Alternative Visions - Reinventing American Unions & The August 24 March on Washington DC - 09/04/13

Summary: Dr. Jack Rasmus provides his take on the subject of Union-Community Strategic Alliances and the upcoming AFLCIO convention where membership for non-union community groups in the federation will be considered. Jack explains why Union Labor is in a deep crisis today, with both its 'workplace' strategy' and 'political strategy' in shambles. Reinventing American union labor will require changes in its mission, objectives, as well as strategies. And this cannot happen without a major organizational restructuring at the grass roots levels, creating new institutions for labor-community action. Jack outlines those institutions and organizational changes.In the second half of the show, Jack's guest is Jerry Gordon, longtime representative for the Food & Commercial Workers union, and today secretary for the recently formed national Labor Fightback Network that played a key role in organizing union turnout for the August 24, 2013 march on Washington. Gordon reports on the march, its strengths and weaknesses, and what's necessary going forward to build labor-community protests and demonstrations.Next week grass roots 'Workers Centers' in the US. And don't miss the Sept. 18 Alternative Visions show, where guests will be local labor folks reporting back as delegates to the Sept. 8-11 AFLCIO national convention.