My version of Leon Rosenblatt's great "Non-Trivial Pursuits."
Summary:
Participants discuss short case studies of workplace and union problems and answer questions about their legal rights and how to enforce them. Also puts legal rights in the context of reform organizing.
Good for:
Introducing basic legal rights needed by rank-and-file activists, as they occur in practice. Showing how to distinguish a legal question and response from an organizing question and response. Looking at the relationship between legal tactics and other job-action type tactics in organizing. Demonstrating a way to be an informed activist without attempting to master the law. Providing a method for analyzing problems and deciding what information and resources are needed, where and how to get them, and how to use them. Promoting an organizing approach to problems.
Set up:
Participants seated in a circle or semi-circle, set up so they can easily work as pairs or small groups.
Number of people:
Six or more?
Materials:
Flip chart paper, markers, handouts. The handouts are two to four pages long, and contain a series of short case studies, featuring the same context and characters so that they fit together to make a longer story. The cases are based on a) the participants' own situation (their industry, typical complaints, etc.) b) the facilitator's knowledge of problems rank-and-file activists face, and c) sense of the legal rights information participants are likely to need. Writing the scenarios is the labor-intensive part of this technique -- you have to strike a balance between many factors. The cases have to be long enough to give a clear picture, but short enough to quickly analyze. You need to illustrate basic legal ideas without letting them obscure the organizing issues. The cases also have to be carefully prepared to match the circumstances of the participants. Here's how I do it:
To begin with, I interview key activists beforehand to find out what type of work people do, what are the most common problems and complaints, and how organized they are. (Most of this I already got back in stage one, preparing the educational event.) I want to know what the activists feel are the hot issues and what their coworkers feel are the key issues.
Then, I make a list of legal rights questions and organizing issues I want to cover and think about how to incorporate them. Typically, I will set them up to follow a path that goes from first attempts at activism (e.g., filing a grievance) to a more full-blown collective effort (like a major contract campaign, or a run for union office). I want to make sure that the basic legal rights to concerted activity are covered, but also that the case raises questions about what to do at work (or in the union) in addition to or as an alternative to, taking legal action.
As I write the cases I try to make sure that they match the real situation of the participants in terms of problems raised, the industry, etc. At the same time, I try to make them different enough from the real story that people will focus on the purpose of the cases -- to teach legal rights and organizing -- and not on the way the story is being told. You do not want to spend a lot of time debating the facts of the narrative: "No, that's not how it happened, Frank was standing when Ludmilla walked in." Critical distance from the real situation also helps people focus on what is common -- the problem -- and not get lost in the details.
Finally, I write the cases to be open-ended -- there may be several different responses to the problem -- even as they incorporate specific legal problems for which there are more or less settled answers. And, by writing a story that goes from the first steps of activism done by two people up to advanced actions that can only be done by a highly-organized group, I am promoting the idea of strategy. So, I am adding another kind of information here, an idea of rank-and-file organizing. (An example of how the educator is not neutral.)
Time:
One to two hours. Can expand with discussion.
Flow:
- Explain and motivate the activity.
- Everyone receives a copy of the handout with all the cases.
- Participants are paired, or put into small groups. Each pair or group is assigned one or two cases from the handout, so that all the cases are covered. Their task is to read the case and answer the following questions:
- What is the problem? Who has this problem and who is causing it? Are there any legal rights being violated? What other information do you need? What actions could they take to solve the problem and/or enforce their rights?
- Participants have five to ten minutes (your call, depending on how deep you want them to go and how complex the scenarios are -- I keep them as short as possible).
- The facilitator keeps time. Warn people when they have three minutes left.
- When the time is up, the facilitator reads the first scenario aloud -- with emphasis on key points -- repeats the questions and then asks the pair/group who had that scenario to give their answers. At this point, only that group/pair can speak. When they are done, the facilitator can ask other participants what they think of the answer, if they (dis)agree with what was said, etc.
- The facilitator needs to choose what he thinks are the most important cases ahead of time, in case he runs out of time.
- As you go, on flip chart paper keep a list of legal resources and a list of actions to help people keep track of the options.
- At the end, the facilitator may ask participants to summarize what they learned from the workshop and how they will use it in their own situation.
Watch for:
If there is disagreement over a factual question -- e.g. whether non-union workers have Weingarten rights or not -- and there is no easy way to solve it at that moment (no authoritative text to point to, no lawyer to ask), the facilitator should provide his/her view, note that there is disagreement, and then provide a way to resolve the point: for example by giving the phone number/website address for the National Labor Relations Board. If others have sources of information on the subject, put those up too.
The key is to keep the tempo up -- the facilitator has to provide energy and provoke debate and discussion. This technique can be a real slog if it gets slow.
Prioritize: the facilitator should designate for herself which scenarios are particularly important, as there is usually not enough time to discuss all of them in depth.
Variations:
To keep the energy up, Leon Rosenblatt divides participants into teams and keeps score on their answers. (He also uses a lot of corny -- or is it Dickensian? -- humor: in one case prepared for teachers union activists, student Emma Goodchild goes up against principal Joe Blowhard.)
Examples:
The story of Stanley and Bernice (see handout) was written for a small group of nurses who had decided that they had to do something about the problems they confronted on the job and in the union. This case study shows the combination of details typical of their situation (as described to me by the two main activists) with ideas and possible actions intended to give them ideas about a plan for action. The cases each raise legal questions, but the flow of the story is supposed to model a process of rank-and-file organizing.
We met in the club house of a public golf course near the hospital. This was one of those meetings where the context was not quite ripe for popular education: the most important participants -- not the main activists, but their close contacts -- were interested in information, but not ready to commit to any specific plan. The next step might have been to form a committee, or plan a follow up meeting. It did not happen.
I learned at AUD the importance of keeping your eyes on the prize as you work with people. Sometimes what you offer meshes perfectly with what is needed and an organizing project takes off. Sometimes it does not, though a few unionists may leave with a greater knowledge of their rights and some of the tools available to them should they decide to fight another day. And, then, sometimes people take what they learned with you and use it in a way you hadn't foreseen.