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Today's
Stories
November
4, 2003
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
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
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Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
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November
4, 2003
Debating the New Unity
Partnership
New
Unity for Labor: Time to Get Started
By TOM WOODRUFF
It's great to see that efforts to rebuild workers'
strength in America that the Service Employees International
Union (SEIU) and other unions are engaged in are provoking a
much needed debate, including the recent article in CounterPunch
by Joann Wypijewski, "The New Unity Partnership: A Manifest
Destiny for Labor."
We hope others will join in, and invite
anyone who wants to hear SEIU's views and concerns in detail
to email alej@seiu.org to ask for a copy of the SEIU discussion
paper, "United We Win: A Discussion of the Crisis Facing
Workers and the Labor Movement."
As for Wypijewski's article itself, some
of the legitimate questions she raises are a little hard to find
in the barrage of personal invective (and even ethnic slurs like
the epithet "oily" directed toward a Greek-American
activist) she directs at a long list of people she doesn't like.
It is bizarre, for example, to see SEIU criticized as a union
with an "all-consuming dedication" that "has signed
up half a million new members in the past few years and that
is not content simply to weigh union revenues against expenses
and leave it at that. SEIU seems to be on a mission from God,
and that is part of the problem."
For years, unions have been criticized
as narrow institutions lacking a sense of mission and vision
about social change. Now, SEIU and a growing number of others
in the labor movement are taking action based on a belief that
working people in America cannot regain the strength we need
without making dramatic changes in strategy and structure. If
that constitutes what Wypijewski calls the sin of "passionate
impatience," so be it.
Wypijewski brushes aside the cold facts
about the status quo, so let's begin there:
Fewer than 1 in 10 private sector workers
in America has union protection -- down from what was once nearly
4 in 10.
Twenty-two particularly nonunion states
have "right-to-work" (for less) laws that make it illegal
to negotiate union contracts requiring every worker to contribute
to union representation, even though all workers in the unit
reap the benefits. Those states are in nearly all cases the same
ones that deny 7 million public employees the right to a union
at all. And -- progressives take note -- those are essentially
the same southern and Rocky Mountain states that provide a reliable
base for anti-worker candidates in every national election.
About 85% of the approximately 16 million
manufacturing jobs still in the U.S. are nonunion.
What union membership remains is mainly
in industries that are losing employment. In some high growth
service sectors (retail trade, business and personnel services,
finance and insurance), the percentage of union membership is
5 percent or less.
Polls show that between 45 and 50 percent
of U.S. workers say they would choose a union where they work
if they could, yet an average of only 84,000 private sector workers
per year make it through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
process to win a union representation election, and only about
a quarter of those have a contract in place five years later.
Left critics have long argued the importance
of worker involvement and democracy, coalition building with
other social movements, outreach to immigrants, and more militant
grassroots action. These are all key ingredients for reviving
labor -- but they won't happen on a large, meaningful enough
scale without two other central ingredients:
1. Industry and market focus.
Before workers go into battle in today's economy, they need
the strategy, resources, and strength to take on a whole industry,
market, or company.
2. Unity based on industry strength
strategies. Unions must act like one movement, not 65 overlapping
and competing organizations that happen to be part of a common
trade association called the AFL-CIO. To build workers' strength
and unity in each major sector requires that unions help and
be accountable to each other by
* Pooling financial, political, bargaining, capital, and community
resources.
* Coordinating in dealing with employers and making elected officials
give the highest priority to reducing employer interference with
workers' freedom to form a union.
* Creating structures or partnerships that unite -- instead of
dividing -- the strength of workers in the same industries, markets,
or companies.
Wypijewski laments that if unions reorganize
themselves to focus on building workers' strength in particular
industries, some workers may lose their traditional union "names
and colors and identifying insignia."
It is strange to see a progressive so
concerned about preserving a status quo that too often consists
of heroic but losing battles and declining strength. What workers
today want more than a particular union brand name is the strength
to win for working families -- and that is hard to build without
a change in labor's structure and culture.
The AFL-CIO has already become a federation
primarily made up of a few big unions. The 6 largest affiliates
represent almost half the members; the remaining 59 affiliates
represent the other half. The 15 largest affiliates represent
10 of the 13 million members -- more than 3/4 of the labor
movement.
But these unions often organize in a
way that divides workers instead of uniting their strength. From
1998 through 2001, at least 16 national unions each conducted
organizing elections for workers in 5 or more different sectors.
Multiple unions organized auto parts workers, truck drivers,
school employees, miners, and many other workers who are not
their union's primary focus. Twelve held NLRB elections for hotel
workers, and 30 different unions mounted organizing elections
for health care workers.
Most importantly, lack of unity behind
an industry-focused strategy leaves the labor movement unable
to deal with the enormous challenges Wypijewski cites: the destruction
of union manufacturing jobs, the growth of the nonunion contingent
workforce, the rise of massive service companies like Wal-Mart
that are setting labor market standards today the way the auto
companies did during labor's heyday. It's true, as she says,
that no one has easy answers to those challenges. But it's also
true that we won't develop them or carry them out as long as
we are neither structured nor united to do so.
