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THE STRIKE AS THE ULTIMATE STRUCTURE TEST 209 Within days, a compromise was reached, and Graves and Miller were elected to represent Tele. And at the opening of negotiations on August 17, Payne and Graves attended the first negotiations. Management was astound- ed, and they seemed to understand the fight was over. We had moved every single unit in the hospital. During the course of the negotiations, Kelly built a solid relationship with Payne and with all the leaders from Tele. I had to leave in November, just after the US election because I had way overstayed the date by which my director at Harvard had said I needed to return to teaching. I handed the negotiations over to the PASNAP organizing director, Mark Warshaw. When I first told the nurses I had to leave and that we had a transition plan, they were nervous. Terrified, actually, but I knew that by that point they knew, really deeply knew, that they were winning and almost done. They were confident in themselves, and I stressed repeatedly that I was only a tactician in a serious power fight between them and management. In early December 2016, by the time a real strike vote was needed—not a vote for picketing, but a vote to strike—to get management to move off their insistence that only small raises would be given, Payne didn’t just participate in the strike vote, she helped lead it. It was even more important than the vote she had ignored back in July—the vote to send the ten-day legal notice to picket. Trump had been elected US president, and management was smelling blood. At that crucial moment, Tele stepped in to become central actors in winning a terrific first collective agreement. The workers had forged an- un breakable solidarity bond through their unpaid, all-volunteer, high-participa- tion, open, democratic negotiations. Payne told me that in the final days, actually the final 18 hours—there was an 18-hour round-the-clock last day of negotiations, “I wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave. I am for fair pay, and I was not letting management not give us a fair pay raise.” Miller, who was inseparable at that point from Payne, told me: I kept saying to people the process is fascinating, a slow chisel away, all the way to the end, with 18-hour days, with people say- ing, “I am not going to leave. I am going to sit right here to the end.” I remember when it was finally over, that last day, we got the wages, we got some remaining little stuff, too, but it was big, and the raises were big. And it’s all big—especially when they [man- agement] don’t want to give you anything. We were so burnt out. And then I went home thinking, “Oh, my God. I can’t believe this shit happened.” I even cried when I drove home, I was crying. On the blackboard, on that final, 18-hour day, as she walked out, Payne wrote, “Thank you, Jesus.” On December 23, the day the workers voted to ratify their first contract, she sent a text message to Kelly. He gave it to me, and Payne agreed I could include it here in its entirety: 210 NO ONE SIZE FITS ALL Hey Patrick. I wanted to personally thank you for all the work and time you sacrificed on this contract. Up until the very end, I still did not believe our contract could be this good the first time around. I know myself that I was not easy to deal with. I have very strong convictions. And so does my floor, telemetry. It was hard for myself and the floor to swallow that the union got in. I did not believe in the process. After last night and waking up this morn- ing I have now realized that we are in fact stronger together. And we can accomplish so much in this profession together. Thank you for being one of the lead organizers and helping to push this through. We now have a true voice and damn good contract!!! Enjoy your holidays with your family. I am sure they miss you! CONCLUSION: BECAUSE WORKERS, NOT PROFESSIONAL STAFF, HAVE TO DECIDE TO STRIKE, REAL WORKER AGENCY AND UNION DEMOCRACY PRODUCE AND RESULT FROM REAL STRIKES Trade union and strike leaders who have experienced genuine union democracy know that the rank and file have a great deal to teach them. John Steuben28 I asked Payne recently what she would say if it were five years from now and someone in a non-union hospital was asking her opinion about forming a union. She thought for a couple of seconds and said: I would tell somebody if they need a union, to be patient and be prepared to fight for what you believe in, and, you have to fight for every nurse in