The demands and grievances of the working class are the objective force driving the labor movement forward. Therefore, in the course of any labor organizing there will come a point when the demands and grievances of the workers, and the question of how to develop a successful campaign around them, will manifest itself. This guide will cover some basic points to keep in mind when organizing around these demands, whether it be as part of a formal contract fight, or just as part of the day to day work of the shop organization.

In the course of our daily work under capitalism we workers are constantly accumulating grievances, complaints, and issues that we either keep to ourselves, or share with our co-workers, friends, family and comrades. The accumulation of these grievances and problems in our lives as workers is something that happens spontaneously because it is a material product of the struggles within production and between wage-laborers and capitalists under imperialism. In addition, grievances are accumulated among the workers spontaneously not only due to capitalist exploitation, but also because of the various forms of oppression and misery our society produces due to the state, national oppression, private property, backwards reactionary cultural practices, etc.

The important thing to understand is that these grievances will end up manifesting themselves practically and politically in your workplace whether you as a class-conscious worker take action or not. They can manifest relatively quietly and subtly, through high turnover rates, a level of constant frustration, grumbling among the workers during their break, or a quiet refusal to follow the bosses’ policies or quotas. They can also spontaneously manifest themselves loudly, through regular clashes between management and employees, walk-outs, mass resignations, and group confrontations.

So the question is not whether or not something will happen due to workers’ grievances, but rather whether or not these grievances can be planned around by activists who take action in a way that mobilizes, politicizes and organizes the workers in the short-, medium-, and long-term. Whether or not the grievances and daily demands can be organized in a way that that is economically successfully in a given workplace, but also linked at the hip to the political demands of the working class as a whole.

Now that we understand that grievances and daily demands exist objectively among workers under capitalism, we need to start to consider how we can convert these demands into campaigns, actions, structures, and plans. There are a few criteria to follow when selecting and synthesizing a set of consciously organized demands from the set of spontaneously present grievances in a given workplace: 1) what demands or problems are consistently expressed in common across significant sections of the workers, and not just a few individuals, 2) what demands or problems are currently very relevant and hot topics of conversation and spontaneous struggle in the workplace, 3) to categorize demands according to how politicized a grievance is and under what political conditions it can be resolved, what actions need to be taken to address the grievance in the short-term vs. medium-term vs. long-term etc.), 4) what would need to be done action and organizing-wise in order to accomplish those demands, 5) how to apply the mass line and ensure the grievances of the lowest and deepest workers are prioritized and thus ensure the mobilization of the largest possible amount of workers, and 6) how to leverage a limited campaign for a specific demand into a general increase in the level of collective organization and mobilization, so as to avoid a short-sighted or ambulance-chaser approach.

There are a lot of balancing acts here and possible deviations: picking too few versus picking too many demands to organize around; having a one-sided short-term approach that mainly prioritizes fleeting and small-scale demands versus having a one-sided long-term approach that mainly prioritizes demands that could only be feasibly achieved on a 1-, 2-, 3- or more year time scale; both extreme approaches will inevitably lead to failure but in opposite directions. A one-sided short-term approach will lead to directionlessness, a lack of strategic and political vision, and likely economism, whereas a one-sided long-term approach will lead to a lack of mobilization and militant acts of class struggle and responsive agitprop which politicize and organize the workers. An organizer must also consider the balance between tailism and commandism when approaching organizing around grievances. This contradiction could manifest for example as making a call to action around a demand with little on-the-ground support or collective organization present in the lead up to it (commandism) or perpetually playing catch-up and following behind the spontaneous desires and whims of your co-workers without any far-sighted political leadership or connection to demands beyond the most narrow economic ones (tailism). Taken as a whole, a New Labor organizer must have a far-sighted and comprehensive approach to organizing around daily demands, which requires lots of necessary behind-the-scenes work such as a scientific social investigation and class analysis of the workplace, formation of an initial core of supporters and sympathizers among the advanced workers, connecting with national and regional organizers as logistical and political supports/guides, etc.

A conscious and correct approach to the struggle for demands must also take into consideration the operational situation the shop-floor organizing is concretely occurring in. If, for example, a contract-related struggle is on the table, the approach workers take might look slightly different than if there is not. Devising, proposing and organizing around a contract by necessity (if it is being done well and with fidelity to the long-term interests of the working-class) implies the need to organize around a large series of well-formulated demands covering most, if not all, of the aspects of production and work in a given enterprise simultaneously, in comparison to a one-off campaign around a relatively smaller set of demands. Even if only a relatively small set of demands are centered in the shop organization’s propaganda and agitation among the rank-and-file workers, it would be negligent, tailist and short-sighted to not include demands covering all the main aspects of working conditions, production, benefits and compensation just because three or four demands are what are mainly on the workers mind at a certain moment.

