This somewhat belated report captures Black Rose/Rosa Negra Labor
Committee's participation in the 2024 edition of the Labor NotesConference. ---- Background on Labor Notes---- The 2024 Labor Notes
Conference was held from April 19th to 21st in Chicago, bringing
together some 4,700 unionists from around the United States and beyond.
This year, the biennial conference smashed the previous record set for
attendance during its 2022 gathering.
Now in its 45th year, Labor Notes began its life as a simple black and
white newsletter, coming on to the scene one year prior to the election
of Ronald Reagan. Carrying labor news and pointedly advocating for
reform caucuses within unions, Labor Notes emerged in a period marked by
the accelerating retreat of the labor movement--a trend that continues
into the present. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the
percentage of wage and salary workers belonging to a union was 10% in
2023, down from 20.1% in 1983, four years after the founding of Labor
Notes. Whereas union density as a whole has declined, the record
breaking attendance at Labor Notes, along with increased organizing in
new industries and geographic regions is cause for hope that a committed
rank and file will not only turn the tide, but give rise to a new and
more combative unionism.
In the intervening years, Labor Notes expanded beyond a print newsletter
to an organization that offers training and brings together
rank-and-file activists from across the US for its large biennial
conference. The organization seeks to foster militancy and union
democracy in the labor movement, advocating for reviving the strike
weapon and moving from the weak tactics of business unionism. While
members of the organization Solidarity first helped to cohere Labor
Notes and continue to play important roles within it, the project takes
a politically non-sectarian approach. As such Labor Notes exists at what
we refer to as the intermediate level, being neither a political
organization united around a specific ideological perspective nor a mass
organization that functions as a vehicle to carry out fights directly.
Planning
Since the 2018 conference, Black Rose/Rosa Negra's (BRRN) Labor
Committee has made it a point to attend and participate in each Labor
Notes gathering. Mainly this looks like financially and logistically
supporting the attendance of BRRN members and encouraging them to speak
on conference panels.
In late 2023, the BRRN Labor Committee began to identify several
specific objectives related to our active participation in the Labor
Notes conference, including aims to:
* Begin building networks of rank-and-file activists within industries
where we have some presence (focusing on K-12 education, higher
education, the building trades, and healthcare).
* Gather information about the current state of labor struggle and
organization in the US, so that we can have a better analysis of conditions.
* Establish a presence for anarchism by articulating our perspective on
building workers power via a fighting rank-and-file led labor movement
as panelists, at our social event, and by tabling during the conference.
* Attend with co-workers and organizing contacts, in order to build
organizing relationships through discussion, debate, and shared learning.
* Bring attention to the Palestine solidarity organizing that our
members are engaging in through their unions and make the case for an
anti-imperialist labor movement.
With these objectives in mind the BRRN Labor Committee committed to
sending at least 20 members to the 2024 iteration of the conference. As
well, we made plans to organize a public social during the conference
and to support the attendance of a member from one of our international
sibling organizations.
Recognizing early on that these plans would require a significant
financial investment, we launched a fundraising campaign with the goal
of crowdfunding $5,000. By the end of the campaign nearly 110 individual
supporters had donated more than $7,000, far exceeding our goal and
ultimately allowing us to underwrite the airfare, lodging, and
attendance for a total of 27 Black Rose/Rosa Negra militants. This
fundraising effort also played a crucial role in enabling us to secure
spots for members early on, prior to the cap on attendance that was
later imposed by conference organizers in response to overwhelming interest.
During this same period we worked closely with our Argentinian sibling
organization Federación Anarquista Rosario (FAR) to plan the travel,
attendance, and participation of one of their militants who is active in
the public sector employee union Asociación Trabajadores del Estado
(ATE). This came at an especially critical time as Javier Milei-the
recently elected far-right president of Argentina-began rolling out a
package of extreme neoliberal policies. In supporting the attendance of
our FAR comrade, we hoped to not only deepen the relationship between
our political organizations, but to bring the experience of Latin
American labor militancy to a largely North American gathering.
The Conference
As always, it was exciting to walk through the doors of the Chicago
O'Hare Hyatt, where Labor Notes takes place, and immediately find
oneself in the company of thousands of other unionists from around the
United States and beyond. The agenda was packed with full days of
workshops, trainings, industry specific breakouts, history panels,
cultural events, lectures, discussions, and more.
Members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra participated on several panels
throughout the weekend, offering lessons from campaigns that were made
successful by rank-and-file militancy. This included panels that focused
on organizing the unorganized in the South, building bottom-up power to
carry out indefinite strikes, and organizing for Palestine solidarity in
our unions. As well, we were happy to be able to arrange for the comrade
from our sibling organization FAR, to speak on an international panel
about public sector organizing in Argentina.
