Building a Democratic Army of Volunteer Organizers - Third in a series of six articles by Harry Kelber
If you're trying to build an army of volunteer organizers, the best place to look for recruits is in local unions and the workplaces they control. There are at least 10,000 local unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win, whose members are worried about their jobs and economic future.
While there is broad agreement that organizing millions of new members is the key to rebuilding a bigger and stronger labor movement, our national leaders have failed to come up with a practical plan to accomplish it We're offering hardly any resistance to the forces that our dragging us down to irrelevance.
To fill the vacuum and overcome the inertia in the labor movement, the creation of an "Army of Volunteer Organizers" offers frustrated union members an opportunity to participate in a modernized organizing program that can challenge the nation's anti-union corporations.