Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction by Lynn R. Williams
- 1 A Future for the American Labor Movement?
- 2 Industrial Relations in a Time of Change
- 3 A Survey of American Union Strategies
- 4 The Old Reformist Unionism: The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor
- 5 The New Reformist Unionism: CAFE
- 6 A New Version of an Old Reformist Strategy: Employee Ownership
- 7 Social Democratic Unionism in Action: Strategies of European Trade Unions
- 8 A New Twist and TURN on Social Democratic Unionism: Unions and Regional Economic Development
- 9 A Labor Movement for the Twenty-First Century
- Appendix: Interview with John J. Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO
- References
- Index
5 - The New Reformist Unionism: CAFE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction by Lynn R. Williams
- 1 A Future for the American Labor Movement?
- 2 Industrial Relations in a Time of Change
- 3 A Survey of American Union Strategies
- 4 The Old Reformist Unionism: The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor
- 5 The New Reformist Unionism: CAFE
- 6 A New Version of an Old Reformist Strategy: Employee Ownership
- 7 Social Democratic Unionism in Action: Strategies of European Trade Unions
- 8 A New Twist and TURN on Social Democratic Unionism: Unions and Regional Economic Development
- 9 A Labor Movement for the Twenty-First Century
- Appendix: Interview with John J. Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO
- References
- Index
Summary
We, at CAFE, believe that everyone has a moral right to fair employment – to work that is free from bias, dishonesty, and injustice. It is reasonable and right to expect fair employment. The key to fair employment is having strong worker organizations.
Carolina Alliance for Fair Employment, undatedAs one surveys the American labor movement it is easy to miss a part of it that is given little attention in the news media and the scholarly literature. These are the worker-rights organizations discussed in Chapter 3. They are important not so much for their numbers, which are small relative to those of traditional unions, but because it is in these organizations that the American labor movement looks most like the social working-class movement long dreamed of by left-leaning intellectuals and reformers. They are more akin to the Knights of Labor of the nineteenth century than to modern labor unions. Indeed, they appear to be a new version of Reformist Unionism.
In its modern incarnation, Reformism in the form of worker-rights organizations has many, but not all, of the characteristics of the Knights of Labor. Just like the Knights, these organizations have a very broad vision of the group among whom solidarity is envisioned, and they tend to have education as a major priority. Just like the Knights, they do not see collective bargaining as an organizational goal, although assistance to the formation of collective bargaining units is actively engaged in.
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- Information
- The Future of the American Labor Movement , pp. 103 - 117Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002