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Peter Gilmore, UE News, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America

SECOND TROUBLEMAKER'S HANDBOOK WILL INFORM, INCITE AND INSPIRE

by Peter Gilmore, Editor, UE News

Bosses, beware! A Troublemaker’s Handbook 2: How to Fight Where You Work And Win! is hot off the press and ready to inform, incite and inspire. Produced by the staff of the monthly magazine Labor Notes, this is 372 pages brimming with ideas and information for worker activists of the 2000s.

Some UE members may be familiar with A Troublemaker’s Handbook, written by Dan La Botz and published by Labor Notes in 1991. Intended as an addition to that volume, A Troublemaker’s Handbook 2 is somewhat similar in content and design. The new book is heftier and even meatier and draws from a broad range of union experience over the past decade and a half. Seventy-two author-activists contributed to this volume.

The amount of information and the quality of the experiences is truly impressive.

Troubled by the term “troublemaker?” The editor explains: “By ‘troublemaker’ we mean an activist who dares to defend her or his rights and those of fellow workers. That often means making waves and causing some discomfort among managerial types.” So, the editor says, “this book is an organizing manual for workers who want justice from their employers and control over their lives at work and beyond.”

Handbook 2 consists of two dozen major topics — everything from shop-floor tactics to dealing with the news media — each with numerous examples from real-life experiences in organizing for power. At the end of each chapter are “Action Questions” designed to promote thinking and discussion about how to implement similar tactics.

UE REFERENCES
Naturally, an activist union like UE has its share of references and referrals. The section “Continuous Bargaining and Confrontation Save Jobs at GE” (in the chapter on “Saving Good Jobs”) examines the Local 506 experience in fighting for good jobs through shop-floor action and the innovative job preservation committees. In the same chapter, the section “Fighting Disinvestment and Discipline” deals with the UE experience in Vermont’s “Precision Valley.”

An entire section, “A Model of International Solidarity: The UE-FAT Strategic Organizing Alliance,” appears, naturally, in the chapter on “International Solidarity.” The section "Using the Internet to Promote International Solidarity” refers readers to the UE online to see “a good example of a website that makes internationalism very concrete.” (Unique to UE, much of the national union’s work gets done by full-time staff dedicated to the union’s vision of how the labor movement should operate. The website, produced by Rick Peduzzi, is no exception.)

During a Chicago strike, UE worked with the Day Labor Organizing Project to stop the flow of scabs from a temporary employment agency; this story is retold in the chapter on “Workers Centers.”

Gary Huck’s popular anti-drug testing cartoon appears, along with an account of its origins authored by fellow cartoonist Mike Konopacki. There are several references to UE resources, including the Preparing for and Conducting a Strike: A UE Guide and UE Leadership Manual.

What’s surprising is what isn’t mentioned Handbook 2.

OMISSIONS
The chapter on “Allying with the Community: Multi-Issue Coalitions” says that “Workers Rights Boards were first developed as a [Jobs with Justice] strategy in 1993, out of frustration with the National Labor Relations Board’s weak enforcement of the right to organize.” That’s not exactly right. UE and Vermont Jobs with Justice set up the first Workers Rights Board in 1992; the UE-inspired project in the Green Mountain State then became a model for the national coalition.

It’s also somewhat surprising that experiences from UE’s pioneering work in North Carolina, Virginia and Vermont — struggles covered in the pages of Labor Notes — did not provide the editor and authors with suitably instructive incidents. In North Carolina, UE is organizing public-sector workers despite the statutory denial of collective-bargaining rights to public employees. UE members are fighting for workers’ rights in factories, without a contract or formal recognition. In Montpelier, Vt., UE built a union among downtown service workers, and brought two workplaces under the same basic contract.

Perhaps lessons from these and future UE struggles will appear in Handbook 3.

In a book of this size with so many contributors, errors are probably inevitable, and a glaring one appears in the “Resources” chapter. Labor’s Untold Story is said to be “out of print.” That news might bring a sigh of relief to the UE National office staff who regularly ship box loads of the book to bookstores, universities and union halls across the U.S. and around the world, but it’s not true. Now in its twenty-fifth printing, Labor’s Untold Story has not been out of print since UE became the publisher decades ago. (Information on this and other UE publications is readily available from the union’s website.)

Regardless of these minor quibbles, A Troublemakers Handbook 2 would be a wise purchase by activist members, stewards, shop committees and local unions.