The East Side Freedom Library invites you to a discussion of Class Struggle Unionism with author Joe Burns and a panel of labor activists.

Register here to join on Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with the Zoom link.

This event will also be live-streamed to ESFL’s Facebook page.

For those who want to build a fighting labor movement, there are many questions to answer. How to relate to the union establishment which often does not want to fight? Whether to work in the rank and file of unions or staff jobs? How much to prioritize broader class demands versus shop floor struggle? How to relate to foundation-funded worker centers and alternative union efforts? And most critically, how to revive militancy and union power in the face of corporate power and a legal system set up against us?

Class struggle unionism is the belief that our union struggle exists within a larger struggle between an exploiting billionaire class and the working class which actually produces the goods and services in society. Class struggle unionism looks at the employment transaction as inherently exploitative. While workers create all wealth in society, the outcome of the wage employment transaction is to separate workers from that wealth and create the billionaire class. From that simple proposition flows a powerful and radical form of unionism. Historically, class struggle unionists placed their workplace fights squarely within this larger fight between workers and the owning class. Viewing unionism in this way produces a particular type of unionism which both fights for broader class issues but is also rooted in workplace-based militancy. Here is a link to a review of the book by Jonathan Kissam, UE’s national Communications Director, in the latest issue of UE News.

Joe Burns is a veteran union negotiator and labor lawyer with over 25 years experience negotiating labor agreements. For many years he was an activist in the Twin Cities labor movement, elected president of an AFSCME local at a public sector hospital, before heading off to law school. He is currently the Director of Collective Bargaining for the Association of Flight Attendants, CWA. Joe is the author of Strike Back: Rediscovering Militant Tactics to Fight the Attacks on Public Employee Unions and Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America. Class Struggle Unionism, just published by Haymarket Press, is the subject of intense discussions within the labor movement.

On Thursday evening, April 7, Joe will be engaged in conversation by a great panel: Twin Cities union leaders Cherrene Horaczuk, President of AFSCME 3800, and Kieran Knutson, President of CWA 7250; and much-respected Labor Notes activists and writers, Jane Slaughter and Steve Early. Please join us and participate in the conversation.

Free and open to all