By Chris Townsend

September 3, 2025

 

Meet Sean Tierney – The Left Wing Doing the Work

Legendary U.S. trade union and communist leader William Z. Foster instructed workers more than 100 years ago that, “The left wing must do the work.” There are many ways to measure the multiple crises that some days seem to doom our U.S. trade union movement. And a small recent episode here in greater Washington, DC, illustrates so much of the problem we have when it comes to stimulating the trade unions to do the basic work of organizing the unorganized masses. It also reveals the simple answer to the question of “What can the scattered socialists do to get union organizing going?”

The Crisis of New Union Organizing

New union organizing in the U.S. today is sparse, especially shocking given the fact that more than 90% of the U.S. workforce is unorganized. Some new union organizing does proceed today under the steady hand of trained, veteran union staff. Some goes forward driven by young, mostly inexperienced, but highly motivated organizers. For all of that we can be grateful. Some union organizing is orchestrated without the NLRB process. Some takes place in the public sector, or in the rail and airline industries. All of it is heroic, but the cumulative results are insufficient to make even a small dent in the magnitude of the crisis. As Trump’s recent attacks on the federal unions reveal, it will take years and years just to regain these lost union members given the snail pace of new organizing by the labor movement.

Where are the unions? Mostly they just sit, inert, consumed with their own internal worlds, and increasingly surrounded on all sides by hostile elements. Taking the trade union message out to the unorganized workplaces to spread the hopeful word among the toilers is either an unknown activity or, at best, an occasional field trip reserved for paid staff. In many business unions new organizing is a bothersome “bill” that they can, and do, avoid paying. The most urgent crisis facing the labor movement today – its refusal to dramatically launch mass campaigns to organize the unorganized – has only worsened since I explored the topic last year. It has worsened every year of my entire 46 year run in this labor movement.

Where is the Left?

“Organize the unorganized!”, has been the call of our left in past decades, but not today. With some energetic exceptions, we instead see our fractured, scattered, and tiny left forces largely engaged in 101 different pursuits. Some are more compelling than others, but few, if any, are connected directly to the workplace or the trade unions. The workplace is mostly off-limits. Employer “boss rule” is complete and unchallenged by most in our left. And you can bet that the assorted moribund trade union “leaderships” that plod along are grateful that they face virtually no pressure from the left elements that do exist. With few left forces willing to demand or do the difficult work of new organizing, retreat becomes inevitable. The union officialdom draw their breath, draw their pay, while new organizing slows to a trickle.

What Can One Union Member Do?

A little more than two years ago, Sean Tierney found out about and came out to a new union organizing school I was running here in Northern Virginia. Sean works as a driver for a private contractor company in suburban, Washington, DC. He takes senior citizens and people with disabilities to wherever they need to go, and he is a member of the Teamsters Union. He is a socialist, and he keeps up with developments across our scattered labor movement and left wing. He knew he had a lot to learn about unions, and especially union organizing, since his shop was organized so long ago that nobody knows how it happened. Sean also joined Teamsters for Democratic Union (TDU) as soon as he found out about them and their mission of revitalizing the union.

Sean has helped with a number of the union organizing schools that I have run. He volunteered to pick me up and drive to the school I was running in Richmond, Virginia. We talked about a lot of things on the trip and he had one question; “Can the mechanics at my company join the union?” I answered, “Yes, of course, but you have to do the work of signing them up.” He then volunteered that he didn’t think that his union local business agent was interested in organizing them. He had been told already that they could not be organized. Sean didn’t know it yet, but he was supposed to give up right then. And he didn’t.

The Union Wins

The good news is that on August 7th, 2025, thanks strictly to the diligent work of Teamster member Sean Tierney, 8 mechanics at his company voted in an NLRB election by a 7 to 1 margin to join his local union. These workers, somehow left out when the unit was originally organized, now come under the coverage of the Teamsters union contract that covers Sean and 80-odd co-workers at the company. This is made possible by the NLRB election known as an “Armour-Globe” election, where workers can join an existing bargaining unit immediately. They do not have to wait for the union and the company to bargain an entirely new contract for the small group. Any union with an actual organizing program would have long ago identified this group and brought them into the union. Sean made it happen with his many months of persistent effort. He talked to the workers over and over again, answering their questions and keeping their morale up during the months when it looked like the union was never going to do anything.

