A full recording of the event is available here.
On June 14th, militant workers from across the country came together to stand in opposition to the prevailing trend in the labor movement: union structures which consistently side with the bosses and labor left reformism that channels workers’ frustrations into the dead ends of electoralism, the bosses’ legal system, and futile interclass coalition organizing such as May Day Strong, No Kings, 50501, and Indivisible. “For a Fighting Workers Movement: A Militant Critique of Labor Notes” (More Information) was an event organized by the Class Struggle Action Network, as well as other class struggle groups, for the purpose of not only uniting our forces, but also drawing in workers fed up with the controlled opposition of Labor Notes, and discussing how we could really build a genuine fighting workers movement.
Report Back from the Event
We consider the event a huge success, with approximately 70 in-person participants and around 80 tuning in over Zoom. In addition, viewing and discussion events took place in Portland, OR and Oakland, CA. Panelists from each of the contributing organizations were given time to speak on the positions of their respective groups and to share the successes as well as the difficulties they’ve experienced. The ways in which these groups’ organizing is contributing to the building of a fighting workers movement were discussed, alongside a detailed critique of Labor Notes and the labor left.
Panelists expressed the typical issues experienced by combative workers in the unions: strikes limited in size and duration so as to not hurt the bosses’ bottom line, backroom deals between bosses and boss-linked leadership, and union leaders that express patriotic and nationalistic ideals. The importance of the struggle of immigrant workers was also raised, alongside the failure of union leadership to mount any meaningful opposition to the attacks of the ruling class on immigrant workers, including their silence on anti-immigrant CDL regulations and the firing of workers who have organized against ICE.
CSAN reported on its own work: opposing boss-linked leadership and building class struggle groups within the unions as a basis for that opposition, picket line support, and organizing class struggle contingents within UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) and SBWU (Starbucks Workers United). We reported our consistent push for the need for shorter working days, higher wages, and the closing of the wage differentials used to divide different sections of the working class, including immigrant and non-immigrant labor. CSAN also reported on its history, which was anchored in solidarity organizing with a lumber workers’ strike in Longview, Washington, and has since included work with Class Struggle Baristas and United for Class Wide Action. CSAN has also participated in internationalist Palestinian solidarity work, immigrant worker solidarity organizing, and in solidarity with striking Turkish textile workers.
On the critique of Labor Notes and the labor left, panelists drew the line clearly between labor-left reformism and class unionism. Workers are being funneled back into structures acceptable to the bosses and the capitalist class, including voting for the Democratic Party, as evidenced by the Democrats featured at Labor Notes events, Labor Notes’ organizational and financial ties to the AFL-CIO, and Labor Notes’ endorsement of coalitions backed by the Democrats, including May Day Strong, No Kings, 50501, and Indivisible. This includes the elevation of figures like Sean O’Brien, who has made openly anti-immigrant statements.
The discussion extended to reform caucuses, which generated significant discussion. Some noted that reform caucuses can play a role, while other panelists noted that Labor Notes has promoted them as a path to working class power despite those caucuses having in many cases reproduced the over-reliance on legal structures, historically relying on court injunctions and other legal processes to insert themselves into regime union structures. In vying for power through these means, they have reinforced and welcomed the intervention of the bosses’ government into the unions, which, through the NLRB and Taft-Hartley, has historically constrained and repressed the working-class movement. What is needed for working-class power is the opposite: working-class political independence, unified strike action, a break with the legal regime, class-unifying demands, and the general strike as the exercise of collective working-class power.
Attendees, both in-person and online, were given the chance to ask the panelists questions, many of which focused on the way forward. There was extensive discussion about organizing the unorganized and the urgency of that task, and the divide between union and unorganized workers that the bosses exploit to drive down wages across the board. Many questions and much discussion also arose around the need for a working-class party and a definitive break with the Democratic Party as a condition for working-class political independence. There was also significant discussion about how to expose boss-linked union leaders and Democratic Party-backed coalitions that sweep up the working class’s fighting energies, not only through critique but through putting forward positive class-struggle action that those leaders and coalitions cannot take up without contradicting their own programs and purposes, and whose refusal to do so will expose their treachery in action.
Across the event, many attendees expressed appreciation for the coming together of these organizations and the space the event created. Many also expressed a sense of having felt isolated and alienated within the Labor Notes space. The hunger for this conversation, given the challenges workers are facing in their unions and in the class struggle broadly, was evident throughout.
Where Do We Go From Here?
What can we do to turn a nucleus of around 150 workers into a powerful movement encompassing the majority of the working class, one finally able to confront the boss-linked union leadership, the bosses, and the capitalist state? There are, for sure, no simple answers. Workers looking to bring about real change in their unions and workplaces cannot be presented with simple step-by-step instructions for how to do so, and whatever actions are decided on will not bring about the realization of this objective overnight.
