Thread by @ErikLoomis

Book #14 for 2019--Jonathan Rosenblum, Beyond $15: Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of Labor Movement. A largely excellent study of the Fight for $15 and unionization campaigns in Sea-Tac. Great look at where unions have to go.

amazon.com/Beyond-15-Immi…

A lot of books in this genre can be frustrating, because they are so pushing an inside baseball agenda where union leadership does no right and worker democracy does no wrong. Rosenblum does not repudiate this, but presents a far more nuanced view.

Rosenblum was one of the SEIU organizers on the Sea-Tac campaign and his point is that worker power needs to be goal of the union movement. He notes that the union movement is simply not prepared to deal with the needed transformation to broad-based community organizing.

Rosenblum is highly critical of the Andy Stern-era of SEIU with the service model that undermined worker organizing and much more favorable to the Henry-era that replaced it. And he goes into the weeds of why this really matters in how the organizing campaign at Sea-Tac worked.

And then there is the discussion of faith-based organizing, centering on the religious diversity of the modern workforce (many east African Muslims in Sea-Tac) and how we too often ignore religion in our organizing.

Really, my only criticism of Rosenblum's book is that the title could be more catchy and striking and get to the heart of the argument. Easily made up for by his great point that organizing needs to be about building worker power rather than just higher wages.

Sure, he probably makes the transformation of unions seem a bit more possible than it actually is, but there's nothing wrong with optimism, which to be fair, is not a personal strength of mine.

Unlike a lot of inside baseball labor books, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in organizing, the future of the labor movement, building coalitions, socialists, pretty much anyone who is thinking hard about making the world better outside of the electoral system.

And for those who do focus on change through the electoral system, remember that this sort of change can't happen without mobilization outside of electoral politics and we need to think about how to build political movements out of mobilizations that aren't just the middle class.