The Strike Wave Slate is a multi-tendency group of rank-and-file union members in DSA with the unifying belief that the working class must be organized and fight back in this political moment.

DSA must become an organization that can grow and support a fighting working class, which means that we must also be in and of the labor movement.

The guiding star of our organizing is building rank-and-file worker power.

These planks represent our strategic vision that can help merge the socialist movement and the labor movement, turning DSA members from labor supporters into active labor organizers.

On top of successful campaigns and projects from the past term such as Strike Ready and the DSA National Labor Solidarity Fund, we are proposing new campaigns that can expand the scope of our activities beyond labor solidarity work.

Additionally, we will continue to work with and deepen our connection with partner organizations such as EWOC and Labor Notes.

The success of DSA Labor’s Strike Ready Campaign has brought in and trained up an entire cohort of solidarity captains in DSA chapters across the country. We should formalize the Strike Ready campaign as a durable labor organizing structure for the national organization and chapter labor formation and leverage our existing infrastructure to provide comprehensive training, guides, and support for labor solidarity work on a local, regional, and national scale.

Building up the national labor solidarity fund is a key priority as a common resource for DSA chapters to draw upon and as a conduit for connection and communication with the National Labor Commission.

We will recommit to supporting and building EWOC, following the directives of the 2023 national convention to start the formation of local EWOC chapters. Our continued partnership with UE in national EWOC as well as the additional capacity of local EWOC chapters has the potential to spur new organizing and new cohorts of labor activists for decades to come. Additionally, we support the development of more outward-facing organizing projects that can bring the socialist movement closer with workplace militants.

We should plan for long-term success by building the infrastructure to support workers and strategically targeting major contract expirations. Such a project includes the construction of a “Solidarity Hub” which maps these contract expirations across the country and offers model contract language that workers can use in their demands and help raise expectations across the entire working class.

As our organizing matures, we should look to emulate the success of DSA Labor’s national logistics committee which laid the foundation for the UPS Strike Ready campaign and establish new national worker networks that can focus on strategic sectors, employers, or unions. These networks can bring together people based on sharing a strategic industry (e.g. teaching, nursing, or manufacturing), employers (e.g. Amazon, Starbucks), or unions(e.g. UAW, Teamsters).

The NLC will support these networks when workers in given workplaces, industries, or unions express interest and capacity to build such networks. These networks should both connect workers engaging in similar workplace struggles as well as create an “on-ramp” to DSA for coworkers not currently in DSA. Through these new worker networks we can recruit workers from various industries to promote rank-and-file unionism, grow the labor movement, organize our members into strategic industries, and continue the merger of the socialist and labor movements.

We will also collaborate with chapters to help them identify local union and non-union industries, employers, or unions that are strategic for organizing, and help them build jobs pipelines to help their members get jobs in those industries, and support them in organizing on the job once hired.  We will also focus on developing coordinated salt recruitment and training programs on a national scale, including building a salting academy.

In line with the decision made at convention, we reaffirm our commitment to working closely with Labor Notes in pursuit of these goals.. Labor Notes has emerged as a key partner to achieve our labor organizing goals, from providing important skills trainings to connecting socialists with workers in their industries. We should continue to closely collaborate with Labor Notes, hosting industry-specific events, local Troublemakers’ Schools, and linking up socialist organizers with workplace militants.

For too long there has been a perception that “national” DSA is separate from the organizational life of local DSA chapters. The cohort of solidarity captains brought up through Strike Ready now serve as the ‘middle layer’ of activists connecting DSA members to national labor organizing. We need to capitalize on this and integrate the work of DSA national with the work of DSA chapters, giving our membership compelling reasons to see themselves as a part of the most ambitious socialist project in decades and to commit to our organization’s success.

We also need to collaborate with other DSA formations such as the Ecosocialist Working Group and the International Committee to bring our labor work into conversation and coordination with our broader organizing such as Green New Deal and internationalism work. YDSA remains a key partner in our labor organizing and the NLC will work hand-in-hand with the YDSA NLC liaisons to support their work on and off campus.