Organizing Institute - Impact of The OI

Impact of The OI

Although the "organizing model" did not originate from the OI, the method quickly became associated with it. OI staff adopted the organizing model and strongly advocated its use in both internal and external organizing.

The OI helped train and organize some of the most prominent and effective labor actions of the 1990s. In the early 1990s, the OI recruited and trained activists for the highly effective and public Justice for Janitors campaigns in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. OI staff also helped recruit and train staff for UNITE's national campaign to organize industrial laundries, and began the first tentative steps toward building a comprehensive campaign strategy for this organizing campaign.

Despite being one of the few concrete outcomes of the AFL-CIO's 1983 strategic planning process, the Kirkland administration did not place a major emphasis on the OI. Its budget remained small relative to the organizing department's, and it was not promoted in significant ways to AFL-CIO member unions. Nevertheless, AFL-CIO member unions held the OI and its staff in very high regard.

During the contested 1995 election for the presidency of the AFL-CIO, the OI became a political football. SEIU president John Sweeney criticized the Kirkland administration for failing to boost union organizing, and pointed to the small budget and lack of focus on the OI as one example. Sweeney promised to dramatically boost the OI's funding and importance. For his part, Lane Kirkland pointed to the establishment of the OI as a major success of his administration. Kirkland later abandoned the race and resigned as president of the federation. His successor and presidential candidate, Thomas Donahue, was able to lay a stronger claim on organizing success because of his role as the primary backer of the OI in 1989. But Donahue's claims were rejected by AFL-CIO member unions, and Sweeney won the presidential race.

Once in office, John Sweeney significantly promoted the OI. Sweeney split the organizing and field services function, and created an independent Organizing Department within the AFL-CIO. Bensinger was appointed the new department's first director. The OI became part of the new department. Its budget increased sharply, and a separate fund was established to subsidize strategic organizing campaigns.

The OI began to wane in influence in the late 1990s. The OI continued to emphasize the organizing model and promote an activist approach to union organizing. However, many of the labor leaders and staff most prominent in organizing began to de-emphasize the organizing model. SEIU president Andy Stern and others argued that large-scale union organizing depended less on organizing methods and more on wholesale restructuring of the labor movement. Other labor leaders and organizers contended that federal labor law was too weak and ill-enforced to adequately protect workers and organizers under the organizing model and that a new model—the comprehensive campaign—was needed.