Recognizing that these challenges will
not be met as long as each union goes its own way, a number of
national unions have been exploring a new partnership based on
a commitment both to build worker strength in particular industries
and markets and to share resources to do so.
In attacking these unions' emphasis on
whole industry and market strategies, Wypijewski cites two SEIU
campaigns -- Justice for Janitors, and recent organizing by hospital
workers employed by Tenet. In reality, those two campaigns provide
good illustrations of the value of new unity to build industry
and market strength.
In the 1980s, SEIU had as many as four
locals in the same city with contracts with the same building
service employers. Most janitors were in amalgamated locals
that also represented public employees and health care workers
and didn't have an industry focus for janitors. While locals
bargained separately and didn't coordinate, workers' standards
were devastated. Twenty-three of 25 master contracts took backward
steps, health coverage was eliminated, a shift to part-time work
increased, and wages dropped. Nearly a third of the membership
lost their union entirely.
In 2003, 100,000 building service workers
have bargained contracts at the same time. They have won health
care improvements and raises, reduced part-time work, and won
immigration protections and organizing rights. How can it be
that at a time when unions are weaker than 20 years ago, the
economy is in recession, and we have an anti-union president
and Congress, janitors who were losing back then are winning
now?
1. Reorganizing locals for strength:
Most SEIU building service workers
are now united in powerful, industry-focused locals for their
metropolitan area.
2. Uniting behind industry strategies:
These local unions now operate
as one, united national union to take on real estate owners and
cleaning contractors who are often the same from city to city.
Inspired by new unity and new strategies,
janitors -- many of them immigrants -- are involved in their
union like never before. By uniting to use civil disobedience,
coalition building, capital stewardship to harness our pension
power, organizing of non-union workers to strike (instead of
relying on NLRB elections), and the fight for immigrant rights,
SEIU janitors have built a broad-based movement that has grown
from 150,000 to 200,000 workers in a short time. Workers' lives
are dramatically better because the union confronted and changed
an internal structure that may have worked for leaders of weak,
multi-jurisdiction locals but didn't work for workers.
Meanwhile, workers at Tenet, one of the
nation's largest hospital chains, had little success over the
years trying to organize or win good contracts using the old
one-hospital-at-a-time approach. Then, SEIU's 750,000 health
care members united behind a strategy that focused on the largest
chains in the industry and on the whole California market where
Tenet has 40 hospitals.
First, SEIU worked with other unions
to jointly bargain with Kaiser Permanente to set high contract
standards -- including nurse-to-patient ratios that are stronger
than state requirements -- for 60,000 workers, most of them in
California.
Then, it mounted a four-year campaign
on many fronts to convince the entire Catholic Healthcare West
chain to allow employees to freely choose a union and to negotiate
contracts that give workers a real voice in decisions that affect
the quality of care, including staffing committees with arbitration
so management does not have the final say.
That set the stage for a similar nationwide
campaign that took Tenet workers' concerns to legislators, regulators,
health plan administrators, shareholders, community groups, and
the news media. They drew attention to the dangers of inadequate
staffing, joined communities in opposing hospital closings, and
raised issues where Tenet was seeking to acquire hospitals in
five states.
These campaigns were possible because
SEIU has an industry and market strategy for health care and
the focus, resources, current membership strength, and relationships
with community allies and elected officials to implement that
strategy -- just as other unions have those potential strengths
in their core industries.
The result at Tenet was an agreement
that this huge, anti-union private sector employer would respect
workers' freedom to choose a union, accept quick elections (instead
of multi-year legal delays under the NLRB), and guarantee that
once workers voted for the union they would have a contract in
place instead of facing more years of employer opposition. The
raises of up to 29% are the highest ever negotiated by any group
of Tenet workers, and the new Tenet agreement bans mandatory
overtime.
This series of health care worker victories
will increase union strength among private-sector hospital workers
in Southern California from 8% in 1996 to at least 50%. It is
a good example of how a labor movement with industry and market
strategy, focus, and resources can win against large private-sector
employers.
Despite helping more than 600,000 workers
join the union since 1996 (in addition to those who joined through
union mergers), SEIU clearly needs to help workers organize on
a far greater scale. No one has all the answers for how to do
that. But it is obvious that working with other unions in a
new way and focusing more clearly on particular industries and
markets is one place to start.
Progressives like Wypijewski used to
condemn past leaders of labor because they were not trying to
make bold change. It is strange to now see some of the left
turn its fire instead on the very leaders who are trying to reverse
labor's decline. We have offered a specific analysis of why
workers are losing strength and are taking a series of first
steps to start trying to reverse the decline. The major changes
within our union have been debated in every local union and voted
on by the elected delegates to our national convention, and our
United We Win paper exploring the need for new strategies and
structures for labor is both the product of and a tool for discussion
in locals throughout the country. The challenge for critics
is this: if you don't agree with the importance of new unity
and industry strategies to rebuild workers' strength, what do
you propose?
(Tom Woodruff
is executive vice president of SEIU.)
