Ask Labor Jane: How Can We Build Industrial Unionism in Education and Health Care?
Jane McAlevey argues that to build the power required to make huge gains for workers, we can't organize different kinds of workers separately from each other. We need wall-to-wall organization in workplaces to build an antiracist, antisexist trade union movement.
Educators, parents, students, and supporters of the Los Angeles teachers’ strike gather in Grand Park on January 22, 2019 in downtown Los Angeles, California. (Scott Heins / Getty Images)
Hello Jane,
I just finished the biography of Eugene V. Debs, The Bending Cross, and it’s left me with a lot of reflections concerning the cause for industrial unionism, one of Debs’s major lifelong battles. I know your positions are not that different from Debs in this regard, since you’ve been openly critical of craft unionism in the health care sector before, pointing out the common and inefficient model of “nurses-only” unions.
The recent struggles and victories of educators throughout the nation have left many of us amazed and inspired. It’s come to my attention, however, that schools also are still organized along craft lines: teachers have their own two major federations, cafeteria and janitorial staff usually have their own union, bus drivers are also organized separately . . .
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