In the aftermath of Ralph Nader's colossal, nation-damaging ego trip of 2000, I still maintained that his earlier career was a good one and that there were still good aspects of his legacy. I cited the PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) movement as an example of something founded by Nader that has been of great benefit in American politics. Three things have soured Nader's legacy even more: his 2004 attempt at a repeat of the 2000 ego-driven disaster (this time without help from the Green Party, to credit them with learning a valuable lesson); the full scale of disaster that the Nader-enabled Bush administration has proven to be, fully in line with my warnings in 2000 and contrary to the Nader claim that Bush and Gore were equivalent; and finally, the decline of the PIRG movement into an anti-labor, union-busting political machine that seems to be betraying its roots.
I didn't so much come to this story as have it thrust upon me from several sides. A discussion with a new New Democratic Majority member about what kind of canvassing options were available for pay brought up the PIRG efforts, which I knew were paid, and a comment from Michael Bouldin that he had heard they had become horrible to work for, a kind of progressive political sweatshop.
That was the first I heard about PIRG's decline. Some 20 years ago I tried canvassing for CalPIRG in Los Angeles. It was to be a holiday job, combining my need for some income with my interest in politics. I went through their training and trial period. It was hard work, but exciting. I remember coming home each night of that brief period so keyed up that it took a couple of Guinesses to calm me down for bedtime. We worked from a script and started by working with experienced staff. My partnered staff member liked my style and delivery, saying that I seemed to be a natural. I didn't really find canvassing that enjoyable, but with his encouragement I really felt I could do it.
I had two evenings to "make quota," essentially get enough contributions to make their paying me worthwhile. Long story short, I never made quota, contrary to the expectations of my trainers. I didn't get the job and realized that door-to-door canvassing is not my forte.
The work had been hard and I had failed to make the grade, but it all seemed very reasonable.
Well, Michael's comment made me wonder about the PIRG approach. Had they indeed become a political sweatshop?
Two readers, one from Brooklyn and one from Seattle, both clued me in on a story originally from the August In These Times [1], and since expanded into a series of diaries on MyDD [2] and Daily Kos [3]. The story is a warning to all grassroots organizations about the balance between reaching the political goal and maintaining your political ideals.
It's all about the "Fund for Public Interest Research," which is commonly called "THE FUND." You know something is wrong when something is just called "THE whatever." THE FUND was established in 1982 (around the time I tried out for PIRG canvassing, I guess) by the PIRGs and now has a near monopoly on canvassing, doing the job for groups like the Sierra Club, Human Rights Campaign, Greenpeace, the PIRGs themselves and a whole slew of other "partners [4]." Through THE FUND's branch, Grassroots Campaigns, Inc, they netted a very high profile contract with the DNC. Since its foundation, THE FUND has raised over $350 million and gathered more than 20 million signatures for their "partners." Quite an accomplishment by any standards. But at what price?
It is telling that the average time a canvasser can stand to work for THE FUND is only 2 weeks. Despite the extremely idealistic, young demographic of THE FUND's canvassers, they last only an average of 2 weeks. That's a bad sign! The pay usually amounts to less than minimum wage and it seems that in recent years there seemed to be an increase in slippery practices that I have seen big companies employ to save money, delay payouts and to intimidate employees, including erratic reimbursements, paycheck "miscalculations", difficulties with vacation days, etc. Furthermore, the workload was expected to be high, despite the low pay, well over the 40 hour work week. In short, THE FUND did not run an organization that encouraged people to stay and make a career out of progressive politics, but rather it treated its workers as expendable and underappreciated drones. This led to a unionization movement.
Here is one summary of small problems that amounted to an untenable working situation:
Here's a sampling of the accumulated "little things": Meal breaks were not allowed during the six-seven hour shifts. Callers had to clock out if they wanted to take cigarette or bathroom breaks. Employees often felt uncertain, or uninformed entirely, about the particularities of office policies--like the bonus structure or health care. They learned to keep meticulous personal records of "their numbers," as paycheck errors were somewhat regular. They would often hear from former co-workers who had recently left or been fired, and who had not received their final paycheck. Promises of reimbursements (for instance, during a bus strike, when callers with cars picked up their co-workers) often went unfulfilled. Callers were expected to bring their own cleaning products to wipe down their keyboards.
But the problems seem almost inherent in the business model used by THE FUND. Although I suspect that 2 weeks is shorter than they would like the average stint to be, it seems, according to the article, that those who actively do carve out a career working for THE FUND as canvassers begin to get on the bad side of THE FUND. The kind of crap those who tried to dedicate themselves long term to THE FUND had to put up with is outlined here [5]. The story is one of mismanagement at THE FUND at best, and exploitation at worst. The net result was that even die hard FUND workers who had previously opposed the unionization movement began to talk union. The story comes to a head in Los Angeles where the local organizers nearly unanimously voted to unionize, with the help of Local Teamsters 848. THE FUND immediately proceeded to use all the usual union busting techniques.
The unionized offices weren't given contracts. Top-level phone canvassers were suddenly shifted from the top fundraising lists to the worst immediately after the vote, leading to a sharp decline in their nightly yield and thus their pay. The worst example of this was that the usually savvy FUND suddenly gave unionized callers a call list targeting, get this, post-Katrina New Orleans! Again, either GROSS mismanagement or outright intentional sabotaging of the unionized office's efforts. Union organizers were fired (though then rehired when the union filed a complaint...then fired again later). Negotiations for a contract dragged on until, one by one, THE FUND closed down all the unionized offices. The full story of the union-busting efforts can be found here [6].
A summary from the diary series mentioned above sums it up thusly:
Quick recap: the largest employer of progressive activists in the country is engaging in widespread union-busting. Its "sister" organization just raised twenty-two million dollars for the DNC to "beat George Bush," although almost none of that money actually went to the 2004 election. Put those two facts together in light of the failure of the Left to mount a coherent, coordinated opposition to its greatest opponent in modern American history.
I am a big fan of the Act Blue model for grassroots fundraising anyway, and have always been a bit leery of the giant fundraising campaigns. But this story is a complete turnoff, a case of idealism gone awry. It reminds me of a company someone I knew worked for that was, as he put it "run by dictatorial ex-hippies" who used questionable business practices despite their claims of liberal sainthood.
This story also makes me think of the MoveOn.org volunteer who stayed with Joy and me for this last election. She began completely gung ho, and wound up burned out from the grueling pace and had to quit about a week before the election. MoveOn.org did wonders in this last election, and it was done over only a couple of months. But the story of PIRG's betrayal of its own values should be a lesson to all of us, MoveOn included, that success in the elections should not come at a larger price.
Of course, the story also means that there isn't much of Nader's legacy that I will still respect in the end. Nader's big personal failure was to be a victim of his own ego, even in failure. The big mistake PIRG is making is letting their own success ruin them. Success that comes at the expense of one's workers or one's ideals is precisely the kind of mentality that Nader and the PIRGs set out to fight against. Which leads to the question: will the PIRGs offer to help out the attempts to fight the union-busting of THE FUND?
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