Other than its record breaking number of attendees, another detail set
the 2024 conference apart from those in the past: this year Labor Notes
lifted a ban on the official presence of political organizations. While
political organizations, including Black Rose/Rosa Negra, had long held
unofficial events during and around past iterations of the conference,
2024 was the first year that they were invited to table and list their
own events in the conference agenda.
We took advantage of this new openness by booking a large event room on
the main floor of the hotel to host our 'Red and Black Party'. With it
we aimed to create a more casual space to gather, meet, and network with
unionists who share our political and strategic principles. While
daytime conference proceedings present some opportunity to do this, it's
often hard to have anything more than passing chats as everyone rushes
to get to the next event on their schedule. Given that one of the
objectives we commit to in our political program, Turning the Tide, is
the development and expansion of a "militant minority of anarchists
dedicated to organizing at a rank-and-file level within strategic
industries", we felt that we needed a place to have more sustained
conversations.
With the decorations up, drinks on ice, and music bumping we opened the
doors to our party right around 9 PM. Kicking things off, we had members
of the Blue Bottle Independent Union-who had just recently announced
gone public with their effort-speak about the choice to organize
independently of a parent organization, what it takes to run an
underground campaign, and what they hope to accomplish in the future.
Over the course of the night hundreds of Labor Notes attendees filtered
into our party, with many visiting our literature table, lining up for
our party photo booth, and grabbing drinks from the bar. BRRN members
chatted with dozens of fellow unionists, articulating our strategic
vision within the labor movement and gathering contacts from those who
are organizing in our same industries. At one point in the night we cut
into the music to announce that the United Auto Workers (UAW) had won
their campaign at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, news
that was met with an explosion of cheers and applause.
By the time the party wound down a little after 1 AM, our literature
table was picked clean, our contact lists were full, the beer stockpile
was nearly depleted-and we were confident calling the Red and Black
Party a success.
Critical Reflections
While members of the BRRN Labor Committee believe that the Labor Notes
conference is playing a key role in creating an opportunity for labor
militants in the United States to congregate and develop a resurgent
labor movement, we do not participate uncritically. As a matter of
strategy, Labor Notes the organization stresses the formation of
rank-and-file reform caucuses oriented toward challenging and replacing
the existing executive leadership of unions. Unfortunately, the
overemphasis on leadership has led Labor Notes to tacitly or expressly
endorse high profile labor leaders and politicians who have little
interest in developing a militant, democratic, and rank-and-file led
labor movement.
This was exemplified in the choice to provide Chicago mayor Brandon
Johnson with stage time on the first night of the conference this year.
Johnson, a former Chicago teacher and staff organizer for the Chicago
Teachers Union, won his mayoral campaign as a Democrat in 2023. Since
taking office, he has overseen the repression of Palestine solidarity
protests in Chicago over the last year. More recently, Johnson helped to
broker a deal with union bureaucrats that would prevent strikes in the
city during the Democratic National Convention.
But Johnson's presence at the gathering did not go without response.
Immediately prior to his appointment to take the stage, hundreds of
Labor Notes attendees-many adorned in Palestinian keffiyehs-gathered to
demonstrate outside of the hotel where the conference was being held.
Responding to the gathered crowd, local police quickly arrested several
participants, though were eventually forced to release them without
charge after police cruisers were surrounded.
The power we have built and must continue to build, did not and can not
come from politicians-whether they have their own labor movement
bonafides, or claim to be the most "pro-union" elected in history.
Neither can it come from electing the right reform candidates to our
executive boards. Rather than investing ourselves in winning and
defending control of a particular office, we can instead build a more
durable power through the development of independent rank-and-file
organization.
Conclusion
Labor Notes continues to present the best opportunity to regroup a
militant labor movement in the United States. Despite the shortcomings
identified in the previous section, it would be beyond foolish to refuse
participation or attempts at intervention in one of the few independent
labor oriented projects that have achieved the scale and momentum that
Labor Notes has built.
It is still the case, as we offered in our reflection on the 2022
conference and at the beginning of this piece, that the labor movement
in the US continues its slow quantitative decline. While there are
bright spots to be proud of-the explosion of organizing in the service
sector; recent UAW victories in the South; the choice by a small but
growing number of workers to pursue independent unionism-it is
impossible to ignore the statistical reality. Should this lead us to a
state of resignation? To abandon labor as a sector through which we can
build and assert class power? We refuse this position.
In fact, in the decay of what has passed for unionism over the last 50
years, a renewed and militant unionism-animated and controlled by the
rank-and-file-might find more room to breathe and grow. It will take a
great deal of work to make this hope a reality.
If you share our commitment to such a project, reach out.
https://blackrosefed.org/report-on-labor-notes-2024/
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