This blog is cross-posted at StewartAcuff.com
I spent last week in Britain on a book tour. Next week I will be in British Columbia, Canada conducting a training for the senior organizers of the Canadian Labour Congress.
This schedule is just a small bit of evidence that the economic, working class, and middle class problems we face in the United States are, in fact, global problems.
Other advanced democracies are now suffering assaults by their own and a global Financial Elite and radical rightwing politicians that we in the United States have struggled against for 35 years.
British unions and workers face wholesale privatization of public services. As a consequence, workers and their unions are attacked, and public assets and wealth from the public sector are transferred to the Financial Elite and fabulously wealthy. In the past, due to a long and rich tradition of trade unionism, British unions have not had to fight for their survival and the right for workers to form unions.
That is all changing now. Multinational corporations operating on British soil are beginning American-style union busting. British unions are now very worried about the privatization of healthcare and the destruction of the publicly-owned National Health Service. Should that happen, the British people would lose their RIGHT to healthcare and a massive transfer of public assets and wealth to the Financial Elite and the private sector. It would be a massive blow to the people of Britain.
Canadians realize they must organize much more aggressively, strategically and effectively. In British Columbia, Canada. I will teach for three to four days focusing on the craft of the individual unions and the role of organizers, and growing the best possible skills of organizers. I will also urge organizers to play the role of change agents in the unions, advocating the need to change institutionally to organize more and more effectively.
In Canada all the trainers will use both my books, Getting America Back to Work and Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing. In my training for the British Trades Union Conference Organizing Academy I used Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing as a text. The book is especially effective when the trainer uses the body of it to demonstrate how workers can win when they unite and mobilize together with a common agenda for the common good. Then it is important to use the last chapter of the book to teach the fundamentals of good, tight organizing.
I am available to speak and educate union leaders, activists, and organizers on how to organize, why to organize, and what we all need to do to reduce income inequality and raise the quality of life and standard of living and strength of the middle class and allow low income workers to climb into the middle class. And I am available to do that here in the United States. I would love to speak and teach at your convention, conference, or local union. My experience has been our folks love being able to take home a signed copy of the textbook that was used for their training. Please let me know how I can help your gathering be more effective in advancing your union or organization’s agenda and strengthening your future.
Contact me via my website by CLICKING HERE for bookings and inquiries.
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Stewart Acuff is the former organizing Director of the AFL-CIO. Acuff has also written two books: Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing, and Getting America Back to Work.
Get the e-book edition of Playing Bigger Than You Are by clicking here!