struggle in workplaces and industries.
Workers also organize informally in workplaces and in neighborhoods and cities.
Good unions confront the boss, are democratic, and educate their members.
01:35 – 15 minutes
Large Group Discussion
Background: Unions in the US are enmeshed in a complicated labor law system that gives them rights, but also limits their activities. We're going to look briefly at the key section of one of the “founding documents” of U.S labor law. After the crash of the stock market in 1929 and the Great Depression the popularity (though not yet the membership) of unions grew and the government sought to manage this ferment. The Norris-LaGuardia Act, one of the United States’ first labor laws, was passed in 1932, and later laws used its terms and categories. In spite of the high unemployment during the Great Depression, the union movement grew by more than 300 percent. In 1933, national union membership had fallen to less than three million. By 1941, it stood at over ten million.
Prompt: What does the Norris-LaGuardia Act mean by the following terms: “concerted activity,” “freedom of association,” “representatives of his own choosing,” and “free from restraint and coercion?” How does the text contrast the ability of “owners of property to organize” with the situation workers are in?
Have volunteers read the paragraph. It's useful to have actual paper copies of the text to distribute.
Ask participants to discuss what each term means.
You may want to note that the word ‘union’ is not used in the text.
Key Points
“Concerted activity” is what socialists would call ‘class struggle.”
Employers seek to use the idea of “free from restraint & coercion” against unions.
01:50 – 5 minutes
X. Feedback
01:55 – 5 minutes
XI. Assignments
Give date, time, and place of next session
Let participants know that Session 2 will continue the discussion about workers and unions, and then look at some of the history of U.S. labor.
Ask participants to read Sections 5-8 of Labor 101: Socialism and the Labor Movement, 2021 before the next session.
Ask for volunteers to give quick reports on the following eras of US labor. These reports should include major events and their outcomes, and changes in what groups of workers were organizing.
1900 - 1935
1935 - 1945
1945 - 1981
Since 1981