Portside

The United Electrical Workers was one of America’s mightiest unions. Many leaders were leftists who challenged corporate power, so UE was decimated by McCarthyism. The union survived and UE's model of militant, democratic unionism can revive labor.

Donald Trump swept the Rust Belt in part because labor unions are in retreat, a trend that started long before Election Day.

Our federation and its affiliates are not ready to confront the challenges of using our existing base in certain industries to grow in non-union sectors of those industries and linked industries. Those discussions and strategies require challenging the inertia of the status quo. They are difficult discussions that challenge the power and positions of our elected trade union leaders. The interplay of the old and the new is one of the keys for renaissance. . .

To reverse organized labor's decline and to rebuild the left requires either reviving the old New Deal coalition or forming a new comparably powerful alliance. That means confronting and outwitting the long demonization of unions and the left....More importantly, it requires a strategy to reposition labor unions and their allies as champions of broad social gains for the 99%.