In this envi­ron­ment, any­thing that unions can do alone, with dwin­dling pow­er, will be insuf­fi­cient. The chal­lenge for labor, at a moment of his­toric weak­ness, is to fig­ure out how unions can sup­port and be involved in move­ments and cam­paigns that expand, rather than nar­row, the scope and scale of what we are orga­niz­ing and bar­gain­ing for. It may seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive, but it is think­ing big­ger and broad­en­ing our vision, goals, and demands — even at a moment of weak­ness — that offers a path to resur­gent unions and a more equal and just coun­try and world.

Aus­ter­i­ty, grow­ing inequal­i­ty, and the eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal dom­i­na­tion of bil­lion­aires, bankers, hedge funds, and giant cor­po­ra­tions make the cur­rent moment ripe for birthing a move­ment that can rad­i­cal­ly trans­form the coun­try and the world. This is a time of great per­il, but also of extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­ni­ty and — yes — rea­sons for hope. The last four decades have been char­ac­ter­ized by unre­lent­ing attacks on the work­ing class, the weak­en­ing of unions and the finan­cial­iza­tion of cap­i­tal­ism. The fis­cal cri­sis of 2007 – 2008, the bur­geon­ing wealth gap, and the flood of mon­ey from cor­po­ra­tions and the rich drown­ing our democ­ra­cy have exposed the nation’s polit­i­cal, moral, and eco­nom­ic decay, cre­at­ing con­di­tions that beg for an alter­na­tive to a sys­tem that increas­ing­ly only works for the super-rich.

Step one: Under­stand what’s going on in the economy

Unions need to under­stand and edu­cate the pub­lic about what is going on in the econ­o­my if labor and oth­er social move­ments are to seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty and fig­ure out how to turn frailty into strength. They need to demys­ti­fy the com­plex­i­ty of the how the econ­o­my works, so that work­ing-class peo­ple and social move­ments can respond in kind.

Over the last 40 years, our econ­o­my has increas­ing­ly grown to be dom­i­nat­ed by the finan­cial sec­tor — banks, hedge funds, pri­vate equi­ty firms and oth­er invest­ment hous­es are the biggest prof­it-dri­vers in the econ­o­my, exer­cis­ing effec­tive con­trol over many oth­er areas of our econ­o­my. As investors, these finan­cial enti­ties put pres­sure on com­pa­nies to cut expens­es by slash­ing labor costs and avoid­ing tax­es in order to increase their return on investment.

In prac­ti­cal terms this means we have two seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry devel­op­ments. On the one hand, there is the grow­ing con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and own­er­ship of cor­po­ra­tions at the top of the finan­cial sys­tem. On the oth­er, employ­ment is increas­ing­ly dis­ag­gre­gat­ed at the bot­tom, mean­ing the per­son, enti­ty, or com­pa­ny that pays work­ers is increas­ing­ly some­one way down the eco­nom­ic lad­der that has lit­tle abil­i­ty to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve wages and benefits.

The few elite at the top have the best of both worlds: They are max­i­miz­ing their con­trol of the econ­o­my while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly avoid­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­di­tions of the work­ers whose wages they dri­ve ever low­er and for the com­mu­ni­ties they drain finan­cial­ly. To build a broad social move­ment that seeks to change fun­da­men­tal aspects of our polit­i­cal econ­o­my, we need to rec­og­nize how the finan­cial elite have cre­at­ed a vicious cycle that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly trans­fers wealth from work­ers’ pock­ets to their own in four impor­tant ways:

Cre­at­ing and prof­it­ing from per­son­al debt: Wall Street investors’ empha­sis on share­hold­er prof­it cre­ates pres­sure to low­er wages. Hav­ing dri­ven wages so low that most peo­ple can­not afford to pay their bills, Wall Street has devel­oped a vast num­ber of preda­to­ry loan schemes to fur­ther siphon wealth from the peo­ple at the bot­tom and mid­dle of the eco­nom­ic lad­der to the top. Sub­prime mort­gages, stu­dent debt, cred­it card debt and pay­day loans are all ways Wall Street extracts ever greater wealth while trap­ping peo­ple in a per­pet­u­al cycle of debt. It is a sweet deal for the bankers and bil­lion­aires: they prof­it by dri­ving wages down and then fur­ther prof­it from of people’s grow­ing debt. This cre­ates the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect and orga­nize stu­dents, home own­ers and low-wage work­ers around the shared expe­ri­ence of being stran­gled by debt and the fact that it is often the same finan­cial firms, like Wells Far­go, that own their debt.

