Still No Union Contract? This’ll Help…
Labor educator and author Bill Barry’s “I Just Got Elected — Now What? A New Union Officer’s Handbook” is now in its fourth edition.
By Joe Maniscalco
Despite the roughly $340 million employers spend each year to crush their unionization efforts, American workers are filing more union petitions than they have at any time since 2016, and they’re winning more than 70 percent of workplace elections. So, how come most still don’t have a signed union contract after more than a year of trying?
Union educator and author Bill Barry has some thoughts, as well as more than a few concrete strategies on how to finally overcome the barriers and turn things around.
His “I Just Got Elected — Now What? A New Union Officer’s Handbook” has just entered its fourth printing and been fully revised to address the challenges of organizing in the post-Covid era.
The fourth edition of “I Just Got Elected — Now What? A New Union Officer’s Handbook” is available now at Hard Ball Press.
“Once upon a time, what people knew about being a union officer was what they’d seen a guy like ‘Old Joe’ do — and whatever ‘Old Joe’ did, it worked. Well…clearly, it’s not working anymore,” says Barry. “Union membership is dramatically down. Look at the railroad stuff — three years without a contract. They’re hoping [President] Joe Biden or [Labor Secretary] Marty Walsh is gonna bail them out, and it’s just not gonna happen.”
Barry, whose roots go back to the Carpenters union, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, the NewsGuild of Great Philadelphia, and Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union, has spent nearly 45 years in the labor movement as a member, representative, educator and trainer.
In 1997, he took a job as Director of Labor Studies at the Community College of Baltimore County Dundalk and started doing live classroom teachings.
“We found that many of the union members who would come to class suddenly realized they were as smart — or smarter — than their officers,” Barry says. “They ran for union office themselves, and got elected. The problem then was they didn’t know what to do.”
Often, Barry says the newly-elected officers were “confronted with hostile structures from other officers and things like that.”
“So, I started doing trainings for new officers,” he says. “This book, which is now in its fourth edition, developed out of those classes.”
Although those classes had more to do with “how to kick the boss in the balls” than any kind of dry, academic exercise — confidence building was key to student success. If anyone approached the course with a “Well…I’m just an autoworker” attitude, Barry would immediately shut it down and let them know that was simply an unacceptable way to look at things.
“I still hear from those attendees,” Barry says. “My whole goal is to build the union movement — we’ve gotta do it.”
Many hate the ubiquitousness of electronic screens and cold detachment of text messaging. Barry, a guy who prizes organizing through personal connections, is among them.
Just before Covid hit, the late Larry Hanley, former international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, ordered up 500 copies of "I Just Got Elected — Now What? A New Union Officer’s Handbook”, and hired Barry to do in-person trainings up and down the East Coast.
But, Barry says the old days of “seeing Joe in the lunchroom, and talking to him about something, are gone.”
“People have got to figure out new ways of contacting members, new ways of getting them involved,” he says. “You’ve gotta have people skilled at communication, social media, and have the ability to learn new things. We used to have officers who couldn’t even type up a grievance — how far have we come from that?”
Barry’s in-person officer trainings in Denver, Colorado used to attract 10 to 15 participates prior to the pandemic — during Covid, attendance suddenly exploded to 300 via Zoom.
“It was a huge change and opportunity,” Barry says. “Obviously, the officers have to appreciate that growth. For some officers, they don’t want it. They’re happy if no one comes because then nobody challenges what they do.”
To those people, Barry says, “Get out of the way — go play golf.”
Barry is a longtime advocate of bringing members into the entire process of negotiation and grievances, and building union strength that way — something that’s now easier than ever to accomplish.
“That was often very, very difficult where you had to do it in person,” he says. “Now, you can do it online or in a Zoom meeting — people can come in from anywhere; they can be in their cars driving back and forth from work and see what goes on.”
Again, the idea behind utilizing social media and all the screens, according to Barry, is “establishing personal relationships at remote distances.”
“The goal is to get every member involved in at least two union activities every year. That means spreading out.”
In this respect, using social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, et al. — is actually a way of reviving an essential component of traditional union culture.
“One the things we talk about in the book is creating activities,” says Barry. “For many, one or two generations ago, the union was the center of social activity. Everybody on the street would be in a union. When you’d go to a Christmas party for the kids, it would be at the union hall. The Interstate highway system and union prosperity took a lot of people into the suburbs where they were creating actives, too. Social activities, political actives, group grievances, negotiations — all that kind of stuff is crucial to build up the membership.”
Patterns of company ownership have also dramatically changed in America — presenting even tougher challenges for today’s newly-elected union officers interested in exerting real workplace power.
“You’re not dealing with the same local owner of the factory you’ve been dealing with for 30 years,” Barry says. “It’s some global company with a mailbox in the Cayman Islands. It’s a real shift and a lot of unions have not figured out how adjust to that.”
Barry maintains, “Unions are just not organizing the way they should.”
“The Scary thing is our member numbers are where they were in 1910,” he says. “We’re six percent of the workforce in the private sector — 10 percent overall.”
They also don’t learn from each other the way companies do, says Barry.
“Companies will get together and say well, we tried this and it didn’t work — unions don’t do that,” he says. “There’s not a union movement if unions don’t work together.”
This fall, Barry held another successful workshop on getting a first contract — which, of course, also went out online.
“With all of the excitement about new organizing, the reality has been that one-third of the campaigns never get a contract and the average is more than 400 days for those units that do,” he says. “The officers keep bragging about the growth of union membership, but I don't count someone as a member unless they are covered by a contract.”
The newly-revised fourth edition of “I Just Got Elected — Now What? A New Union Officer’s Handbook” is available here.
Bill Barry’s next online workshop focusing on strategies to help new union officers get more members involved, sign-up non-members and build union power will be on February 16. Click here to register online at Labor’s Bookstore.