Trends in Union Corporate Campaigns - US Chamber of Commerce

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ORIGINS Corporate campaigns trace their origins to several sources. Two of the most important include the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and long-time community activist Saul Alinsky. In its defining 1962 manifesto, The Port Huron Statement, drafted by then-president Tom Hayden, the SDS noted: We can no longer rely on competition of the many to assure that business enterprise is responsive to social needs…. Nor can we trust the corporate bureaucracy to be socially responsible or to develop a ‘corporate conscience’ that is democratic…. We must consider changes in the rules of society by challenging the unchallenged politics of American corporations. 1 SDS was soon to be swept up in the anti-war movement of that era and, with the single exception of a demonstration organized in 1964 by then-president Todd Gitlin and then-vice president Paul Booth designed to pressure Chase Manhattan Bank to stop financing the Apartheid regime in South Africa, did not engage in significant anti-corporate activism. 2 But numerous SDS alumni, including Mr. Booth and perhaps most notably Michael Locker, went on to careers in the labor movement, where they helped to put these strategies into motion. In the meantime, Mr. Alinsky, acting independently, was already putting some of these ideas to work, most notably in a campaign he led against Eastman Kodak in 1966 on behalf of a coalition of African-American organizations seeking to open employment opportunities in Rochester, New York. Significantly, Mr. Alinsky chose Kodak as his target, not because it was the worst corporate citizen in town, but because it was the best. He reasoned that the Trends in Union Corporate Campaigns 9
company was so image conscious that it would be the most likely to yield to the group’s demands. 3 Of more lasting import, however, was his tactical advice to anti-corporate activists, which, in a book of the same name, took the form of thirteen “Rules for Radicals.” They included: 1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. 2. Never go outside the experience of your people. 3. Whenever possible go outside the experience of your enemy. 4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. 5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. 6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. 7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. 8. Keep the pressure on. 9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. 10. Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. 11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counter-side. 12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. 10 Origins
Page 1 and 2: TRENDS IN UNION CORPORATE CAMPAIGNS
Page 3 and 4: A “corporate campaign” is an at
Page 6 and 7: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This briefing boo
Page 8: INTRODUCTION A corporate campaign i
Page 14 and 15: STRATEGY The central strategic conc
Page 16 and 17: then examines each relationship in
Page 18 and 19: Table 1, Continued Post warnings or
Page 20: When fully deployed, a corporate ca
Page 23 and 24: “Retail” Organizing “Wholesal
Page 25 and 26: management, unions have a significa
Page 28 and 29: CORPORATE TARGETS Corporate campaig
Page 30: Table 2, Continued Target Nike Oreg
Page 33 and 34: the unions are in the process of tr
Page 35 and 36: By the Numbers. At last formal coun
Page 37 and 38: A listing for a more senior positio
Page 39 and 40: Figure 4. UNITE HERE Network Extend
Page 41 and 42: accounts in 2005 is a case in point
Page 43 and 44: though labor itself had higher stan
Page 46: CONCLUSION When we put all of these
Page 49 and 50: the Corporation (Mahwah, NJ: Lawren

Trends in Union Corporate Campaigns - US Chamber of Commerce

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