Build­ing and prof­it­ing from pub­lic sec­tor debt: Wall Street and the super-rich have pur­sued a sim­i­lar two-pronged approach to the pub­lic sec­tor. First they low­er tax­es and come up with ways to avoid the tax­es they can’t elim­i­nate. Then they sell preda­to­ry finan­cial schemes to cash-strapped cities, states and school dis­tricts to fill the short­fall they cre­at­ed because there isn’t enough mon­ey com­ing in. Cities and school dis­tricts that are try­ing to make ends meet rely on preda­to­ry finan­cial deals, like bonds that pay wealthy investors triple-dig­it inter­est rates (no won­der for­mer Cal­i­for­nia Trea­sur­er Bill Lock­y­er referred to these instru­ments as the ​“school dis­trict equiv­a­lent of a pay­day loan”). This has par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant impli­ca­tions for pub­lic sec­tor unions and the com­mu­ni­ties they serve. Wall Street is increas­ing­ly call­ing the shots, threat­en­ing to raise inter­est rates and cut off cap­i­tal if pub­lic offi­cials don’t insti­tute aus­ter­i­ty by cut­ting pen­sions, slash­ing ser­vices, and lay­ing off work­ers. By expos­ing the spe­cif­ic finan­cial firms that are respon­si­ble, we can keep pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and poor com­mu­ni­ties from being pit­ted against each oth­er and instead joint­ly cam­paign against the cor­po­ra­tions who are real­ly in charge.

Defund­ing, then pri­va­tiz­ing: Hav­ing starved gov­ern­ment out of being an effec­tive deliv­er­er of pub­lic ser­vices, bankers and bil­lion­aires spon­sor and prof­it from var­i­ous pri­va­ti­za­tion and pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship schemes that fur­ther trans­fer pub­lic dol­lars to the top while destroy­ing local democ­ra­cy and any form of com­mu­ni­ty con­trol. Wall Street’s solu­tion is to replace democ­ra­cy with emer­gency man­agers and pan­els of tech­nocrats after they bank­rupt local com­mu­ni­ties. For exam­ple, hedge funds are behind the push in Con­gress to put an unelect­ed fis­cal con­trol board in charge of Puer­to Rico. In Illi­nois, Bruce Rauner, the pri­vate equi­ty man­ag­er-turned Gov­er­nor, wants give con­trol of Chica­go Pub­lic Schools over to a state-appoint­ed finan­cial over­sight pan­el. Although pro­po­nents claim unelect­ed pan­els and con­trol boards are bet­ter able to deal with finan­cial crises because they can make polit­i­cal­ly unpop­u­lar deci­sions, the real­i­ty is that their deci­sions are unpop­u­lar because they put the inter­ests of Wall Street cred­i­tors ahead of the needs of residents.

Estab­lish­ing a cor­po­rate-owned revolv­ing- door gov­ern­ment: The role of ​“mon­ey in pol­i­tics” goes far beyond the impact of polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions on elec­tions: Key reg­u­la­to­ry posi­tions go to peo­ple from the indus­tries they are sup­posed to reg­u­late. Upon leav­ing gov­ern­ment, politi­cians and appointees become mul­ti­mil­lion­aires work­ing for pri­vate equi­ty firms and hedge funds. For­mer major­i­ty leader Dick Gephardt and for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee (RNC) chair Ken Mehlman now work togeth­er for the pri­vate equi­ty firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) that spe­cial­izes in lever­aged buy­outs. Doc­u­ment­ing, expos­ing, and cam­paign­ing to stop such revolv­ing-door con­flicts cre­ates the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect to groups try­ing to lim­it the role of mon­ey in pol­i­tics on broad­er issues of cor­po­rate dom­i­na­tion beyond the impact on elections.

Step two: Learn from labor’s past

Assert con­trol over wealth and cap­i­tal: In the post-World War II era, unions made two relat­ed mis­takes that have con­tributed to labor’s iso­la­tion and to unre­strained cor­po­rate con­trol of the econ­o­my: First, orga­nized labor focused near­ly exclu­sive­ly on win­ning high­er wages and ben­e­fits for only the union­ized sec­tor of the econ­o­my; and sec­ond it declined to chal­lenge how com­pa­nies were man­aged or how cap­i­tal and wealth were invest­ed or con­trolled. In the auto sec­tor, the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers (UAW) won high­er wages in Big Three assem­bly plants at the same time the com­pa­nies spun off and out­sourced man­u­fac­tur­ing of parts that used to be done by UAW mem­bers. These two moves both low­ered stan­dards for these work­ers and under­cut the union’s over­all pow­er in the industry.

