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Today's
Stories
December 1, 2003
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
December
1, 2003
The New Unity Partnership
Bureaucratizing
to Organize?
By HERMAN BENSON
What John Sweeney did unto Lane Kirkland in 1995,
may now be done unto him. On September 18, this year, Sweeney
announced he would run for reelection as AFL-CIO president, along
with Rich Trumka, secretary-treasurer, and Linda Chavez-Thompson,
executive vice-president. But his term of office doesn't expire
until mid 2005, almost two years to go.
Ordinarily such a premature declaration
would seem strange. Not this time, however, because Sweeney needs
to forestall a not-so-subtle drive by five international union
leaders to push him out. They had planted stories in Business
Week and in the American Prospect about his probable 'retirement'
in 2005 (news to him!); they were already mulling over the choice
of his successor. The pressure on Sweeney continues. When the
New York Times reported that he would run for reelection, it
added, "Some labor officials questioned whether Mr. Sweeney
might reverse himself and ... not seek another term."
The five were banding together, they
said, because at a time when labor must grow or die, the AFL-CIO
remains passive and impotent. Calling for change, they propose
to show the way to organize the unorganized. And so memories
of the 1995 AFL-CIO convention in New York! That's when Sweeney,
at the head of a coalition of international presidents, proclaiming
that labor must grow or die, called for change and proposed to
lead the federation in a drive to organize the unorganized. His
drive for change succeeded only partially. He was elected AFL-CIO
president to head a new leadership; he beat the drums for organizing;
he called upon affiliates to put forces in the field; he recruited
hundreds of eager students for a demonstrative summers of organizing.
But it didn't work. Now, eight years
later, back to square one. Despite his exhortation, the response
from the established labor leadership was limp. There have been
some gains in organizing, but the unionized section of the private,
nongovernment, work force remains at the dangerously low 9%.
Now, the restive five international union
leaders, publicly expecting Sweeney to bow out, have joined together
in a formal organization, partially inside the AFL-CIO and partially
outside, complete with a name, New Unity Partnership. Time and
tide wait for no one. They intend to reorganize themselves and
then demonstrate to the labor movement how to organize the unorganized.
The implication of their message: Lane Kirkland and Tom Donahue,
the AFL-CIO old guard and all their predecessors, talked of organizing;
but did nothing. Sweeney promised to organize, but accomplished
next to nothing. But this time, really and now, they will organize.
Together, the five international presidents
make up an odd combination: Douglas McCarron, Carpenters Union;
Bruce Raynor, UNITE; John Wilhelm, Hotel union; Terrence O'Sullivan,
Laborers; Andy Stern, Service Employees.
In 1995, the Carpenters and UNITE both
voted for the old guard against Sweeney the reformer. The other
three backed Sweeney. When McCarron pulled the Carpenters out
of the AFL-CIO, Sweeney announced that Carpenter locals would
be barred from AFL-CIO state and city federations. In a serious
rebuff, an unusual coupling of the building trades and the New
Unity Partnership defeated Sweeney and blocked his move.
Wilhelm and O'Sullivan head two unions
once heavily infiltrated by organized crime. Their unions, at
least at the national level, were freed from organized crime,
not by internal insurgency and reform, but by the U.S. Department
of Justice. Wilhelm and Stern, who have both earned reputations
as modern, progressive leaders, are allied with McCarron who
exchanges mutual public expressions of admiration with President
Bush.
Unlike Sweeney, the Partnership starts out with a scientific
plan scrupulously worked out on paper by research workers, complete
with graphs and statistical charts. The NUP program is inspired
by a 44-page analysis prepared by Stephen Lerner of the SEIU
organizing staff. The key aim of any organizing effort, according
to this plan, is for unions to win a decisive market share in
industries by increasing "union density" and controlling
the "labor supply" and so gain the ability " to
take wages out of competition and raise standards."
According to Lerner, here's the problem:
"The current structure of the labor movement stands in the
way of organizing workers and building increased strength for
workers at every level of the labor movement." And so, they
would reorganize the labor movement, but really reorganize it:
Unions must stop taking the lazy way out; no more picking up
whatever is easy to organize; and so no more "general workers
unions" that reach out for anyone who will pay dues, from
laborers to nuclear scientists. They must concentrate on increasing
that "density" in their assigned basic markets. We
have to get rid of that clutter of little organizations, those
"corner store" unions which are happy with a tiny,
selective membership so long as they pay enough dues to sustain
the officers' salaries.
The graphs and charts demonstrate that American industry is shaped
into 15 great segments: Services, Government, Manufacturing,
Mining, etc etc. And so, we have to get rid of that useless proliferation
of impotent unions and organize into 12 - 15 big, powerful unions,
each in its defined industrial segment. To get there, we must
eliminate the defectives, merge some, swap locals and members,
and end with those powerful few, each with its authorized clearly
defined sphere of influence.
The formation of the NUP has been compared
with the rise of the CIO within the old AFL, but differences
are more striking than similarities. The CIO arose in response
to the turbulent, spontaneous, often uncontrollable initiative
of thousands of workers. The NUP arises out of the brain of well-meaning
idealistic union staffers.
The ideological flavor of the plan recalls
the old-fashioned disputes of yesteryear; a weird combination
of old AFL conservatism with its strictly assigned jurisdiction
and the old radical industrial unionism with its imaginary unions
concocted out of wheels and charts.
