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THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT A RECENT ORGANIZING CAMPAIGN IN FAIRFIELD COUNTY, CONnecticut. The Union Organizing Project, as it came to be called, was an experiment in many different ways. Our hybrid organizing model drew the best of union and community organizing into a tight blend. We gave equal weight to workplace concerns and broader quality-of-life issues.
In part, this model emerged from our confrontation with a power structure so lopsidedly against us that forging a radical union organizing agenda required creating a broader "culture of resistance." The model was heavily rank-and-file dependent, and sought to transform the members from thinking and acting like isolated workers, to community leaders capable of mobilizing all the resources at their command to better their lives.
Muscles grow from exercise, and we were in constant motion. From 1998 to 2001, we were engaged in intense fights, fights we started . . . and won.
* 4,500 workers were organized into unions, all with first contracts that significantly raised wages, benefits, and working conditions (new contracts covered public sector, healthcare, childcare, taxicab drivers, and janitors).
* Four public housing projects slated for demolition were saved.
* $15 million in new state funds were secured to help pay for improvements in the same public housing complexes.
* An "Inclusionary Zoning Policy" was passed by the city.
* The nation's strongest one-for-one replacement ordinance was passed by the city council-protecting thousands of units of affordable public housing.
* The first-ever African-American woman was elected to the school board.
* Union-led electoral campaigns put two new members into the city council (including the first Latina, or for that matter the first person of Latin-American descent).
In 1998, one of a handful of experimental projects initiated out of the AFL-CIO's new national organizing department was launched in Fairfield County, Connecticut. The campaign was to experiment with ways to increase union organizing drive win rates, and to accelerate obtaining first contracts. The AFL-CIO had decided each region of the nation would have one funded project, using some mix of funds from the newly established organizing fund. Importantly, the unions and not the AFL-CIO funded the overwhelming majority of this campaign, constituting a buy-in from the beginning.
In the initial plans, the unique thing about the...