An Interview with the Southern Workers Assembly
The Louisville Workers Brigade
3/21/2025
Could you tell our readers about the Southern Workers Assembly's history and origins?
The Southern Workers Assembly (SWA) was organized in 2012. The North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, UE Local 150 and Black Workers for Justice, initiated the process. Organizing the South was part of UE 150's organizing perspective when it affiliated with the United Electrical Workers National Union (UE) in 1997.
The SWA founding conference opposed holding the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte, NC. The main reason was that Charlotte was behind the passage of the state's current law that forbids public sector workers from collectively bargaining a union contract, written in 1959 by an all-white state Legislature. Charlotte also has the second highest concentration of finance capital, behind Wall Street in NYC.
More than 300 rank and file workers from sectors and states across the South participated in that founding gathering. As the Democrats held their convention, while the country was still in the midst of the financial crisis that began in 2008, the conference was an opportunity for workers to speak in our own voice and put forward an independent, struggle-oriented program that spoke to the crises and the needs of that period. The SWA conference was also a call to both unionized and self-organized workers, to form the SWA as a regional framework to launch a social justice labor movement in the South.
Despite the role of the South in the major shifts in the US and global economy over the past 40 years, US unions do not have a strategic plan focused on organizing labor in the South. The South continues to be the region receiving fewer resources for organizing and strategic campaigns, aside from major elections. The SWA's objective is to develop infrastructure that can lay the foundation for broader organizing across the South.
What does SWA organizing work entail?
SWA's work focuses on developing militant worker cadre/leaders who are engaged in committee building efforts in their workplace, and linking those workers together through various kinds of networks – by geography (workers assemblies), sector (regional industrial councils), employer, etc – that are engaged in public collective action.
SWA learned from our working-class history and developed a strategy that applies to today's conditions. We created an intentional and deliberate plan of organization and cadre development in multiple workplaces in discrete geographies to lay the groundwork for a "sweep" of workers forming unions. This not only gets us to scale in terms of the numbers needed to really grow the labor movement but also to exert significant power in negotiations that result from multiple elections. We think that a committee of three to five workers in a shop is sufficient to start.
Once there are committees in three to five workplaces, an assembly can be established to engage in collective action—mostly public-facing campaigns designed to address workplace issues and develop leaders. Currently we have a network of 17 local assemblies in six states and are always working on developing more.
During the period of 1930 to 1941, social turmoil resulted in mass working class organization and collective bargaining in major US industries. SWA identified the necessary elements that were present in the upsurge and uses those lessons to guide our efforts.
The first and most important element is the existence of a committed core of experienced activists and organizers in major workplaces linked together in networks that spread throughout both industrial sectors and geographies. Their common intent was to establish collective bargaining as a democratic necessity and thereby build power for the entire working class. Many failures taught them through their practical experience to use sympathy strikes, defy injunctions, and use brief sit-down strikes to win grievances.
Other elements – including sharply defined class politics, new legislation encouraging collective bargaining, a few top union leaders who broke politically and tactically with the moribund AFL by refusing to compromise militancy and gave local organizing efforts a national voice and support— were necessary but NOT sufficient for success. Without the organized pre-existing network of experienced cadre, ready to act once the breakthrough occurred (in this case the Flint sit-down strike victory), massive organizing involving millions would not have spread.
On the question of legislation, there's an erroneous view among some that labor upsurges follow changes in the legal landscape (ie, the passage of the NLRA and the 1937 Supreme Court case that upheld it, or similar arguments today for the PRO Act, etc). Of course, those are good things, but they're a byproduct of, rather than the cause for, militancy and organization.
The bottom line that underscores our approach is this: The labor movement can't possibly run enough elections fast enough to make a significant dent to reverse the decline of unionization in this country. In the US, there are roughly 160 million workers, of which about 135 million are covered by the National Labor Relations Act. 12 million are already in unions. That leaves about 120 million private sector workers eligible for NLRB elections. While 2024 polling showed that nearly 60 million workers would join a union if they could, only 120,000 workers participated in recognition elections, which turned out to be double the number of 60,000 in 2021. And even so, union density continues to decline – not to mention the PATCO-esque moment federal workers and their unions are facing. At this rate, in 100 years we will have organized only 10% of the non-union workers.
Once we had a few assemblies, we started to conduct worker schools usually twice a year to meet together, to build community and network, to develop skills, and to strategize campaigns.
The worker schools were another featured methodology developed by Black Workers for Justice in its 40 year history of organizing. Several years ago SWA started to create industrial councils in manufacturing, education, hospitality, logistics, and tourism. Our newest council is being established for gig drivers.
We developed a ten-point Southern Worker Power Program creating some cohesion among the demands that assemblies and councils could fight for. The program is based on the idea that as workers we have certain rights and therefore we make demands that enforce and enhance those rights. Pieces of the program include demands related to health care, collective bargaining rights, education, ending all forms of discrimination and providing reparations for Black and Indigenous people, demilitarizing the police and ending unpaid prison labor, and a clean environment and taking steps to counteract the effects of climate change.
