It can’t be said enough times: to build a better world, we must rebuild the labor movement. But it’s not enough to just organize unions; we also need unions that fight the boss rather than cozy up to them. We need class-struggle unionism.

Class-struggle unionism is based on a very simple concept: that workers create all wealth in society through their labor, but their bosses steal that wealth from workers and sock it away for their own benefit, rather than the benefit of the workers themselves. That is how and why we have billionaires in society. To take back that wealth and all the power that comes with it, we need unions that are willing to go toe-to-toe with those bosses.

In contrast to the strategy of business unionism, which seeks to represent the interests of narrow groups of workers at an employer or industry and fights for “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” class-struggle unionists believe that there’s no such thing as a truly fair wage under a system in which bosses steal from workers all day long. Those workers create all wealth, and our union struggles are part of a larger fight between labor and the billionaire or owning class.