Given the central role of the workplace in the lives of Buffalonians, workplace organizing is essential to the development of a base for meaningful political power. As such, the Buffalo DSA Labor Working Group seeks to build a well-organized, class-conscious base of working-class people in Buffalo and its surrounding communities, a base that is committed to both organizing for democratic power in unorganized workplaces, as well as fighting for democratic power within already-existing labor organizations.
At its core, the Labor Working Group seeks to grow and support a robust and resilient workplace culture that is deeply conscious of the conflicts inherent to the relationships between workers, managers, and owners. Growing this culture requires whole worker organizing, based on a political education program that helps working people: develop a clearer understanding of the relationship between their labor and political economy; recognize that worker exploitation and deprecation is fundamental to the present ordering of society; and fight for the belief that, organizing democratically controlled workplaces is the ultimate path to making work meaningful and fighting the social exclusion that characterizes working-class life.
The working class is the most diverse class and our task is to organize across differences in true solidarity against the antagonists who benefit from our collective oppression. Socialist labor organizers recognize we must address complex and changing circumstances, and be resilient enough in building our base to support the struggles of those most vulnerable and marginalized, particularly women, people of color, LGBTQ, and the disabled. We aim to focus outside the professionalized worlds of media, academia, and professional services with high educational and credentialing requirements. We must organize alongside the roles that exist in essential sectors like in food and logistics, as well as in education, healthcare, and childcare in which less-credentialed workers are increasingly used as entry-level labor and forced to take on more work while being supervised by their overworked credentialed counterparts. By focusing on the organization of this base that employs huge numbers of people, we recognize its power to substantially disrupt economic activity and the upward flow of capital.
This pro-worker culture expresses itself by:
- fighting for and winning cooperative ownership of workplaces;
- routinely winning workplace structure tests for democratic worker power;
- showing solidarity with ongoing organizing projects; and
- participating in electoral and electoral-adjacent spaces to hold pro- and anti-labor political actors accountable.
To get involved with Buffalo DSA’s Labor work group, check our calendar for upcoming events, contact us, and sign up for our chapter’s newsletter.