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| The stewards army would mobilize workers such as these CWA members who are supporting a union at Verizon Wireless. |
Union members always have mobilized behind the goal of making life better for all of America’s working families. Now, with the nation’s middle class under attack and the freedom to form unions being curtailed at nearly every turn, workers are developing a new way to mobilize workers in workplaces and in their communities to fight for a better life—the stewards army.
The idea behind the stewards army is simple, but powerful: Create a movement-wide network of stewards—the union official closest to the members, who works alongside the rank-and-file members—to educate, organize and mobilize members around key issues. Unions such as the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Electrical Workers (IBEW), United Steelworkers (USW) and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) already have put the process into motion with revamped steward training and mobilization.
Speaking to the AFL-CIO Organizing Summit last December, CWA President Larry Cohen, who chairs the AFL-CIO Executive Council Committee on Organizing, laid out the case for the stewards army (see video):
Being a steward can no longer mean, as important as it is, that I know the contract, that I’ll protect the rights of my fellow workers, that I’ll handle a grievance, that I’ll help lead a contract fight. We need a stewards’ army in every union…so we’re there for each other’s fights…so we can talk to each other quickly and turn out hundreds of thousands of people. So that corporate management knows at every company in this country, in every organizing fight, in every strike, in every bargaining fight, the stewards’ army will be there.
The stewards army will include both active union members and retirees. Its action program will be directed sometimes at an employer or workplace and other times will be focused more broadly on an industry goal or even a national issue such as health care. Actions can range from sending an e-mail message to participating in rallies, meeting with elected officials and mobilizing thousands for mass action.
The stewards army is not only the most exciting innovation in the union movement in some time, but it can really effect major change, says Tim Waters, director of the USW Rapid Response program, which many see as a model for the stewards army:
Union members are much more likely to listen to their co-workers than anyone when it comes to union issues. They trust their co-workers and they stick together. The value of the stewards army is that engages union members with union issues that they’re not going to hear about in the media. But with the stewards army, members hear about an issue, get mobilized and get active. There is a tremendous power there. This shows a real concern about the real grassroots members and getting them involved.
That power already is on display in the way workers are pushing for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Less than a month after the November 2006 elections, the AFL-CIO Executive Council called on every union to “mobilize for this legislation, just as we did to win elections”—and the USW Rapid Response network sprang into action. The union set up the network several years ago to identify key activists across the country and links them electronically. Following the Executive Council call, union leaders pinpointed congressional districts where the union is strong and faxed and e-mailed 20,000 Rapid Response team leaders one-page InfoAlerts about the obstacles workers face when they try to form unions and how the Employee Free Choice Act would help.
After team leaders help union members understand the key issues, the leaders are ready to mobilize their co-workers. Many take cell phones to the shop floor and help union members call their members of Congress on the spot. Workers on the overnight shifts fill up voice mails at congressional offices. In addition, USW members have visited congressional offices and stood up at town hall meetings to discuss the obstacles workers face when they try to form unions.
CWA and IBEW are putting the stewards army idea to work assisting workers at Verizon who want to form a union. The two unions have held joint trainings with stewards and plan to sign up thousands more in the stewards army. CWA aims to sign up 50,000 in the stewards army by 2009, according to Yvette Herrera, an assistant to Cohen.
At CWA and throughout the labor movement, we’re imagining thousands of activists, working in their own communities but sharing a common vision of how we can achieve real change for working families: real improvement in bargaining rights, jobs, health care ad pension security.
That’s what the stewards army is all about. We will make change the same way generations of workers before us made change—with a movement of activists who stand up, speak out and demand change.
CWA plans to connect its 50,000 with another 500,000 or more activists from other major unions to create a powerful force to change the priorities of the country and refocus on an agenda for working families.
Cohen says the stewards army will feature a new breed of shop steward:
Members of the stewards army won’t all be shop stewards in the traditional sense of handling grievances and enforcing contracts at the job site. It’s really about ‘stewardship’ in a broader sense: stewardship to strengthen workers’ bargaining and organizing rights and to fight for our other major goals—jobs, health care, and retirement security.
Fred Azcarate, director of the AFL-CIO’s Voice@Work, says the stewards army will make the phrase solidarity really mean something.
It’s about talking to people about what’s happening with the economics in this country and not just in some theoretical way but in how it’s impacting their contracts at the bargaining table and how they can do something about it. It’s not only in the context of their contract but how they have to do something about getting national health care in this country and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. And it’s about how it’s going to make their bargaining easier if other workers can form a union and if we can take health care off the bargaining table.
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