Socialists Are Trying to Revive the American Labor Movement
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a partnership between socialists and the United Electrical Workers union, is trying to be at the heart of a new mass labor resurgence. Their success could help millions of workers.
As any good organizer will tell you, workers know best how to organize their workplaces. (Getty Images)
During the height of the pandemic, the Democratic Socialists of America and United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America teamed up to launch the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC). It represented an ambitious attempt to meld together growing socialist currents with the existing labor movement and to help create new avenues of organizing for workers.
Below, historian Gabriel Winant writes how EWOC has been able to support worker organizing in ways that unions often have not, and shares his experience volunteering as an EWOC organizer. Food-service worker Teagan Harris then recounts how Gabe, as a volunteer, assisted her and her coworkers in winning demands from management at their workplace in Chicago.
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For the first time since the 1970s, the labor movement has momentum on its side.