Look closely at the picture below and then envision the racers of today.
Here is a 2 minute YouTube of her in competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6O-r_sKZpA
Labor Rising sees the future of organizing: separated and riding above capital’s turbulent waters and pursuing her own course to victory!
A strategic vision acted upon by its designer, brought to life with a plan. Genuine “out of the box thinking!” Proudly carrying forth the traditions of the past, but not stuck in conventions of design & protocols.
For as good as the older racer was, it simply is too slow to race in today’s regattas.
Today, we could paint an old racer like the Stars & Stripes 87, put new rigging on her, call her a great racing boat, spin tales of greatness in our meetings, put a new skipper at her helm and pronounce her fit to race inside of our own little world. However, no one in the 12 meter sailing world would agree, and as importantly, she would not have a track record of wins sailing today. In fact, she has been relegated to tourist rides and corporate team building activities.
The crew and captain can have all the skills in the world and the grand old racer will still lose the competition.
Keeping with the analogy, the grand old racer won many cups in her day: the weekend, overtime pay, 8- Hour workday, minimum wage, child labor laws, safety standards, health & retirement benefits and more. And, while the racers of today continue to benefit from those old racers’ victories of yore, they have yet to win any race in their day!
The racers of today have every reason to fail because they are clinging to past days of victory. There is little risk and, therefore, little reward for the racers and their skippers of today. Organizers today rely on bottom-up, Breslin, top-down, Win – Win, political legislation, community education and labor/management collaboration to do the mission of organizing. Putting the outcome of the victory in someone else’s hands assures defeat. Our Founders NEVER allowed anyone else to sail their boat. They put the future in their own hands.
So today we have class after class of passionate organizers ready to race but climbing aboard the racers of the past and not ready to compete in today’s racing. They lack:
- use 21st technology to build an entire market in real time;
- understand complex business relationships in the construction world;
- do and use opposition research and websites;
- use structured and aggressive technology to advance our union contractors;
- read and work with the various types of credit reports;
- have a functioning knowledge of hiring;
- know the differences between illegal workers, brokers, trafficking and temp workers and how they are intermixed;
- have a working knowledge of the legal consequences of Recognition and Secondary activities in organizing; and
- know how to build a Compression Zone of their entire market and which non-union contractors to work with and for which ones to develop a plan of uncertainty and labor unrest.
And, today’s organizers are not taught how to bring legal and lawful pressure on the client’s, credit and social footprint of the end-users and construction managers.
A MOVEMENT can either die in reliving its past, or learn from it. Our lesson – step onboard of organizing in the 21st Century.
“if you see yourself sailing an old boat – get off it, unless you’re just taking her for a pleasure ride”
Danny L Caliendo
Organizer
Labor Rising
