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'We Always Had a Union': In Conversation with Shaun Richman
Much of the conversations we see cropping up in today’s online labor discourse center around the labor movement’s need to create a more militant organizing framework within the established unions in the United States. In the last decade, unions have experienced a resurgence in the popular conversation, particularly since 2021, but have struggled to increase membership and create new inroads toward organizing victories, particularly in the wake of successive anti-labor administrations. What does it mean to reintroduce militant organizing strategies to organize labor’s toolbox, and can we look to examples from our own labor history to give us a blueprint?
In We Always Had a Union, Shaun Richman writes a meticulously researched history of the New York Hotel Workers’ Union, and the influence of their militant communist organizers on their organizing strategy from the 1910s through the 1950s. In his introduction to the book he writes,
“Indeed, the hotel workers of New York City had had a union–several of them–for decades before Local 6 and the Hotel Trades Council enrolled tens of thousands of members in some of the largest Communist-led affiliates of the American Federation of Labor. They had a union decades before their collective bargaining was protected by law, regulated by the state, and endorsed by leading politicians like New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Governor Thomas E. Dewey. They had their union long before AFL leaders embraced their radical local leadership during the Popular Front era, and continue to have a union decades after the international union attempted to purge the Communists during the Cold War…it is a rare example of how the Communist Party’s power and influence were so clearly and explicitly negotiated within an AFL union.”
With me today to discuss this history is Shaun Richman. Shaun teaches labor history at SUNY Empire State University and is the author of this and one another book, Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century.
Editorial Note: This podcast was recorded in late December 2025. In a particular encouraging turn of events, the Minnesota AFL-CIO has endorsed a community stoppage action for TODAY Jan 23 in the wake of violent ICE raids in the Twin Cities area. We love militant organizing against repressive state forces, don't we folks?
Additional Links and Resources
Follow Shaun on Bluesky here.
Buy Shaun's Book here.
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By Mel BuerMuch of the conversations we see cropping up in today’s online labor discourse center around the labor movement’s need to create a more militant organizing framework within the established unions in the United States. In the last decade, unions have experienced a resurgence in the popular conversation, particularly since 2021, but have struggled to increase membership and create new inroads toward organizing victories, particularly in the wake of successive anti-labor administrations. What does it mean to reintroduce militant organizing strategies to organize labor’s toolbox, and can we look to examples from our own labor history to give us a blueprint?
In We Always Had a Union, Shaun Richman writes a meticulously researched history of the New York Hotel Workers’ Union, and the influence of their militant communist organizers on their organizing strategy from the 1910s through the 1950s. In his introduction to the book he writes,
“Indeed, the hotel workers of New York City had had a union–several of them–for decades before Local 6 and the Hotel Trades Council enrolled tens of thousands of members in some of the largest Communist-led affiliates of the American Federation of Labor. They had a union decades before their collective bargaining was protected by law, regulated by the state, and endorsed by leading politicians like New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Governor Thomas E. Dewey. They had their union long before AFL leaders embraced their radical local leadership during the Popular Front era, and continue to have a union decades after the international union attempted to purge the Communists during the Cold War…it is a rare example of how the Communist Party’s power and influence were so clearly and explicitly negotiated within an AFL union.”
With me today to discuss this history is Shaun Richman. Shaun teaches labor history at SUNY Empire State University and is the author of this and one another book, Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century.
Editorial Note: This podcast was recorded in late December 2025. In a particular encouraging turn of events, the Minnesota AFL-CIO has endorsed a community stoppage action for TODAY Jan 23 in the wake of violent ICE raids in the Twin Cities area. We love militant organizing against repressive state forces, don't we folks?
Additional Links and Resources
Follow Shaun on Bluesky here.
Buy Shaun's Book here.