Abstract: The terrain of "progressive labor" in the U.S. has shifted dramatically in recent years. The two-million member Service Employees International Union (SEIU)–long associated with the remaking of labor as a force for social justice–has become embroiled in a series of controversies that have alienated past campus, community, and political allies. A union that once commanded almost automatic support in left-liberal circles now finds many "friends of labor" arrayed against it, rhetorically at least, and, in some cases, actively assisting organizational rivals such as UNITE HERE and the new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). The following article reviews the history of the labor-intellectual alliance that emerged in the mid-1990s, in response to changes in the national AFL-CIO leadership. It assesses the current state of relations between labor-oriented academics and leading unions that formed the Change To Win coalition in 2005.
In late June, 2009, the garment workers and hotel employees union known as UNITE HERE held its national convention in Chicago. There, the fellow labor organization recently described in New Labor Forum as our "most dynamic, fastest growing, and (many would argue) mo
Steve Early has worked as a journalist, lawyer, labor organizer, or union representative since 1972. For nearly three decades, Early was a Boston-based national staff member of the Communications Workers of America who assisted organizing, bargaining and strikes in both the private and public sector. Early's free-lance writing about labor relations and workplace issues has appeared in The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, The Progressive, and many other publications. Early's latest book is called Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs (Duke University Press, 2022). He is also the author of Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of An American City (Beacon Press, 2018); Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress (Monthly Review Press, 2013); The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers’ Movement or Death Throes of the Old? (Haymarket Books, 2011); and Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home (Monthly Review Press, 2009). Early is a member of the NewsGuild/CWA, the Richmond Progressive Alliance (in his new home town, Richmond, CA.) East Bay DSA, Solidarity, and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He is a current or past editorial advisory board member of New Labor Forum, Working USA, Labor Notes, and Social Policy. He can be reached at [email protected] and via steveearly.org or ourvetsbook.com.
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