The five in the NUP promise to plunge
forward. Success, they say, will induce others to join in. It
will be interesting to see how they solve their own immediate
problems. One of the five, the SEIU, has many of the characteristics
of the "general workers" union they want to abolish.
Will it swap away all its government workers and other incidentals?
Will the Laborers union fork over its 500,000 mail handlers and
the millions of dollars in federal insurance money that goes
along? Will the Laborers and Carpenters merge into a single construction
union and convince, say, the IBEW electrical workers to join
and surrender the autonomy it now enjoys in its limited field?
UNITE has nothing to swap; its basic industry is in collapse.
Who will define the limits of its ultimate imperial domain? Such
questions, limited when confined within the NUP five, would be
magnified a thousand-fold if extended to the rest of the labor
movement.
Like many a grand plan emanating out
of the minds of great thinkers, the NUP project requires that
its leaders be endowed with extraordinary authority. Naturally,
they are impatient with questions of union democracy. Not necessarily
hostile to the idea as an abstraction, but impatient with anyone
who would focus on the subject as a practical need.
"It is too narrow to talk of union
democracy only ," writes Lerner. (Would it not be "narrow"
to talk only of anything?) "If only 10% of workers in an
industry are unionized it is impossible to have real union democracy
because 90% of the workers are excluded." An elusive formulation
which implies that the 10%, we who are organized, must wait for
our union democracy until that 90% come along, which could be
a long, long time. Actually, as AUD insists, union democracy,
can be a spur to organizing by making the labor movement more
attractive to recruits. But the NUP seems to see union democracy
as an inconvenience, even an impediment; in any event, its whole
program is permeated with that "narrow" spirit.
Those few massive unions, with their
exclusive jurisdiction, would allow no refuge for workers who,
fed up with a highhanded officialdom, seek more congenial representation.
This is the no-raiding pact elevated to the point of fanaticism.
The NUP proposes to eradicate any element of autonomy for state
and city AFL-CIO federations; all delegates would be selected
by the internationals not by affiliated locals. State and city
federation presidents could serve only part time. The federations
would be ruled by full time executive vice presidents, not elected
by the delegates, but appointed by the national AFL-CIO. The
local federations would lose control over their own money; all
per capita payments would go to the national AFL-CIO. These organizational
trappings are never explicitly justified; they are simply enunciated
and shoehorned to fit into the NUP conception of a newly bureaucratized
labor movement.
This vision of a highly centralized labor
movement which restrains membership initiative in an authoritarian
straightjacket is no mere bad dream, no reverse utopia. The model
is already in operation. The Carpenters union has already been
reorganized to show the way. Its locals have been reduced into
impotent units. Merged into sprawling regional councils, locals
are not permitted to pay any officers or staff members; their
main source of income, the work tax, is taken over by the councils.
Locals have lost all control over collective bargaining. No member
can hold any paid staff position in the council or any local
without the permission of an all-powerful executive secretary
treasurer. Local delegates, who elect the EST, cannot hold a
paid union job without his or her endorsement.
Support for the NUP comes from divergent
sources: From a younger generation of union leaders, social idealists
(for want of any better term) who are impatient with the slow
pace of progress and will let nothing to stand in the way. With
them are the congenital authoritarian types. What binds them
together, at this juncture, is the conviction that if they could
be relieved of the "narrow" restraints of democracy
all power placed in their hands, they could save the labor movement.
Unskilled, low-wage workers, immigrants, and even undocumented
workers make up a large part of the membership of four of the
five NUP unions: Laborers, SEIU, Hotel, and UNITE. Huddled masses
yearning to be free, make way for the experts and idealists!
The five unions are already reaching
out to others who they feel share their values, in particular,
the Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers. They
hope for support from liberal Republicans and from Karl Rove,
Bush's chief advisor.
They are not likely to reshape the whole
labor movement. Extensive resistance is unavoidable: On the one
hand, from grassroots local leaders and rank-and-file activists
who would welcome an effective program to organize the unorganized
but want a voice in running their own unions; on the other hand,
from complacent, entrenched office holders who simply distrust
any program of action, good or bad. In any event, given the current
political and economic trends in the country and in the world,
even the best program of organization will continue to run into
heavy employer resistance.
If AUD is correct, and a major breakthrough
for the labor movement requires cultivating the spirit of freedom
in unions and in the nation and not its stifling, this plan is
off the track.
But it does seem clear that the NUP will put substantial resources
into organizing. If they follow through, we can expect progress.
Bureaucracy at its best, spiced with a dash of idealism, is bound
to chalk up some real achievements in organizing the unorganized.
If they fail, it will be another in a line of disappointing and
discouraging efforts.
If they do succeed, the danger is that
they, like the Carpenters union, will deepen the trend toward
bureaucracy and authoritarianism in the labor movement. And so
while we can't wish them well in their drive to bureaucratize
the labor movement, we can only hope for successes in their effort
to organize. In any event, defense of union democracy will remain
more relevant than ever.
Herman Benson
is a member of the Association for Union Democracy. This article
originally appeared in Union Democracy Review. He can be reached
at: info@uniondemocracy.org
For a more detailed account of the NUP
read JoAnn Wypijewski's story for CounterPunch: The
New Unity Partnership: a Manifest Destiny for Labor.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
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