Don't mourn. Organize.
"We're not trying to divide the labor movement - we're trying to rebuild it. We have to do everything in our power to help workers. But when you're going down a road and it's headed in the wrong direction, and you know where the road ends, you got to get off the road and walk in a new direction where there is hope." -- SEIU President Andy Stern
I'm still not sure what to make of today's seen-it-coming-for-weeks AFL-CIO schism, though I'm sure happy the deed is done at last. A unified labor movement is important, but it's also nearly useless once the inevitable stagnation and inertia creep in, bringing the olde beer-gut-and-silk-tie "Big Labor" stereotype back into fashion. Let's face it, organizing is far more important than throwing money at the Democratic party, the latter which seems to have been John Sweeney's genius strategy for the past decade. Lots of news reports have been focusing on how this schism could redirect needless energy to internal battles, causing the labor movement to slip even further into the abyss. Not true: instead we'll see a new organizing strength and focus in key parts of the labor movement, and the resulting victories will start rocking the inertia out of the Sweeney types, eventually rebuilding unity from a stronger footing.
As for the effect this schism has on the Democratic Party: if anything, we left-wing Democrats should watch and learn. Our stodgy moderate party might be long overdue for an invigorating schism too.
posted by Mark D. @ 6:03 PM |
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6 Comments:
"Let's face it, organizing is far more important than throwing money at the Democratic party..."
I'd like to comment two fold.
1) organizing is important I agree, however, listening to your members' or potential members' concerns is much more important. This withdrawl from the AFL-CIO just goes to show that these big national unions don't serve their constituents anymore. They have gotten too big and the point is being lost.
2) A big part of the reason many of us voted against a union at the UofM was the over zealous support of the democratic party. Many graduate students loathe the Democrats. I say this because many grad students are Greens and, to a lesser extent, Republicans. They didn't want any part in an organization who supported them.
With that said, there definitly is an important role for unions in the American workforce. Both my grandfathers were union members and many of my uncles and aunts are too, it is time for unions to again serve the little guy, the worker.
Wake up chumps. Socialism is NOT where its at. Even Blair has realized it.
"What type of social model is it, that has 20 [million] unemployed in Europe, productivity rates falling behind those of the USA; that is allowing more science graduates to be produced by India than by Europe; and that, on any relative index of a modern economy - skills, R&D, patents, IT, is going down not up... Of the top 20 universities in the world today, only two are now in Europe.”
You can't continue to pretend you are helping people with this union and socialism crap. The evidence is overwhelmingly contrary.
-censored
Ooh, the dreaded unions=socialism argument. Man Censored, your Limbaughian playbook sure is diverse. What next? Please amaze us with your humor and logic!
david1369: I'm not sure what you're trying to say, really. Listening to members' and potential members' concerns is absolutely central to organizing, I wonder why you think otherwise?
And as for the grad union drive: I didn't detect much DFL presence in the movement myself, correct me if I'm wrong. And if Green supporters voted against a union simply because the DFL was involved, then they are idiots. Republicans are traditionally anti-union, and my guess their major constituency lay in the science, and engineering departments -- which are also coincidentally flooded with money these days. The vote was essentially class-based: well-paid grad students in the sciences voted against the union because they perceived they had little to gain from it (given their relatively posh paychecks) and the foreign nationals in those areas have a traditional wariness of joining American labor unions.
But yeah, the "little guy, the worker" needs a serious uplift these days, and though it's wrong to say that unions "serve" them (workers *are* the unions), I dig your overall support.
I'm not so sure about any real changes to the political operations of organized labor, particularly on the state and local level. SEIU locals will continue to belong to regional councils and statewide AFL-CIO organizations, and will continue to cooperate in get-out-the-vote drives and other local political activities.
Just wanted to point out that I completely agree with the basic principle of spending money to organize rather than throwing it at Democrats who see unions as nothing more than a cash cow. Union members are much more likely to vote Democratic than workers who are not organized, so why not attempt to expand the base?
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