We've also recently developed a program to get workers jobs in strategic workplaces to organize from the shop floor.
Experience and activism will inform the local assemblies, workplace organizations, and cadre about which of these issues to take on as well as which strategies and tactics will work; sit downs are not likely to be the preferred strategy but other ideas will occur to people. Efforts will fail and workers will learn, new tactics will be devised. SWA attempts to replicate the elements that we have some control over while paying attention to when other conditions become present for a breakthrough. When that happens, the organizations and cadre that are working in the many non-union workplaces and industries will be looking for it, they will recognize it for what it is, and they will cause a "sweep" into the unions.
What unique obstacles and challenges face your work, both in terms of organizing within the South and of fostering a progressive, democratic, and rank-and-file led labor movement?
The challenges are numerous and, I imagine, well-known by many reading this – right to work and other anti-labor laws, an incredibly reactionary ruling class and their political servants who use the South as a laboratory for the most extreme legislation targeting various sections of the working class – from restrictions on abortion, anti-immigrant laws, attacks on trans youth and workers, dismantling public education, you name it – and look for every opportunity to drain the public coffers and fork that money over to private industry, and just a general lack of information about unions and what (very limited) rights workers do have.
From slavery to Jim Crow, the Southern economic model is one that is rooted in racism and white supremacy, and the region as a whole continues to play a central role in shaping systemic racism and anti-labor policies. In that way, every labor struggle in the South is inherently a struggle against the entire system of exploitation.
Racism is used by the bosses and the ruling class to undermine organizing drives by sowing division among workers, and the inability of the unions to confront this dynamic has led to defeat time and again throughout history. The economic and social costs of the inability of the labor movement to seriously take on efforts to organize the South are numerous, and fall especially hard on Black, Latinx, and other oppressed workers.
But though the cards are stacked against Southern workers, the region is home to some of the most militant worker struggles in the country. The first general strike in this country was led by enslaved Africans, who led a mass revolt against slave owners and joined the war against the Confederacy. From sharecroppers in Alabama to textile and tobacco workers in North Carolina and mine workers in West Virginia, there is a deep history in the region of rebellion and struggle.
Today, organizing drives led by migrant poultry workers in Arkansas, education workers in North Carolina (where public sector collective bargaining is still illegal), service workers across the region, and others are shining examples of the vibrant, combative spirit still alive in the South.
Could you tell our readers about your organizational affiliates--who they are, what they do, and how you all cooperate with one another in solidarity?
There are six worker organizations who are formal affiliates of the Southern Workers Assembly: Black Workers for Justice; UE Local 150, the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union; Union of Southern Service Workers; International Longshoremen's Association Local 1422; Charleston Alliance for Fair Employment/Charleston Workers Center; National Nurses United.
Each of these organizations shares both the commitment to building working class organization in the South and an orientation towards developing rank and file leadership and militancy. Most are focused on doing work among particular key sectors of the economy in the region.
There are numerous other unions, worker organizations, rank and file caucuses, and political groups that, despite not being formally affiliated with the SWA, we work with on a regular basis in various capacities in our local and regional work.
In our current political climate, with the rights of working people under attack domestically and abroad, what do you see as the urgent tasks facing the working class today?
It's a very, very dangerous period that truly is unprecedented in modern history. In these moments, there's often a tendency to try to batten down the hatches to hold on to what little we have and make it through. That always leads to our movements being in a much more weakened position when, and if, they emerge on the other side of a crisis.
We have to be finding ways to wage the necessary defensive fights, but also open up offensive struggles when the opportunity arises. Building various forms of working class organization – whether that's organizing a committee at your workplace, forming a workers assembly, or another form of organization – is imperative. Orienting those organizations towards engaging in various types of collective action will also be critical. If you're not already working somewhere that you can organize among your coworkers, get a job in a strategic industry to organize. And we have to be talking more to our coworkers and other workers, especially the unorganized, and doing the patient and necessary work to challenge the propaganda coming from the right wing, build solidarity with workers across various social divisions, and focus our fights around our common enemies – our bosses and the billionaires.
SWA and a number of other worker organizations will be holding a conference to take up this question in more depth this summer in Spartanburg, SC, called the Southern Worker Action Summit, from June 13 - 15. More info coming soon on that but be sure to sign up for updates and keep an eye on our website (https://southernworker.org) for more information on how you can participate.
What advice do you offer working people here in Kentucky? Is there anything else you'd like to share with our readers?
Talk with coworkers, friends, and others in your community about what's at stake and how you can organize where you are. There are many organizations out there that can assist you - the Louisville Workers Brigade, the Southern Workers Assembly, the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, to name a few. Build alliances with organizations rooted in communities – like progressive religious institutions, social organizations, and others – to draw out connections between our workplace fights and broader social struggles, and take a movement building approach to the task of building working class organization.
And get in touch if you're interested in building a workers assembly, getting a job in a strategic sector to organize, participating in an industrial council or the conference that we're hosting this summer! More than anything, we're interested in building alliances with workers and working class organizations across the region to raise our ability to learn from our different struggles and coordinate to build the type of fights that will be needed in this period. Organize the South!