In the context of an ongoing contract-campaign or bargaining with management, class-conscious workers will inevitably be confronted with the concept of “good-faith” bargaining which is one of the main principles underpinning the entire the NLRB system. The basic idea behind “good-faith” bargaining, at least on paper, is that both management and labor are not “unreasonable” and are willing to have a “give-and-take” to their demands in order to reach a settlement acceptable to both parties. In reality, what it means is that workers are brow-beaten into endlessly watering down and compromising on their demands by government mediators, capitalists and state union staff organizers until a sell-out deal is all but guaranteed. While it is obviously difficult to get 100% of what is demanded in every contract fight, a class-conscious approach should establish a set of robust non-negotiable contract demands that reflect the genuine will and long-term interests of the workers the shop organization represents. Without these non-negotiable demands, that is how we end up in a situation where the wage increases of unionized workplaces don’t even keep up with inflation, and working conditions and workers rights within production are endlessly trampled and restricted so that capitalists have almost complete unfettered control over the working lives of the oppressed and toiling masses.

There is another idea which is standard in the modern establishment labor movement and opposed to the approach of New Labor, which is that in the operational context of a unionization campaign, the struggle for demands should be postponed or put on hold pending the formal legal recognition of the union by the employer. This is diametrically opposed to a class-conscious New Labor approach to trade union organizing which views unionization itself as a function of, and in service to, the struggle for daily demands and the struggle to assert the interests and will of the multinational US working class. The struggle for demands and the collective organization of workers on the shop floor should be the basis on which the unionization campaign should be found, the motor which propels it forward. In doing so, New Labor reasserts class struggle as the main motor force of the trade union struggle, rather than the courts and State regulatory apparatus. Thus, shorter-term one-off fights and demand campaigns can and should be incorporated into unionization and contract struggles as a key way of mobilizing workers in the struggle for their own interests and demands, and through that mobilization developing their politicization (agitation, propaganda, political education, etc.) and strengthening the organization of their collective bodies and mechanisms (shop floor committees, union membership etc.)

The complexity of conducting and leading the struggle for daily demands in a workplace compels class-conscious workers to take a far-sighted and multilateral view of things when planning their work and making decisions. As such, when approaching demand campaigns organizers should prepare multiple contingencies with Plans A, B, C and more planned out in advance. Take for example, a demand letter on a single major workplace condition or wage issue. There are multiple possible outcomes one could imagine for such a campaign that should be planned out and anticipated in advance. For example, upon presenting the demand letter one could expect a wide variety of outcomes: a) rejection by management followed by major retaliation, b) rejection by management followed by inaction/status quo, c) qualified acceptance by management followed by a counter-offensive/ other form of retaliation, d) acceptance by management without major immediate retaliation. Each scenario should be planned out and anticipated, with back up plans and tactics drawn up in the case of each option, particularly if a certain option is assessed as likely.

The work of the shop paper/sectoral publication is key for the struggle for daily demands in the sense that the journal allows for spontaneous grievances to be detailed, investigated, and developed into political positions and more complete but also accessible theoretical explanations for the audience of workers. This theoretical work should occur in tandem with practical actions that should be escalatory in nature, ultimately leading to some kind of labor withholding action, whether it be a slowdown, walk-out or strike, if demands are not met and there mass energy and mobilization is sustained.

The combination of demands and actions is an art. For example, while a campaign against a particularly hated boss and a contract campaign might seem like very different contexts, getting a hated supervisor or boss fired or demoted during a longer-term campaign is exactly what should be done in order to gather momentum and demonstrate the practical leadership of the class-conscious workers organization, which will in turn lead to greater success in the campaign for other more medium or long-term demands. Similarly, a struggle for the demands of a relatively small, but also relatively ultra-exploited or oppressed section of workers might seem at odds with a campaign aimed at organizing the demands of the vast majority of workers at a company, but if the class-conscious workers cannot win leadership, trust and participation among the lowest and most profound workers, they could end up relying on more labor aristocratic elements for support which might potentially lead down the road of reformism, chauvinism, and away from class militancy. In this sense also, the struggle for demands can and should be linked to the struggle for worker control over production, and worker control over society, which can only be achieved through the conquest of political power and establishment of a New State lead by the workers and their allied classes.

Exercising leadership in the struggle for demands is an essential task for any class-conscious worker organizer, but it is also a multifaceted and complex task with many competing decisions and paths to take. To strike when the iron is hot, to take decisive action, and to do the hard behind-the-scenes work necessary to build a core of workers that can mobilize others around demands: these things and many others are essential in order for victories to be won, and the interests of our class advanced economically and politically. It is the duty of all of us to let a great wave of struggles and trials unfold, to lead in both victory and defeat, and learn through practice so that revolutionaries may synthesize our lessons into new and more powerful ideological, political, and organizational forms that advance the workers movement, until the overthrow of imperialism itself.