All of this was pred­i­cat­ed on the idea that unions and col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing were accept­ed by the cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal elites as a per­ma­nent fix­ture of the sys­tem and as a legit­i­mate method for set­ting wages and ben­e­fits. Since the 1970s, how­ev­er, union mem­ber­ship has been in a steady free fall with today’s union den­si­ty at rough­ly 11 per­cent. This means that, in addi­tion to hav­ing ced­ed con­trol over wealth and cap­i­tal, unions have large­ly focused on pro­tect­ing the inter­ests of only a small frac­tion of workers.

A quick look at The Black­stone Group, the world’s largest pri­vate equi­ty firm, illus­trates the cur­rent poten­tial for labor and com­mu­ni­ty groups to join togeth­er in a cam­paign that is about both ten­ant and work­er rights. Black­stone is a major investor in many major com­pa­nies. They recent­ly moved into hous­ing, buy­ing up dis­tressed mort­gages from the U.S. Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment (HUD), fore­clos­ing on the home­own­ers, and con­vert­ing the homes into rentals. Black­stone is the now nation’s largest land­lord of sin­gle-fam­i­ly rental homes, and they are rais­ing rents in cities across the coun­try, dri­ving work­ing-class fam­i­lies out of their homes. If the unions who rep­re­sent the work­ers at com­pa­nies where Black­stone is a major investor, like Hilton Hotels and Equi­ty Office, joined togeth­er with com­mu­ni­ty groups in a cam­paign to ful­ly union­ize Black­stone-con­trolled com­pa­nies, and to demand that the firm freeze rents on rental prop­er­ties at afford­able rates, the strat­e­gy would ben­e­fit renters not involved in the union as well as union mem­bers. A demand of improved wages and fair rents would give the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty a clear self-inter­est in the unions’ orga­niz­ing and bar­gain­ing campaigns.

Grow with mass move­ments: The irony of today’s labor move­ment is that, while unions look for the spark that will ignite a mass move­ment and lead work­ers to embrace unions, they are often are blind to or dis­mis­sive of the incip­i­ent move­ments sprout­ing all around them. From the immi­grant rights and mar­riage equal­i­ty move­ments to Occu­py Wall Street and Black Lives Mat­ter, the last ten years have been rife with grass­roots move­ments that have engaged mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, cap­tured the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion, and won real vic­to­ries. Although many unions have often sup­port­ed these move­ments, most viewed that sup­port as a form of ​“extra cred­it” rather than a cen­tral pil­lar of the union’s own mis­sion and orga­niz­ing plan.

In the past though, some of labor’s most suc­cess­ful cam­paigns have won new mem­bers when unions embraced oth­er mass move­ments by inter­nal­iz­ing their demands and posi­tion­ing the union as the vehi­cle for win­ning broad­er social change. For exam­ple, Dis­trict 1199 grew dra­mat­i­cal­ly by orga­niz­ing health care work­ers in the 1960s and 1970s — before the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Act gave health care work­ers the right to orga­nize — by fus­ing its work with the civ­il rights move­ment and build­ing black work­ing-class pow­er. Orga­niz­ing a union and fight­ing for civ­il rights became com­plete­ly inter­twined. They were two parts of the same strug­gle; 1199 helped fuel the civ­il rights move­ment and the civ­il rights movement’s growth and momen­tum inspired African Amer­i­can work­ers to stand up to their boss­es, help­ing the union score orga­niz­ing gains. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of State, Coun­ty and Munic­i­pal Employee’s (AFSCME) ​“I Am a Man” cam­paign dur­ing the 1968 san­i­ta­tion work­ers’ strike in Mem­phis framed the work­ers’ strug­gle as part of the broad­er civ­il rights movement.

UNITE HERE and Ser­vice Employ­ee Inter­na­tion­al Union’s (SEIU) ear­ly embrace of immi­grant rights and their com­mit­ment to orga­niz­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers not only helped sup­port and build the immi­grant rights move­ment, but it also led direct­ly to sig­nif­i­cant orga­niz­ing gains. For exam­ple, the Jus­tice for Jan­i­tors campaign’s break­throughs in orga­niz­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant jan­i­tors grew in tan­dem with the grow­ing move­ment of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers to ​“come out of the shad­ows” at work and in their com­mu­ni­ties. It is hard to imag­ine a sce­nario where jan­i­tors would have struck and engaged in mass civ­il dis­obe­di­ence if there hadn’t been a broad­er move­ment for immi­grant rights that both sup­port­ed and was sup­port­ed by the Jus­tice for Jan­i­tors campaign.

