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The Entire Labor Movement Should Be Paying Attention to Wisconsin’s Kohler Strike
Two thousand workers at the Kohler faucet plant in Northern Wisconsin have been walking the picket since November 16. Such a strike would have been commonplace decades ago. Nowadays it is a rarity. Major strikes of over 1,000 workers are few and far between. Even rarer are open-ended strikes at an industrial plant.
Today’s battered labor movement no longer thinks of watershed strikes; we are so beaten down and used to defeat that no particular loss is seen as critical. And sadly, it’s not as if labor must win this particular battle to survive. The truth is labor has learned to live with defeat. But a more fundamental point is at stake: Labor must redevelop the ability to win this type of strike if we are to have any chance of survival.
The Kohler strike is an open-ended, large scale, non-publicity style strike in manufacturing, a traditionally organized industry. Labor has become adept at hit-and-run publicity strikes such as the Walmart, retail and fast food strikes of recent years. Although important, these are not the fight-to-the-finish type battles, nor do they involve anywhere near the number of workers or level of participation, that this strike does. It is likely that more days of work lost to striking have accumulated in two weeks of the Kohler strike than in five years of retail and fast food strike activity.
Decades ago, victory or at least a draw in such a strike would have been likely. Here we have a union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), with close to a century of unionism and a long history of confrontational class struggle. The strike involves almost 100% participation by the workers facing a historically anti-union corporation. Indeed, the Kohler plant was one of the most anti-union holdouts in the North at a time when most corporations operating in Northern and Midwestern states like Wisconsin temporarily accepted workers’ demands for unions and the right to strike.
Today’s battered labor movement no longer thinks of watershed strikes; we are so beaten down and used to defeat that no particular loss is seen as critical. And sadly, it’s not as if labor must win this particular battle to survive. The truth is labor has learned to live with defeat. But a more fundamental point is at stake: Labor must redevelop the ability to win this type of strike if we are to have any chance of survival.
The Kohler strike is an open-ended, large scale, non-publicity style strike in manufacturing, a traditionally organized industry. Labor has become adept at hit-and-run publicity strikes such as the Walmart, retail and fast food strikes of recent years. Although important, these are not the fight-to-the-finish type battles, nor do they involve anywhere near the number of workers or level of participation, that this strike does. It is likely that more days of work lost to striking have accumulated in two weeks of the Kohler strike than in five years of retail and fast food strike activity.
Decades ago, victory or at least a draw in such a strike would have been likely. Here we have a union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), with close to a century of unionism and a long history of confrontational class struggle. The strike involves almost 100% participation by the workers facing a historically anti-union corporation. Indeed, the Kohler plant was one of the most anti-union holdouts in the North at a time when most corporations operating in Northern and Midwestern states like Wisconsin temporarily accepted workers’ demands for unions and the right to strike.
Snip
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18641/all_of_the_labor_movement_should_be_paying_attention_to_wisconsins_kohler_s
