From Sean O’Brien, HELU Steering Committee and member of Wayne Academic Union #6075
EWOC, the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, held its first conference at Wayne State University with co-hosts Labor@Wayne on June 28 and 29. The Unite & Win conference started with an opening reception on the evening of June 27 in the Reuther Library, the largest labor archive in North America. EWOC’s Megan Svobda and HELU’s Sean O’Brien gave opening remarks to kick off the two-day new organizing conference.
EWOC is a network of union organizers. At the periphery, it’s like a call center, where workers from all over the country can call in or email to talk about problems at work. The people who respond are trained organizers who can assess the potential for addressing the problem with collective action, including actually organizing. They are in turn connected to a substantial multi-level group of experienced union educators and leaders.
EWOC combines emergency response, mentoring, training and a national strategy to organize regardless of union jurisdiction, workforce type or state lines. They originated as a joint effort between the Democratic Socialists of America and United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). They serve as a program for mentoring and connecting workers that are newly organizing with experts for support and guidance.
EWOC has an origin story like HELU’s. It emerged out of the COVID-19 crisis. Like HELU, it developed to meet labor’s needs. It grew rapidly to a point where reflection and self-assessment became an essential part of the work. The next step was this conference. Almost three hundred workers from around the country participated. The conference explored labor history, organizing methods, and concrete tools for organizers in a variety of situations and workplaces. Higher education workers were a considerable contingent of the attendees with HELU’s own NCOC co-Chair, Anke Wolbert, speaking on a panel regarding Detroit-area organizing.
Higher education unions are emerging across the country with EWOC’s support. These range from undergraduate workers at a local Starbucks to graduate student workers, academic staff, non-academic staff, and faculty. Several of these new unions have joined HELU, too.
EWOC is, like HELU, such a commonsense response to an obvious crying need (more, stronger unions and more, better collective action), that people are drawn to join it and commit time to it without requiring a lot of explanation. Like HELU, its internal organization has and continues to fill out as the movement expands.
The conference was co-chaired by UAW and UE. UE’s president, Carl Rosen, provided fiery closing remarks that reminded us of the need for organized labor in this moment.