Today’s labor move­ment has not been a reli­able part­ner to oth­er mass move­ments. They may encour­age mem­bers to attend march­es against police vio­lence and may occa­sion­al­ly even send a ban­ner with the union’s name and logo, but few unions are will­ing to fight against white suprema­cy at the bar­gain­ing table. They view Black Lives Mat­ter as a good cause to sup­port from afar, but they will not risk their orga­ni­za­tion­al clout or jeop­ar­dize their rela­tion­ships with City Hall or police unions for an issue they view as poten­tial­ly divi­sive with some mem­bers that is not core to nar­row­ly rep­re­sent­ing their mem­bers’ inter­ests in the workplace.

Step three: Build a move­ment for trans­for­ma­tion­al change

Unions are still the best-resourced pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions in the U.S., but they have been far less suc­cess­ful at cap­tur­ing the nation­al imag­i­na­tion than oth­er move­ments that have no resources. If unions lim­it their mis­sion to the four walls of the work­place, then they become less rel­e­vant as they rep­re­sent few­er work­places. But by embrac­ing oth­er mass move­ments — with­out attempt­ing to con­trol or hijack them — unions can grow along­side of them and those move­ments will ben­e­fit from the orga­ni­za­tion­al resources that orga­nized labor can bring to bear.

Ele­ments of rebuild­ing unions as part of a move­ment for trans­for­ma­tion­al change include:

Take the offense , not the defense — Focus on the 0.01 per­cent at the top who dom­i­nate the econ­o­my and pol­i­tics of the coun­try: When unions wage defen­sive fights, the best they can do is lose less. Main­tain an unre­lent­ing offense, focus­ing on the peo­ple and com­pa­nies at the top of the finan­cial food chain, direct­ly expos­ing, con­fronting, and chal­leng­ing the peo­ple and enti­ties that are dri­ving and expand­ing inequal­i­ty and fight­ing to take away pow­er and mon­ey from unions.

One exam­ple of this is the Hedge Clip­pers cam­paign, with crit­i­cal sup­port from Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (AFT) and oth­er unions, which takes on the hedge fund man­agers and bil­lion­aires who push poli­cies to enrich and empow­er them­selves at our expense. The cam­paign research­es and expos­es the prac­tices of bil­lion­aire hedge fund man­agers, show­ing how they dri­ve inequal­i­ty and dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase their wealth by cut­ting jobs, avoid­ing tax­es, and rip­ping off pen­sion funds and uni­ver­si­ty endow­ments. Hedge Clip­pers brings the research to life with non­vi­o­lent direct action, by dis­rupt­ing indus­try events, and by work­ing to cut off hedge fund cap­i­tal by press­ing pen­sion funds and uni­ver­si­ty endow­ments to divest. As a result of this cam­paign, the New York City Employ­ee Retire­ment Sys­tem (NYC­ERS), the largest munic­i­pal pen­sion fund in the U.S., recent­ly vot­ed to divest $1.5 bil­lion in hedge fund holdings.

Demand more, not less—Orga­nize and bar­gain for the com­mon good: Instead of lim­it­ing them­selves to defen­sive fights to pro­tect exist­ing wages and ben­e­fits, many pub­lic sec­tor unions around the coun­try are start­ing to ​“bar­gain for the com­mon good” by part­ner­ing with com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions to bring broad­er eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal demands to the pub­lic employ­ee bar­gain­ing table. For exam­ple, the Fix L.A. cam­paign found that Los Ange­les spent twice as much on Wall Street fees as it did on all street ser­vices. By cam­paign­ing against that, the city work­ers’ unions and their com­mu­ni­ty part­ners won a com­mit­ment by the city to hire 5,000 new work­ers to restore pub­lic ser­vices to pre-reces­sion lev­els, and to pri­or­i­tize hir­ing dis­ad­van­taged and for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed peo­ple into these posi­tions. The city also agreed to fund a rev­enue com­mis­sion with a man­date to look at ways to reduce finan­cial fees, rene­go­ti­ate bad deals and devel­op oth­er new pro­gres­sive rev­enue solu­tions. That com­mis­sion is cur­rent­ly being formed. The Chica­go Teach­ers Union has part­nered with par­ent, com­mu­ni­ty and racial jus­tice groups to tack­le issues like the school-to-prison pipeline, the need for new pro­gres­sive rev­enue and bad bank deals that have drained more than half a bil­lion dol­lars from the school budget.

