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"In unions all across the United States — with a few exceptions — radical members and staffers have been waiting for Godot, dreaming of a moment when their leadership takes the membership away from the next contract or organizing battle and to a broader agenda of economic justice. "
As Fine points out, beginning these relationships is the hard part. Unions have rigid leadership structures and bylaws and must comply with strict federal and local regulations, and the bigger ones work with high-priced lobbyists and media consultants. It is hard to fuse that with something as leaderless and nebulous as OWS, but there’s been marked progress, she said. And there is also a faction in any union that believes the business of the union is settling and administering contracts, and that any other endeavor is a just a waste of dues money.n that regard, a better way to think about the role of unions in the Occupy Wall Street movement is to ask what OWS can offer the labor movement. Occupy Wall Street could inspire what remains of organized labor in this country to move away from just pushing specific employers for modest wage gains and start organizing working-class people in order to shape not just industry standards, but a new economic order, as its frustrated radical factions have dreamt about.
“The labor movement has conditioned itself to only think of itself in legal terms. ‘What does the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] say about this or that?’” Fine said. “It has to get beyond that.”
To borrow a phrase from free market fans, OWS is about “creative destruction.” Old models for resisting corporate power have failed, and OWS is forming a new one. Maybe it is time for labor to shed its old skin and remake itself. Some of that is happening at Liberty Park when union members join the emerging movement., said OWS activist Harrison Magee. “They sort of drop that identity,” he said. “They become Occupy Wall Street and they become something new.”
