Rand Wilson, organizing director at IUE-CWA Local 201 in Massachusetts, sends us this report on the AFL-CIO union movement’s push for a “Stewards Army” to unite workers in face of increasing employer harassment.

The president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) has called for a new volunteer “Stewards Army” to mobilize for workers’ rights.

At a Dec. 2 meeting of rank-and-file activists and stewards in Braintree, Mass., CWA President Larry Cohen described a “vicious attack” by telecommunications employers on our standard of living, right to organize and ability to negotiate collective agreements. To rousing applause, Cohen said that for the labor movement to defend its members’ wages and working conditions—or that of workers more generally—would require “creating an army of stewards.”

The meeting brought together activists from fourteen CWA, [Electrical Workers] IBEW, and Utility Workers [UWUA] local unions from throughout the Northeast to focus on the challenges of uniting workers in the rapidly evolving telecommunications, computer and broadcast TV industries. Some 60 members, stewards and local officers attended the day-long Saturday meeting along with several AFL-CIO staff.

Cohen elaborated on CWA’s commitment to the idea:

“Our initial goal is to recruit 25,000 activists into the Stewards Army by July 2007 and then build our ranks to 50,000 by 2009. We will develop a special education and training program for members who sign up, and we hope other unions will do likewise.” 

As chairman of the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Committee, Cohen already has helped spearhead efforts by the AFL-CIO to create a steward-based education and mobilization program for tens of thousands of local union activists.

The Stewards Army will be on the front lines of every CWA effort, helping support strategic organizing and contract campaigns, and building political support for regaining workers’ rights. Members of the Stewards Army won’t all be shop stewards in the traditional sense of handling grievances and enforcing contracts at the job site.  It’s really about ’stewardship’ in a broader sense: stewardship to strengthen workers’ bargaining and organizing rights and to fight for our other major goals—jobs, health care, and retirement security.

Cohen’s call for a Stewards Army was well received at the Braintree strategy meeting.  After all, with so many rank-and-file activists from different unions in attendance, it looked just like a meeting of such an army. 

For union members frustrated by the labor movement’s labyrinthine structures or bureaucratic officialdom, Cohen’s official sanction for bottom-up organizing and a stewards’ army opens up some exciting possibilities. Local union activists will be able to use the AFL-CIO’s education materials to organize training and recruitment sessions.  After a large number of new stewards have been enlisted, meetings of the Stewards Army could be convened by industry sector, region or around key issues like health care or jobs.

As Cohen concluded:

As we train an army of new stewards on what is happening in the labor movement today, on the forces that reduce our power, on how earlier generations of stewards organized a movement from a similar starting point. Then stewards, in turn, will be able to mobilize thousands of workers and their families to lead the fight for restoring our collective bargaining and organizing rights.

More photos from the Dec. 2 IBEW, CWA, UWUA New England Organizing Strategy Meeting are at: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZM2Thu0atFEkg.

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