In the current period, it is important that we focus on struggling against boss-linked union leadership and the union legal-regulatory apparatus, because it is these factors that largely smother workers’ struggle and trap them into conditions favorable to the bosses, repressing the working class’s greatest weapon: the strike. This struggle can be undertaken within the existing unions by putting forward the program of class unionism and rallying and organizing fellow workers around it. However, it will ultimately be the decline in living and working conditions brought about by the crisis of capitalism that pushes workers into open struggle on a mass level, overcoming the complacency of the better-off sections of the working class, whose relative comfort has been sustained by imperialist super-profits.
On the ground, the task for the worker militant is to go into the workplace, build relationships with coworkers, talk to them to find the issues that really burn them up, have those difficult conversations about what it means to really put up a fight, and develop the solidarity without which no victory for us is possible. We must take every opportunity to put forward positive lines of action in line with class unionism: strike action, joint actions and demonstrations with other unions, fighting for real wage improvements and a reduction in the working day. Denounce the boss-linked union leadership whenever the opportunity presents itself, especially when they openly show themselves to be on the side of the bosses. Let every garbage contract they force you to settle for be another nail in their coffin. When your coworkers show racist or xenophobic tendencies, tell them how racism is a tool used by the bosses to divide the workers and drive down wages. Show them how when workers in other countries, or undocumented workers in the United States, are compelled to accept lower wages, it makes it easier for the boss to pay everyone less. This is the same dynamic at the heart of the wage gap maintained through ICE terror against immigrant workers: every division the bosses can maintain within the working class, whether of nationality, immigration status, or anything else, is a tool for keeping wages down and workers disempowered across the board. Closing those gaps by unifying the working class around unifying class demands such as higher wages and reductions in the work week is necessary both for workers to make material gains and for building a fighting workers movement. Making moral or humanitarian appeals will only end in fruitless arguments and abstraction. And finally, while partial demands for immediate improvements are important, militant workers must consistently point to the larger problem of capitalism that creates the system in which we are exploited.
It’s the same with organizing a workplace without a union: you can’t just put a flyer up in the break room saying “This place sucks, let’s form a union” and expect everyone to tag along. It takes a long and persistent struggle to win real concessions from the bosses, whether you are in a big business union or not. As for the form that struggle takes, there are many possibilities, and which one is appropriate depends on the specific conditions of the workplace, the level of combativity of the workers, and the goal to be obtained. For restaurant workers in North Carolina, it was enough for all the employees to initiate a march on the boss to deliver a letter demanding a working air conditioner in the kitchen and for the schedule to be released on time. For West Virginia teachers, a Facebook group formed to discuss confronting the state legislature for better pay and insurance developed into an illegal strike that was able to win a 5% wage increase.
These are both good examples of workers organizing outside the existing union legal apparatus. The restaurant workers needed no official union apparatus at all, just the solidarity among coworkers to act together and confront the boss directly. The West Virginia teachers, although organized in massive business unions, had no legal right to strike and no collective bargaining rights, and it was precisely the illegal nature of the action that advanced its power: workers unencumbered by legal constraints chose extralegal, anti-conformist action, and that strike power was all the more serious for it. Both led to material gains won by workers exercising power without and despite the official structures meant to constrain that power. This points to the fact that, to win major improvements in living and working conditions, the working class will need powerful class unions which operate outside the constraints of the NLRB legal-regulatory apparatus. We cannot rely on government legal guarantees, created and taken away by the bosses’ government depending on the needs of the bosses, to arbitrarily strengthen the unions or lend them permanence.
Building a Fighting Workers Movement
The organized class struggle forces arising out of this struggle, whether organized opposition within the unions, independent fighting forces of workers, or formations spanning unions and industries, must unite, including those that may be temporary, serving their purpose before dissolving. Together, these forces can form a nucleus of a class union united front from the grassroots of the working class that serves as the organizational basis for a fighting workers movement, one ready to arise when boss-linked union leadership and the legal-regulatory apparatus repressing the working class are overcome and the struggle is pushed to a new level by the inevitable crisis of capitalism and the consequences it imposes on the working class, including the inability to afford the necessities of life amid bottom-of-the-barrel wages, and the wars imposed on workers by the ruling class.
The For a Fighting Workers Movement 2026 event represents a class union nucleus that we must continue to build from. We will continue to stand against the faux opposition of Labor Notes and the labor left, who funnel workers into the dead ends of the bosses’ political parties, legal systems, and toothless coalition organizing. We can grow into the fighting workers movement the working class needs, ready for the moment when the crisis of capitalism further deepens, wages are pushed further down, unemployment spreads, and imperialist war is imposed on workers, and the necessity to fight back becomes impossible to ignore.
Join and contribute to this movement if you find yourself or your worker organization in agreement with the points in this article and those outlined by this event and the Class Struggle Action Network.
If you want to get involved with CSAN specifically, reach out via email: class-struggle-action@proton.me
And if you want to get involved in the fighting workers movement more broadly, visit fightingworkersmovement.wordpress.com or reach out at Fighting-Workers-Movement@proton.me
