A Strategy That Works

NONE of this was ever supposed to happen in the 1980s.

After eight years of Ronald Reagan, the labor movement was supposed to be dead. Unions were supposed to be on the run, management was supposed to be in control and strikes were to be a quaint historical oddity.

After the election of George Bush, left-wing activism was supposed to end. Campus activists were supposed to be too dispirited to hold noisy rallies. With the Reagan Revolution vindicated by the 1988 election results, young socialists were supposed to realize the error of their ways and flock to business school.

But that never happened. Instead, unions are becoming more militant, students more active, and the left--particularly the labor movement--is slowly learning how to articulate an intelligent, cohesive and successful philosophy.

Earlier this month, Local 26 of the Hotel, Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Union, which represents 3500 Boston-area employees, won major concessions from such national hotel chains as Sheraton and Hilton.

In addition to negotiating a 16 percent raise over three years, Local 26 convinced management to contribute to educational and housing trust funds for their employees.

The educational plan requires management to contribute three cents per hour per employee to a fund which would finance a college scholarship program, and proficiency classes for employees who do not speak English as a first langauge.

The housing plan--the first of its kind in the nation--requires the hotels to donate $500,000 over the next 18 months to a fund that would help hotel employees, who are among the lowest paid workers in the city, find affordable housing.

Local 26 won these demands at a time when less progressive and less militant unions are being forced to seek concessions, and they didn't win because the negotiating team for the hotels was in a conciliatory mood. Local 26 won using the hottest and most creative tactic the left has to force change in this country--the corporate campaign strategy.

THE corporate campaign strategy builds public sentiment in favor of unions and exerts enormous community pressure upon the folks in the boardrooms. It involves the personal lobbying of political figures on behalf of unions; stresses an executive's personal accountability for his corporate decisions; and involves massive research on corporate relations--such as how pension funds are invested, or which members of the board may have a conflict of interest.

According to Ray Rogers of Corporate Campaigns, Inc., "the corporate campaign strategy is designed to bring pressure upon management from a variety of sources--not just the workers themselves. It is a simple matter of confronting power with power--and that has brought back into the labor movement a recognition that unions can transform a group of workers into a powerful political and economic force."

Local 26, under the skilled guidance of local president Dominic Bozzotto, has been one of those powerful forces--one that refuses to remain quiet. After the union authorized a strike by a 2034 to 112 vote, Bozzotto warned management that if forced to strike, Local 26 would not simply picket the hotels: "We won't be outside on the street" he told The Boston Globe, "we'll be inside, in the hotel lobbies, the dining rooms, the meeting rooms."

The union chapter reportedly had a strike strategy which included lists of employees willing to volunteer for "arrest" duty, hour-by-hour plans for sit-ins at hotels, and demonstrations in the communities where hotel owners lived. It is one thing for hotel owners to ignore a picket line outside his hotel, but if strikers march in front of their home or handcuff themselves to a hotel staircase, disrupting business, they will begin to worry.

BUT the corporate campaign technique is no longer used for only contract negotiations. It has become a popular and effective tool of the political left in America, and Harvard activists--who traditionally have had close ties with Local 26--have been no exception. During its certification campaign, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers relied heavily upon student and community support to pressure the administration into ending its anti-union campaign efforts. Pressure from local political leaders and national labor leaders is seen as a factor in President Bok's decision not to appeal an administrative law judge's decision upholding last May's certification vote.

Divestment activists, too, have waged a corporate campaign against the University. Last spring, activists conducted a "Know-Your-Neighbor" campaign, postering the neighborhoods of local members of the Board of Overseers, explaining to residents that their friendly neighbor was responsible for a company with investments in South Africa. Last spring, divestment became an agenda item at Board of Overseer meetings; last week, the Overseers approved a report calling for a slight modification in University investment policy toward South Africa.

The corporate campaign strategy has remarkable significance for the left. Not only does it contribute to occasional victories on certain issues--such as the local 26 contract--but it provides a different way of looking at political and economic problems within American society.

For too many years, the left has let the right control the nation's political agenda. Seeing difficulties in employer-employee relations as a symptom of larger structural problems rather than just a dispute at one company makes it simpler for the left to redefine the agenda in terms of economic justice.

When paperworkers in Jay, Maine stepped up their strike against International Paper (IP) last year, they didn't only picket the corporate headquarters of IP; they also picketed the headquarters of Coca-Cola and Bank of Boston, because both companies had a corporate board member who also sat on the board of IP. Making such corporate incest clear to the public demonstrates the structural problem of American capitalism: that a handful of isolated individuals are controlling the economic destiny of millions.

Corporate campaigns also reinforce a concept lost in the political dialogue of the 1980s: that the personal is political. By holding an executive personally accountable for his corporate decisions, the left has begun to erode the popular belief that there is no inconsistency between a kindly old man playing with his grandchildren on weekends, and busting unions and slashing wages the following Monday morning.

These new strategies--developed in the midst of the frustrations and failures of the 1980s--have shown that the left has finally followed the advice of one of their greatest icons, martyred labor organizer Joe Hill: "Don't Mourn--Organize!"