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca (CWA) helped form the Com­mit­tee for Bet­ter Banks, which is orga­niz­ing front line bank work­ers. They have devel­oped an ​“orga­niz­ing for com­mon good” approach in the pri­vate sec­tor, cam­paign­ing to rein in the pow­er of Wall Street, remake the bank­ing sec­tor and orga­nize bank work­ers into unions. Instead of just focus­ing on the declin­ing wages and mis­treat­ment of bank work­ers, the cam­paign is unit­ing with com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions like New York Com­mu­ni­ties for Change, Make the Road New York, Jobs with Jus­tice and the Alliance of Cal­i­for­ni­ans for Com­mu­ni­ty Empow­er­ment to chal­lenge how banks’ preda­to­ry prac­tices hurt both work­ers and con­sumers. Banks use sales goals and quo­tas to force work­ers to sell con­sumers preda­to­ry and unnec­es­sary finan­cial prod­ucts. If work­ers don’t meet these unrea­son­able goals they can be fired. The only way to suc­cess­ful­ly orga­nize the finan­cial sec­tor is to dra­mat­i­cal­ly lim­it its pow­er, and to do this both work­ers and those hurt by bad bank prac­tices need to work together.

Align focus on com­mon vil­lains: The con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and pow­er in the hands of a small­er and small­er group of cor­po­ra­tions and peo­ple cre­ates the oppor­tu­ni­ty to align seem­ing­ly uncon­nect­ed caus­es, cam­paigns, and move­ments against com­mon bad guys, mag­ni­fy­ing each group’s pow­er. Min­nesotans for a Fair Econ­o­my (MFE) has devel­oped a shared analy­sis among unions, com­mu­ni­ty groups, and work­er cen­ters about the role that a group of twelve cor­po­ra­tions plays in dom­i­nat­ing Min­neso­ta pol­i­tics and the state econ­o­my by push­ing a regres­sive, anti-work­er, and racist agen­da. MFE’s mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions have tied each of their indi­vid­ual cam­paigns to one or more of these ​“dirty dozen” vil­lains. When they take on a key cor­po­rate play­er like US Bank or Tar­get, they run cam­paigns around mul­ti­ple issues at the same time, involv­ing many dif­fer­ent groups. For exam­ple, sub­con­tract­ed jan­i­tors at Tar­get who were fight­ing to improve their work­ing con­di­tions were able to estab­lish com­mon-cause with orga­niz­ers who were fight­ing to ​“ban the box” that makes it dif­fi­cult for the for­mer­ly-incar­cer­at­ed to find employ­ment. Com­bin­ing their strength allowed them to win on both issues.

Chal­lenge white suprema­cy: Unions can­not build a mass work­ers’ move­ment until they direct­ly con­front white suprema­cy, both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly. Inter­nal­ly, it means unions must con­front their own racist past, which led to work­ers of col­or being exclud­ed from cer­tain sec­tors of the union­ized work­force; and direct­ly address the prob­lems caused by police unions’ defense of racist cops.

Exter­nal­ly, it means direct­ly address­ing issues of race as well as class. For exam­ple, unions can fight against Wall Street prac­tices that are built on the theft of wealth from com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, like preda­to­ry lend­ing. Unions can also incor­po­rate racial jus­tice demands direct­ly into bar­gain­ing. For exam­ple, city work­ers in Los Ange­les bar­gained for pro­grams that would give com­mu­ni­ties of col­or greater access to city jobs. Teach­ers unions can sim­i­lar­ly bar­gain over restora­tive jus­tice prac­tices that focus on medi­a­tion rather than pun­ish­ment that dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­gets stu­dents of col­or and can help cur­tail the school-to-prison pipeline.

Re-pop­u­lar­ize col­lec­tive action and bar­gain­ing: These con­cepts aren’t just for work­ers. In order to decrease con­cen­trat­ed eco­nom­ic pow­er, unions need to revive the idea of col­lec­tive action and bar­gain­ing out­side of the work­place as well. The ReFund Amer­i­ca Project has led the call for New York City, Chica­go, and Los Ange­les, which togeth­er do $600 bil­lion of busi­ness a year with Wall Street, to join togeth­er with oth­er cities and use their mar­ket pow­er to nego­ti­ate low­er finan­cial fees, change unfair fee struc­tures, and stop preda­to­ry prac­tices that drain tax­pay­er dol­lars. Think of this as col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing for cities.

