Forging New Class Solidarities: Organizing Hospital Workers

Amid the acrimonious debates about unions’ future direction, too little attention is being paid to the central question of power and the relationship between power and strategy: Is this strategy actually expanding our base of organic worker leaders? Is this strategy deepening working-class solidarity? Is this strategy helping workers and the unemployed to overcome racism, sexism and the other ‘isms’ capitalists use as weapons to defeat the building of class? Is this strategy building measurable power? This essay will focus on one example of mostly female healthcare workers in Nevada who were engaged in bold organizing drives that substantially improved their material and nonmaterial condition at work and at home. Central to their strategy, and to their subsequent ability to win substantial gains, was their decision to build their organizations wall-to-wall, putting not only registered nurses but all other hospital workers together in a single union. Wall-to-wall hospital organizing of the type described in this essay has great potential implications. In terms of collective power against an employer, the sheer number of workers involved matters a lot. Developing workplace solidarities that bridge intra-class differences, such as racism, sexism and more, has a ripple effect beyond the walls of the workplace, too. Nevada’s example of seven hospitals’ worth of nurses choosing a wall-to-wall union model still provides plenty of evidence of what strategic choices are needed today for forging new working-class solidarities, even in the face of existing union organizations which do not value them