This is the beginning of a new, stronger union. While the task of working through the completion of a merger was arduous; the hard work lays before us now. We have an opportunity to create a dynamic and powerful union representing industrial workers across a broad spectrum of industry. A measure of its success will be a commitment to expend the resources necessary to organize workers. At the same time, we will be providing quality representation of our membership for which both predecessor unions are well-known.

This will not happen automatically, or because a handful of officers say it should. The reality of achieving our promise will only take place through the diligent work of the rank and file of the new union. It is natural to ask: What does this all mean and what do we hope to achieve?

Our resources for organizing have tripled, and with those resources we have the ability to recruit, train and place in the field the rank-and-file army that we will need to organize large plants. The ability of the union to provide services - ranging from expertise in occupational safety and health to legal expertise for local union leaders - will be exponentially increased as well.

In virtually every area of union activity, PACE will exceed its predecessor unions' capacity to be the effective spokesperson for the workers it represents. But the real task before us is to capture the energy of the rank-and-file delegates who overwhelmingly approved this merger and to turn that energy into becoming a leader within the trade union movement.

In 1991, after I assumed the presidency of OCAW I wrote on these very pages that our mission was to be a movement. It was incumbent upon us to educate our members, mobilize them to action and agitate for change. That charge - educate, mobilize and agitate - became, I hope, the hallmark for the nearly eight years I served as president. That agenda has not changed.

To make PACE the union we want, we must educate our members on the issues that confront them. Whether it is alternative politics in the form of our ongoing commitment to the Labor Party, or mainstream political debate to save Social Security and attain fair trade policies, we have an obligation to get information to our members and to move them to support change. The status quo just will not do.

We must educate our members on the issues that confront them in the workplace, whether it is to negotiate organizing neutrality language in contracts or fight cooperative programs that don't have job security and organizing neutrality at their core.

With the education of our membership as a foundation for our future work, we will have to mobilize our members to act. As easy as it sounds, it is difficult to do. It will only be through a mobilized membership that we will accomplish the objectives of organizing and maintaining our ability to confront recalcitrant employers.

I suppose nearly every union activist believes that mobilization is as important a piece of our work as anything we do. Yet it is uncanny how often we don't mobilize our membership around essential issues in the workplace, community, and union. I have remarked on numerous occasions that major employers could care less what I say UNLESS I am stating what you are thinking AND talking about in the workplace and on the plant floor.

It goes without saying that we must agitate for the progressive changes we wish to see within the new union and in the world at large. We have important social issues to tackle such as Social Security and health care. We have to figure out the political configuration that will produce the kind of results we want.

As members of OCAW we had committed ourselves to build the Labor Party, and as members of PACE we must start the process of educating and agitating within PACE to not only maintain that commitment but to build on it. We must vigorously pursue the mandate to build a political consciousness based not on a political party but rather on a political ideology.

We are confronting a world that is radically changing with global corporations setting the tone with unprecedented capital consolidation. Just as the union has changed, members of the former OCAW are seeing their lives transformed and must prepare to confront corporate power's increasing consolidation. Just ask the workers employed by Mobil, Exxon, B.P, Amoco, Total and Diamond Shamrock.

The merger will not be an easy undertaking. For it to be successful, we will be required to overcome many difficult moments. But it will be easier and will only be successful if the rank-and-file membership makes it work and demands our very best.

OCAW Reporter, January-February 1999