Stu­dent debtors, 40 per­cent of whom aren’t mak­ing pay­ments on their loans, are orga­niz­ing to nego­ti­ate low­er pay­ments and debt for­give­ness with banks, stu­dent loan com­pa­nies and the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, which is now the biggest stu­dent lender in the coun­try. One of the most promis­ing areas has been the work to can­cel the debts of stu­dents who attend for-prof­it col­leges that have closed down, stick­ing stu­dents with debts and an incom­plete edu­ca­tion. This orga­niz­ing could be reimag­ined as col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing for stu­dent loan debtors, build­ing toward a pos­si­ble stu­dent debt strike.

Democ­ra­tize cap­i­tal: Unions need to demand increased con­trol over cap­i­tal, and pub­lic sec­tor unions are unique­ly posi­tioned to help lead the charge. For exam­ple, city and state work­ers’ unions could demand that their employ­ers estab­lish pub­lic banks to cre­ate a pub­lic bank­ing sec­tor that sup­ports local eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment rather than Wall Street bonus­es. The Postal Work­ers are already call­ing for the U.S. Postal Ser­vice to rein­state postal bank­ing. Pub­lic sec­tor unions can also play a key role in get­ting pub­lic pen­sion funds to stop rely­ing on hedge funds, pri­vate equi­ty firms, and oth­er extrac­tive invest­ment hous­es to man­age their assets and instead use in-house invest­ment man­agers who can pro­vide sim­i­lar returns for a frac­tion of the cost. This is a first step in putting over a tril­lion dol­lars of pen­sion fund mon­ey to work in the inter­est of workers.

Break the law to change law: Not only are exist­ing laws rarely enforced in ways that pro­tect work­ers but, increas­ing­ly, what helps work­ers win is either ille­gal or will be made ille­gal. Unions have spent 30 years unsuc­cess­ful­ly try­ing to win labor law reform through tra­di­tion­al leg­isla­tive approach­es. Take a les­son from labor’s own his­to­ry — from the auto fac­to­ry sit-down strikes in the 1930s to the work­er occu­pa­tion of Repub­lic Win­dows and Doors in Chica­go in 2008 — great vic­to­ries were pred­i­cat­ed on break­ing the law. It is the mass vio­la­tion of unjust laws that cre­ates the con­di­tions to change laws and rebuild work­er power.

Rein­vent and reimag­ine the strike: Tra­di­tion­al­ly the goal of a strike is for work­ers to with­draw their labor as a way to pres­sure an employ­er into nego­ti­at­ing a bet­ter con­tract. Strikes have become more dif­fi­cult to win both because laws lim­it what strik­ers can do and com­pa­nies can usu­al­ly oper­ate suc­cess­ful­ly dur­ing strikes. The Fight for $15 and the OUR Wal­mart cam­paigns have suc­cess­ful­ly used one-day strikes to unite work­ers and bring atten­tion to their demands. Unions need to think about strikes as more than a fight with one employ­er but as a way to dis­rupt the lives and busi­ness­es of the cor­po­rate elites. Strikes at Wal­mart and retail could be aug­ment­ed by the phys­i­cal block­ing of key trans­porta­tion hubs, dis­rupt­ing the retail sup­ply chain and demon­strat­ing work­ers’ abil­i­ty to impact the econ­o­my more broadly.

At this moment finan­cial­ized cap­i­tal­ism is dom­i­nant, but also incred­i­bly frag­ile, caught in cycles of booms and busts. Wall Street, mega cor­po­ra­tions and new­ly mint­ed tech bil­lion­aires boast of using ​“cre­ative destruc­tion” to reshape com­pa­nies and the econ­o­my while enrich­ing them­selves at labor’s expense. Instead of accept­ing their dom­i­nance and con­trol unions can start to counter their destruc­tion with their own ​“cre­ative dis­rup­tion”, demon­strat­ing just how frag­ile their con­trol is and the poten­tial pow­er of labor — if unions are will­ing to flex their muscles.

By artic­u­lat­ing a vision of a more just world, going on offense, demand­ing more instead of accept­ing less and align­ing cam­paigns against the bil­lion­aires at the top, labor can inspire and orga­nize a move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to redis­trib­ut­ing wealth and power.