What is the Radish Research Newsletter?
A regular (free) newsletter focusing on the roots of the labor movement’s decline and revival using investigative research methods and financial analysis skills that I learned as a long-time analyst and campaigner for progressive unions. The ambition here is not to compete with the wonderful new wave of labor reporting and analysis, but to till some fields of investigation that have been overlooked (and to overuse farming metaphors!). The hope is that some of this research will be useful to the constellation of forces seeking to revive a sclerotic labor movement running out of time.
Uh, What’s the Deal with the Radishes?
The newsletter is called Radish Research because…I love a radish, I grow radishes in my garden, I pickle radishes, I worked on a farm called Radix for a year and ate radishes for breakfast, so that’s why. Also, “radish” and “radical” have the exact etymological origin from the Latin word radix "root."
Who Are You, Mr. Radish aka Chris Bohner?
After studying political economy and philosophy in the early 90s at York University and writing a hilariously naive thesis about how organized labor could use their pension power to build socialism, I worked for a national group fighting lending discrimination and disinvestment for a couple of years, and provided research in support of the first community development bank in Washington, DC. Through that work, I was recruited to do investigative research during the 1996 Teamsters election, wrote campaign reports about Jimmy Hoffa Jr., and met many of the inspiring activists at the Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
After Ron Carey won the Teamsters election in 1996, then lost, and then was vindicated (much later), I helped staff the newly created corporate affairs department at the AFL-CIO after John Sweeney won the first contested leadership election at the Federation. Sweeney ran on a platform “to renew and rebuild our labor movement by pouring vast resources into organizing”: you know, the same stuff most labor leaders have been saying (and saying and saying) for 25 years. Sweeney recruited some truly creative staff from the affiliates, including early innovators of the “comprehensive campaign” strategy for the Jobs for Justice and J.P. Stevens campaigns (to name a few), and I was lucky to work with them.
In 2000, I moved to the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE before it was UNITE HERE) to work on hotel organizing and contract campaigns. In 2002, I was sent to Las Vegas and witnessed 20,000 casino workers jam a stadium for a strike vote after the gaming industry sought to roll-back healthcare using 9/11 as a pretext (the companies quickly caved after the overwhelming strike vote). Sent for a six-month stint, I ended up spending eight years at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 working on large organizing and contract campaigns, local and national casino strikes, worker education, and community and political initiatives. I served as a trustee of a $1.5 billion Taft-Hartley pension fund (alas, no socialist investments) and I developed the Housing Partnership Fund, a revolving loan fund that provides members with down payment assistance for purchasing a home. I was proud to be a member of La Culinaria, and saw what tenacious organizing looks like, but it was a tough place to work and live!
Sadly, I spent over a year working to fend off the raid of UNITE HERE by SEIU (and a breakaway faction of UNITE HERE), a colossal waste of time. Still, I did learn how to analyze union finances and read obscure labor filings, a skill I’ll use in this newsletter. After the “fight” was settled, I developed the Real Food Real Jobs campaign, attempting to marry the “food movement” with foodservice worker organizing and bargaining.
Since leaving UNITE HERE, I’ve worked on investment issues with a $2 billion Taft-Hartley pension fund, ran as a director of a credit union as part of the “move your money” movement, developed campaigns with a variety of alt-labor and worker centers, led shareholder and corporate governance campaigns with the 50/50 Climate Project to reform climate change policies at utility and energy companies, worked with African Communities Together on a report on gentrification and displacement in Northern Virginia. More recently, I’ve provide research and support to union reform movements and caucuses, and write regularly for Jacobin.
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