the hospital, you can’t have a union and be self- ish. You can’t be I, I, I. It’s not about you, it’s about the people, the entire population. In the end, as Payne herself said to Kelly in the pre-Christmas text, she wasn’t convinced about the union in the beginning and even after she had first changed her mind about participating (and convinced her entire unit to back the union). Had Tele not completely flipped its position about building a strong union, they would not have won a life-altering contract. That Payne became the strike vote leader—in a department with a 100% strike vote and after run- ning the anti-union campaign—is a powerful lesson in how best to build worker agency. THE STRIKE AS THE ULTIMATE STRUCTURE TEST 211 This real-life struggle, set against the backdrop of a horrible year for the working class in the United States, one characterized by disunity and division, reaffirms the argument laid out by Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin in Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions.29 Their book details with exacting evidence that the unions of the CIO heyday that were least oli- garchic and the most democratic were also the most radical. Today, PASNAP—but not just PASNAP—proves the same point. Unions prove it in today’s strategic sectors, mainly but not exclusively the service sector, where schools, universities, hospitals, and health care systems are growth industries where workers still have strategic labor market power. The mostly female workers who dominate in these two sectors of the economy—sectors increasingly under attack from accounting firms, hedge funds, and Wall Street that attempt to suck the life out of education and health care, to turn students and patients into profit centers—have the ca- pacity to hold the line on austerity. They are building or rebuilding unions like those built in 2016 at Einstein Medical Center and by nurses and techs in a half dozen other hospitals in Philadelphia in the same year. Building strong, democratic unions in strategic sectors, sectors made up of enough workers who are hard to replace, and workers who have a kind of moral authority in mission-driven work, is a strategic choice of leadership, not something dictated by the constraints of global trade deals, though priori- ties on sectors should be informed by the effects of neoliberalism. Of course, there are many sectors of workers where using the strike weapon is not fea- sible, but that was also true a hundred years ago. The key to rebuilding working-class power is a more intense focus on questions of strategy—the strategy of which workers to focus on, why, when, where, and how. 212 NO ONE SIZE FITS ALL TABLE 2 PASNAP 2016 New Organizing Snapshot First Hospital (and Unit, Date of Vote Count Total Unit and Contract If Applicable) Election (Yes–No) % Turnout Vote Eagleville Hospital 94 of 100 voted Sep. 13, Aug. 20, 2015 78–8 RNs (94%) 2016 Eagleville Hospital 71 of 90 voted Sep. 13, Sep. 11, 2015 62–9 techs (79%) 2016 Delaware County Jan. 15–16, 294 of 330 Apr. 20, Memorial Hospital 164–130 2016 voted (90%) 2017 RNs Howard University Jan. 19–20, 633 of 838 Dec. 5, 516–117 Hospital RNs 2016 voted (76%) 2016 360 of 470 Dec. 7, St. Christopher’s RNs Feb. 8–9, 2016 311–9 voted (77%) 2016 St. Christopher’s 20 of 29 voted Dec. 7, Feb. 10, 2016 18–2 outpatient (69%) 2016 Delaware County 78 of 102 voted Apr. 20, Memorial Hospital Feb. 19, 2016 61–17 (76%) 2016 techs Einstein Medical 806 of 926 Dec. 23, Apr. 8, 2016 463–343 Center RNs voted (87%) 2016 Mercy Hospital of 242 of 296 voted Sep. 7, 2016 117–125 (lost) —— Philadelphia (90%) 318 of 360 Pottstown Hospital Sep. 7, 2016 189–129 2017 voted (88%) Total newly organized in 2016 (excluding 3,005 newly organized; 3,300 with growth in new units since election 2015 numbers) THE STRIKE AS THE ULTIMATE STRUCTURE TEST 213 APPENDIX: EINSTEIN WEEK OF 7-25 CONDENSED RAP I’m sure you’ve heard the good news—Einstein has officially caved, and agreed to not appeal again and to come to the negotiations table! Why do you think they finally agreed to respect your decision? Einstein finally caved because of all the hard work you and your co-workers have been doing, and the power you’ve built in the hospital. Getting to a majority on the petition, talking to the Board of Trustees, getting the support of Philly state senators, and sending a 10-day notice to Einstein informing them that you’d be picketing in front of the hospital—this is why Einstein is coming to the table, you’ve built real power.