Open Union Membership: Blessing or Curse?

If SAC didn't have open union membership, there would be almost no one left in their organization. My impression is that the wingnuts are generally tolerated and made to feel at home. I'm not sure if they are that much of a problem.

Being a member of a SAC local I can say it is better now than it has been in a long time (lot of that info is not first hand though, I have only been in SAC since 2003, but you hear stuff about earlier problems with "LWA:s" that is just too much...). SAC has in the past attracted tons of weirdos because it was perceived as a political party/environmental organisation/anti-nuclear protest committé/vegan/history club etc. Lots of lifestylism and not too much class conciousness... SAC is now being perceived more and more like a union and hence attract the right people.

My local (small local, only 80 ppl) would not exist if we didn't have open membership. We have had some success recruiting worker collectives being able to start sections in a factory and a warehouse this year and have other worker collectives on the way in. This development had been very unlikely a few years ago. A strong focus on what we are and what we want the last years have really been good for our Solna local. Most memebers are still the only syndicalists in their workplace including myself but it can work to be able to start with one person and then start organizing...

Thanks for the information Kattmannen. When you say 'workers collectives' do you mean businesses that are owned by the workers?

In North America union membership is tied to the job you work, the IWW is very unusual in that we take anyone. In the CAW for instance you can only be a member if you work a job that is certified and under CAW contract.

Construction workers just as much join the union to get work through their hiring hall as they do out of any belief in unionism as such. The jobs are coordinated through the hall and workers are dispatched to the jobs by the union bureaucracy.

I think that there is a problem with the basis of this discussion in that the OP assumes that the system in North America is the same as the system everywhere in the world. Everywhere I have ever worked (4 European countries and 3 Middle Eastern ones) has 'open membership'. Like Catch I had never heard the term before. For members of the syndicalist unions in Europe, it is just how it is.

Devrim

In response to Devrim, as I said, it seems larger unions have less of a problem with ones that are not as big and trying to grow a larger membership. I am aware that there is such a policy in the UK and other countries, though I am not entirely clear on all the details.

I would be interested to hear if the SAC also permits membership of non-working students, unemployed, temporariy self-employed, and basically anyone who is not an employer or managerial agent of the same.

Also, I think in many European countries there is a provision for minority unionism and also representation of individual members with grievances. There is really no such thing in the USA. The USWA challenged recently the prevailing wisdom that our labor laws permitted only collective bargaining with a union representing a majority of workers in a shop, but their claim for a right to bargain for a union representing a minority of workers was tossed. (This is separate from an issue of whether the law *permits* an employer to negotiate with non-majority unions)

It seems there may be less LWAs active doing their own thing under a setting where the utility of a union is more clear to them in a concrete way.

Kattmannen: I would be interested to hear more about what your SAC local did to bring the focus back to labor organizing.

In Sweden the culture of mutual understanding and compromise solutions has a firm grip on people. Peace in the work place is for the vast majority what the union is all about and no one wants to make a fuzz over things or be a troublemaker. In this context it is very important for people in conflict to rely to the law and custom in order to be 'right'. I mean if someone would write a law that stipulates everyone would have to wear yellow cardigans people would protest, except of course in Sweden where people would go to buy that cardigan because 'it is the law'. What we have tried to do is to challenge this firm belief that the law can tell who is right and who is wrong. It has a lot to do with values and to communicate this to our members, the values in the union now is not 'Let's see if the law allows us to make that claim towards the employer' but 'Forget about their law, we are working class and hence always right'. In SAC we have of course taken direct action before over the years with mixed results, it is not like we are bureaucrats or something but now we have more focus on avoiding legal action against employers as far as possible. I mean, we have always been fairly radical but still, it is a shift. This move is really good for getting people active in the local. Boring negotiations and legal action against employers involve fewer people and is not very sexy. Campaigns involving direct action, blockades, strike, propaganda and other fun stuff makes more people involved and radicalizes our members.

Most of our members are recruited from LO (the big union) and it is really conform and repressive. Every sort of initiative is seen like a threat and activists are seen as troublemakers that threaten the peace and the mutual understanding between the union and the employer. People coming from this background need to learn from the beginning that in SAC they are active subjects and not passive objects like in LO. In many anarcho-syndicalist unions the only recruits are already determined ideologically trained pissed off anarchists and they have all the ideas and methods already clear when they join but lot of our new members need to be guided a bit...

This is of course nothing radical or new or something, it is very basic and I bet people might wonder why I write such obvious shite on this board but that is just the thing, back to basics, relying on our strength and solidarity. I firmly believe people resort to politics, bureaucracy and infighting only when the union loses momentum, it is not in our nature and only comes to light when we are really bored...

Hmm....but if the problem was with LWAs, I do not understand how that philosophy helped bring the focus of the branch back to organizing as opposed to say cultural or subcultural stuff, marches, other activisty stuff, etc. I suppose you are saying a change in tactics helped the union organize and therefore these LWAs fell in line?

here in north america it can be VERY difficult to organize a majority bargaining unit, not because it is really that difficult to get a majority of support, but because employers almost ALWAYS cheat and have control over payroll and staff lists. I could see open membership being a blessing in some cases, especially in casualized work-forces.

on the other hand, I could see it also being highly detrimental in cases where a collective bargaining unit exists, but the union culture is not strong. It would be much easier for an employer to get rid of a union.

at first I wasn't sure what these "LWA's" being referred to were, but now I get the feeling that it has something to do with patchouli and making your own soap. am I right??

Why would they do that? Surely it means they can then never get any new shops or members, just die slowly...

Kim Müller > The first wave of new members where young people with background in autonomous struggle as you say but I can see a new wave now at least in our local of people in their forties, often with political background or union background and very often pissed off at both party politics and big-unions they join us, it is a big step to take for most people to join a small controversial union like us. But the step seems to be more easily taken now than ten years ago. And yeah I exaggerate a bit about swedes being drones that always obey authority but that is one of our tasks, to normalize action so it is seen and recogniced as an alternative for working class people and you do a good job in that respect! I have read some stuff on your blog and Kämpa tillsammans and it is dynamite.

It's not exactly open membership in the sense thats being discussed, but the AFL has a "Working America" progam which offers associate memberships, which basically is discount health care and legal services.

I don't think they count that as membership as such. I could be wrong though.

Working America isn't an associate membership program. It's a community organization created by the AFL. It's basically about mobilizing non-union workers around the AFL's legislative agenda, from what I understand. How useful this is debatable, but it's definitely a different animal than the associate programs that some AFL member unions have.

And no - when the AFL gives the combined membership numbers of its member unions, it does not include the membership of Working America, which is not a union.