LABOR POWER IS POLITICAL POWER
As I write in my new book “The Hammer,” there are countless examples of unions that practice this principle well on state and local scales.

The Culinary Union in Las Vegas has made hotel room cleaners and cooks into legitimate political power players by unionizing the entire casino industry, and then continuing to organize internally to keep members mobilized and ready to fight. Their parent union, Unite Here, does the same thing to varying degrees in cities around the country. After all, if you organize the workers at the airports and the stadiums and the hotels and the convention centers, you have your hands wrapped around the throat of any tourist city’s vital economic organs.

That Labor power is political power. That Labor power is leverage to raise the standard of living for every working person. That Labor power cannot be brushed aside by a politician, or silenced by a large donation from a corporation. It is a fact of the world. The effort that it takes to build and maintain that Labor power is infinitely better spent than the same amount of effort lobbying and schmoozing with officials would have been.