Harold Meyerson

Having banged its head against a wall for years with nothing to show for it but a headache, the American labor movement is devising a plan to bypass the wall altogether. During its quadrennial convention here this week, the AFL-CIO has acknowledged that the laws protecting employees who seek to join a union have been rendered so ineffectual that labor must come up with new ways to advance workers’ interests.

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“Community is the new density,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler said yesterday, just moments before the labor federation’s quadrennial convention was gaveled to order in Los Angeles. For those who follow labor-speak, the remark was both an acknowledgement of American labor’s crisis, and a guide to the strategy with which it hopes to recover.

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Based on Congressional Republicans’ apparently overwhelming opposition to President Obama’s proposal to strike Syrian military facilities in retaliation for the government’s use of chemical weapons, a new way to enact progressive legislation in the United States has become apparent.

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By seeking congressional approval for military action against the Syrian government, President Obama has accomplished something that the nation hasn’t seen in some time: He’s compelled Republicans to divert their attention from their concocted crises to an issue of actual substance.

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Labor Day this year finds American unions plunging into the unknown. Fast-food and retail workers in roughly 60 cities have been demonstrating for a living wage, though how exactly they will win concessions from such mega-corporations as McDonald's remains fuzzy at best. The AFL-CIO, which will convene its biennial national convention in Los Angeles this month, is considering throwing open its ranks to workers who may not actually be union members. Activity is plentiful; uncertainty is rife.

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Of all the commemorations of the March on Washington, the one that will best capture its spirit isn’t really a commemoration at all. Thursday, one day after the 50th anniversary of the great march, fast-food and retail workers in as many as 35 cities will stage a one-day strike demanding higher wages.

Sadly, the connection between the epochal demonstration of 1963 and a fast-food strike in 2013 couldn’t be more direct.

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