EWOC Committee with DSA

Working Class Unity
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I talked to DSA North Central Valley about Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) put in place by DSA and the UE (United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America). Here is some more information about it:

They suggesting creating a five member committee consisting of the following members: 2 DSA NCV, 1 PSL, 1 YDSA Merced, and 1 WCU. They would meet one time a month. Meetings would include doing outreach to potential workers in each of our geographical areas or locations that DSA/PSL/WCU choose to target. Each organization would continue to make decisions about who/where they are organizing, but the committee members would help each other once a month.

The committee would be focused on targeting ununionized workers, offering them support and mentorship if someone wants to form a union at their workplace. The goal of this committee would be to build independent unions, although I have heard EWOC unions being connected to an existing union as well. I think, ultimately, that decision would be up to the workers themselves. EWOC also offers organizing training online and the committee members have to go through a short training period. This committee would also allow for the socialist organizations in the north valley to share labor organizing strategies and share news about upcoming strikes and labor actions.

The California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO (of which UE is not a part of) is also doing a Unionized California campaign. But the North Valley Labor Federation has a typical union/Democratic Party relationship.

I’m going to bring it to the Steering Committee at our next meeting so we can all discuss/vote on it during the next General Meeting, but I think we should discuss ahead of time as well since we always run our meetings long.

Our current priorities are: Tenant Union, labor training for youth, union support, building our Membership Pipeline and educational material, and launching our Voices Newspaper. This committee may tie into the youth labor training if someone decides to unionize and would help us keep up to date about potential strikes/actions. It would take up at least 1/day a month from one of our members.

Would love everyone’s thoughts about if they’d like to move forward or if they have questions/concerns.

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I really like the idea of working with other local groups.
And i definitely like the EWOC concept.
I do have a minor reservation.
YDSA is youth DSA right?
That would give DSA a majority vote on everything, unless the YDSA is more Radical than the general DSA membership (which it prolly is) in which case I’m not too bothered by it.

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Yeah, we need to discuss what expectations are, especially if someone takes us up on the offer to help them organize. Lodi to Merced is a 1.5 hour drive, so I don’t know if everyone will be able to keep up sustained actions between our areas. Especially if we have other focus campaigns running. But from what I understand, it is a fairly low amount of time committment until that happens.

Perhaps we should set up a meeting between DSANCV and YDSA M (and PSL if they are on board) just to talk it through and get to know each other.

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We might be able to rotate reps.
If one of use doesn’t have the time to do it every session, we could just delegate the task to a different person.
It’s def something we need to bring before the group, but I do generally like the idea of cooperation.

A meeting to feel out our respective organizational positions would be a good idea. It would at the very least allow us to determine where they’re at, and at most could lead to a fruitful partnership in the future.

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We can use this thread to keep track of EWOC updates.

We are signed up for the EWOC Organizer Training Series in November. Right now, three of us are signed up to attend, but if anyone else would like to join us, feel free to sign up. All the training will be online.

We are also scheduled to attend EWOC orientation on October 4th at noon and also on October 2nd. (@HipGnosis, what time was it exactly again?). If you would like to attend, please leave a reply and we’ll forward you the Zoom invites.

We have an EWOC Working Group that was approved earlier this month (see below). Right now, activity is limited to one meeting/month with the EWOC Committee and attending the training. As a “Side Quest,” according to the bylaws the EWOC Working Group: “Such groups should not necessitate a significant, ongoing commitment of resources from the membership.” If it does, we will have to vote on it as a Focus Campaign or discuss/change how we are engaging with EWOC work.

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I scheduled a meeting for EWOC Tomorrow at Noon, but I dont’ have the link to it so I have no idea how I’m supposed to do it

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I’ll DM you his email

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Nevermind, I just got an Email about it!