https://vimeo.com/430851076

Clare Hammonds and Cedric Johnson

Trade unions have the potential to play a pivotal role in developing a more significant mass movement - but will they? Clare Hammonds and Cedric Johnson join Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast.

Transcript

Paul JayHi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Back in mid-April, before the massprotests broke out, I wrote an article titled, "Get Ready for the Coming Storm." In part, it went"Now, as the country settles into a deep depression, conditions for the rise of a broad people'smovement might develop. Mass unemployment could spark spontaneous resistance, but withoutorganization, uprisings cannot be sustained and have little direction. I saw this firsthand duringthe Freddie Gray protests in Baltimore. Will progressives and socialists be ready for it?" Well,the storm arrived sooner than I expected. I think if the mass movement that has arisen in thewake of the police murders of George Floyd and many other black men is going to be sustainableand transformative, workers organized in trade unions are going to have to play a leading role.It's almost the only place that workers are organized as workers. Even if their numbers are muchsmaller than in the past, unionized workers are still in strategic sectors of the economy, includingtransportation, telecommunications, the public sector, hospitals and many large industries. Anexample of what's possible may be set by the West Coast port workers on Friday Juneteenth.Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, (ILWU) plan to close WestCoast ports in solidarity with Black Lives Matter on the day commemorating the end of slavery.While many even on the left have written off American trade unions as too weak and tooconservative, there are strikes all over the country - and some say a rising militancy. In the book,"Labor in the time of Trump," the introduction ends with this: "Building corporate lobbies andthe right-wing ideology surrounding them is fundamental to capitalism, as is the impulse togenerate wealth at the top and eliminate unions." How the labor movement responds, however, isgenerating fierce debates within the labor movement. The right-wing agenda is at odds with whatmost people want, and it's up to the labor movement and its allies to expose and counter thatcontradiction. The challenge for labor and the left is to marshal the forces that believe anotherworld is possible. Now joining us is one of the editors of the book, Clare Hammonds, who is aprofessor of practice at UMass Amherst Labor Center, where she conducts and supports appliedresearch and labor education programs. Hammonds also currently serves as the Labor Centergraduate program director. And one of the contributors to the book, in Chicago is CedricJohnson, who's an associate professor of African-American studies and political science at theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago and editor of the Neo-Liberal Deluge, Hurricane Katrina, LateCapitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans. Thank you both for joining me.

Clare Hammonds: Thank you for having us.

Paul JayYour book's dedication talks about laying the groundwork for the next upsurge. Do you think thisis it? And if so, can the progressive struggle inside the union movement effectively challenge theconservatives who lead most, if not all of the major unions?

Clare HammondsWell, I'll just start by saying a couple of things about that. So there are five co-editors on it:myself and the other three UMass Amherst faculty at the Labor Center: Tom Juravich, EveWeinbaum and Jasmine Kerrissey. We were also supported by our sociology colleague DanClawson. And Dan Clawson passed away unexpectedly last May just after we'd finished puttingthe book together.