Richard Bensinger

Organizing specialist Richard Bensinger advised delegates at the GCIU convention to: "Move hard, move quick, do the unexpected. . . ."

Bensinger, who founded the Organizing Institute and served as an AFL-CIO organizing director, is now an independent organizing consultant. He contributed strategies to help develop the GCIU's new organizing program that was approved by convention delegates.

Bensinger told delegates that "it's exciting to be here as you rethink your institution and rethink your commitment to organizing."

A recent Peter Hart poll showed that 44 percent – 48 million working Americans – would like to be in a union if they could. Bensinger said the question is: "Then why aren't they?"

Bensinger said the answers are not excuses such as weak labor laws, vicious employers, and anti-worker government.

Instead, Bensinger blamed the labor movement. "We quit trying," he said. He noted that, in 1973, unions in the United States filed for 9,000 representation elections with the National Labor Relations Board. By 1999, that number was down to 2,700.

Bensinger admitted that employers hold very strong cards in fighting unions. He cited money, threatened plant closures, and captive audience meetings.

"While we watch Gore and Bush have a debate about the debates, why doesn't somebody have the real debate in this country?" Bensinger asked. "Why aren't bosses forced to debate? Why do bosses have a one-way street?"

"How would Bush like it if Gore could have captive audience meetings of all the electorate in the United States and Bush had to stand at the Mexican or Canadian border and leaflet as people drove into the country because that is exactly the analogy to how it is in the NLRB," Bensinger said to delegates' applause.

Saying that society "needs to take a look at this issue of the right to organize," Bensinger noted that Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, whom he knows, "actually believes in the right to organize – frankly, more than most labor leaders do." Bensinger said that, if Gore is elected, he believes Gore will push Congress and the American public on the issue.

However, even Gore's election and a Democratic Congress would not mean unions will increase organizing efforts. Only unions can do that, Bensinger said.

Unions have a "mismatch of funds," Bensinger said. U.S. unions have been spending 95 percent of their resources servicing the 13 million people they represent and only 5 percent trying to organize the 110 million they don't, he said.

Despite the lip service paid to AFL-CIO Pres. John J. Sweeney's challenge to devote 30 percent of union funds to organizing by this year, unions have not met that challenge, Bensinger said. "Why don't we either pack it up and go home or have the guts to put real money into this work?" he asked.

As for many unions' choice to merge with other unions rather than organize, Bensinger said: "Here's a brilliant idea. Why don't we merge with non-union workers?"

Mass advertising doesn't work either, Bensinger said. "It's throwing money down a rat hole." Nor does waiting for some "magic bullet" or special period in history to come that will make organizing easier get unions closer to their goals, he said.

But unions can change to organize, Bensinger said, demonstrating with examples from locals from the Service Employees, Carpenters, and United Food and Commercial Workers that shifted money, resources and changed their institutional lives for substantial growth.

What does work, Bensinger said, are "five quick principles." These are: