A Class Struggle Spirit Is Returning to the Labor Movement
In the past year, we’ve seen large, militant strikes by autoworkers, Hollywood writers, and others. It’s a promising sign that, after decades of weakness, the US labor movement is ready to take the fight to the boss.
Members of the Unite Here! Local 11 hotel workers union picket the Four Points Sheraton after walking off the job on Monday, July 10, 2023, in Los Angeles, California. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Over the past six months, strikes and threatened strikes by autoworkers, Hollywood writers and actors, United Parcel Service (UPS) Teamsters, and LA hotel housekeepers have resulted in industry shutdowns and major contract victories across the United States. This wave of militancy represents a departure for the US labor movement, which for the past several decades has seen both declining union density and reluctance to use the strike weapon.
Joe Burns, a veteran union negotiator and labor lawyer, sees this turn to more militant organizing as informed by the long tradition of what he calls “class struggle unionism,” a perspective and set of strategies that emphasizes the importance of worker-led unions in making transformative change. In his most recent book, Class Struggle Unionism, he makes the case that adopting such an approach is necessary for significant workplace victories. Sara Van Horn and Cal Turner spoke with Burns for Jacobin about divergent visions of union strategy, the militant approach behind recent victories, and why it’s important for labor to have a broader political vision.
Sara Van Horn
Can you give us a brief recent history of class struggle unionism? You note in your book that union militancy dwindled toward the end of the twentieth century, but that there have been promising movements in the opposite direction. Where did this revival start?
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