Small Union Win Reveals Major Underlying Crisis

Why did this process take 15 months? Is the NLRB that slow? No, at least not yet. Did it take that long to sign up the workers? No. Sean did that in a couple days. Was it because the company resisted? No. The company never did anything to block it or slow it down, which is nearly always the case in these types of elections. Sean and I talked at least 10 times, as I was mystified why such an elementary organizing task was not proceeding. More than once I thought of calling his local union myself and explaining what was going on, but based on my own experience I didn’t want to get Sean into any “trouble.” You never know with many unions. Those reading this who belong to one of these types of unions today will know what I am talking about.

At one point, with both of us exasperated, I even gave Sean union cards from a different union. I figured maybe his union would get moving if it thought that another union was moving in to grab these workers for themselves. Sean at one point even showed the union staffer a union card from yet another union, telling him that they were going to organize these workers if his local wasn’t. These gimmicks are best avoided, but nothing else was getting the attention of the union.

From the point that the union finally requested that the NLRB conduct an election, until that election was won, it took exactly 3 weeks. That’s it. Three weeks. Again, what was the holdup? Well, the record is clear; during Sean’s entire 15-month quest to try to organize his 8 co-workers into his union each and every delay or dodge was orchestrated by one or the other staff member of his union local. That’s right. The paid staff of the union. They stared at him. Said they would get back to him. They told him they were “working on it.” Apparently being untrained, and lacking in very much real organizing interest or needed experience, the union staff knew little about how the organizing process worked. Is every Teamsters Union local like this? Certainly not. There are many who are organizing, and some are winning. So Sean kept pushing month after month, and I kept telling him that “Something would break loose, it’s bound to.”

Business Union Failure to Organize

All along the game was to see if Sean Tierney would go away. The business union goal after all is to control the members, keep them in the dark, keep them “in line” and looking up to the leadership and staff uncritically. In many unions – and there are far, far too many like this today – the members are not supposed to question things. Members asking questions are viewed with suspicion. Even if the member is trying to organize new members into their own local union. Even if the process of organizing these workers is about as simple as bending over to pick up some money laying on the ground. And you might think from this episode that this local union was overflowing with new members? No, federal government reports indicate that in the past 3 years alone this local has lost 2,800 members.

Sean Tierney is as pro-union as they come in this working class. But rather than put him to work helping to address this crisis, he gets pushed away for almost a year and a half. Sean Tierney alone expanded his shop’s union membership by 10%. Small, yes, but this opens the door to additional organizing where he lives. And in a related postscript, a different Teamster local from a nearby city just won an NLRB election and organized the shop where Sean worked prior to his current driving gig. It’s only a few miles from his home. He worked there and knows many of the workers. While we will never know, maybe if Sean had not been forced to waste time and valuable energy trying to get his own local to function, these workers might have joined his local instead?  You can’t make this stuff up. Well, given that there are hundreds of unorganized shops and workers by the tens of thousands all over the area hopefully his local union will take him seriously when he brings in the next organizing lead.

Follow the Example of Sean Tierney

There are many more details in this saga as Sean has also had to wrangle with his local union over the past several years to bargain a better contract, and to encourage the members to get involved – even a little. He has been working for the past year to ensure that the members in his unit have access to a functioning and trained union steward. Sean, a socialist and a solid union man, has never become demoralized to the point of giving up. He talks with other union members he knows who face similar situations – or even worse – and shows what support he can. He calls me with union questions, or just wanting to compare notes. He stays as active as he can visiting picket lines and doing his duty to push back against Trump. He reads and studies to learn more about how the union can function better, going to meetings and seminars at his own expense. Sean checks for my articles on the Marxism-Leninism Today web site, and he reads other sites that offer useful trade union and political information. The unions tragically provide very little in the way of trade union study and training for members who want to actually build their own union. That needs to change, and has been a problem for many decades.

I want to salute the tough, unrecognized good work of Sean Tierney, as he lives out Foster’s admonition that, “The left wing must do the work.” Each small task to rebuild worker confidence in our trade unions as fighting organizations is a critical step forward. Sean sets an example for us all to follow. He has never allowed his employer, or his own union from deflecting him, demoralizing him, or aggravating him into giving up. If more on the left would take seriously the need to do their part in organizing the unorganized, and rebuilding and strengthening our unions, we would notice the difference.

 

-Chris Townsend is a 46-year union member and leader. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International Union Organizing Director. Previously he was an International Representative and Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and UFCW. He may be reached at: cwtownsend52@gmail.com