Wypijewski Replies
I am happy to have a hand in the debate, but I
do think it is one that would most profitably be had within organized
labor, and still think it curious that it didn't occur before
five union presidents freelanced their New Unity Partnership,
without any discussion among everyone in labor, as a plan for
everyone in labor. Now the boys are ruffled. So ruffled that
Tom Woodruff mostly ignores the NUP, the subject of my piece,
and Gabe Kramer, in a posting on the portside list where Woodruff's
also appeared, takes a with-us-or-against-us posture, equating
suspicions about the NUP with a To the barricades! defense of
the status quo. Is this what we've come to--the range of imagination
enclosed within the fenceposts of two bureaucratic options?
Kramer distorts most of what I wrote,
so I'll address his points here and there but mostly refer readers
to my original article. Woodruff
is a serious guy who says he wants a serious debate, so let's
first clarify a few things. I did not characterize the passionate
impatience of at least some of the five behind the NUP as a "sin"
but rather as the most charitable explanation for what some in
organized labor see as a plain-old power play. I did not criticize
SEIU for its dedication (that was a compliment) but for, as I
said, its mission-from-God attitude, the certainty that its way
is the way ("Leading the way", as the union's slogan
has it). SEIU's "United We Win" discussion paper has
indeed been floating around and been published in various forms
since last year. It is not the document to which I was referring,
which had a secret life until recently and which is available
to general readers courtesy of Carpenters
for a Democratic Union. While the latter document was heavily
influenced by the former, it also includes some important new
features, such as the drafters' agenda for a remade AFL-CIO,
eliminating, among other things, elected leadership and independent
initiative at the state and local levels. That feature is undoubtedly
less discomfiting to the most backward AFL affiliate leaders
than are the NUP fantasies that would erase their identities
and their jobs by collapsing the federation's 65 unions into
12 or 15, but it is perhaps the most telling. It indicates the
trade-off the reformers are prepared to make, sacrificing democratic
processes and structures capable of autonomous grass-roots action
on the altar of centralized control.
I can hear the creak of knees jerking
already. Mention democracy, and people like Kramer will hasten
to say that it isn't everything, that it's no guarantee of worker
power, that structure alone doesn't determine member dynamism.
Challenge the agenda of those eager to blow up the AFL-CIO, and
others will helpfully point out that the federation is hardly
a bastion of dynamism and democracy, that many of its state feds
and central labor councils are moribund or worse. Let's stipulate
those reflexive responses as true. The questions remain: Why,
in imagining a supposedly new and improved structure for "building
workers' strength" is the matter of workers' power over
the direction of their own organizations given short shrift or
actually disdained? What does it suggest when pages are devoted
to sectoral rationalization and density but barely a word to
membership participation, leadership accountability and class-conscious
politics?
These are not romantic questions, and
don't assume that rank-and-file workers exist in some state of
pre-revolutionary readiness, held back only by their leaders
or their structures--the other reflexive charge leveled at those
who raise the democracy question. I can't help thinking back
to 1995, when John Sweeney took over the AFL-CIO waving the flag
of Organizing as vigorously as the gang of five behind the NUP
now wave the flag of Sectoralism and Density. Maybe those heady
days have been forgotten, those days when one of Sweeney's most
brilliant convention managers, Andy Stern, now president of SEIU,
declared of Sweeney's victory, "This is the revenge of the
organizers." Back then some of us, concerned about the apparent
single-minded focus on numbers, said, OK, but organize for what?
into what kind of organizations? with what definition of power
and what role, beyond dues' payers, for the members? I remember
being told by a Sweeney loyalist, "Those are movement questions,
not institutional questions." The issue was whether the
institution could change enough, open up enough, to give such
movement matters even a fighting chance within unions. I think
the most sour labor observer would have to admit that things
have changed, have opened up--from the space for antiwar organizing
within unions to the about-face on immigration to the participation
of labor in the global justice movement. The numbers, on the
other hand, have not shot up. Nor has union democracy flowered.
And nor has the condition of the working class in general improved.
If any of us had the answer to all of those problems it would
be akin to solving the mystery of the Trinity, because they are
intertwined. What is puzzling is that the NUPsters, having declared
Sweeney a failure, are betting all on a new version of the numbers
piece of his program while warming to Republicans, largely ignoring
social action, advocating a regression on democracy and touting
it as this era's CIO-style revolution. (Kramer says SEIU's leadership
is dedicated to eliminating Bush--whom I never said the NUP was
backing--but ignores the union's financial contributions to and
efforts on behalf of his war-mongering, social-rollbacking, antiunion
agenda-carrier Dennis Hastert.)
Now, it's hard to imagine how the NUPsters
might effect their institutional transformation, particularly
how they might convince most of the rest of organized labor to
give up their unions or transfer some of their members to the
appropriate sectoral union. Again, what is important here is
less the odds on their victory than their premises, and what
gets defined as cutting-edge, forward-thinking "best practices".
Woodruff sees my reference to union traditions, colors, etc.
as a lament to preserve the status quo; actually, it was simply
a recognition that there are union cultures, that unsavory as
some of those may be, workers are attached to them. There is
a reason craft unionism has survived, after all. Can be good,
can be bad, the point is these cultures exist, and changing them,
where they ought to change, simply won't come about as an act
of will on the part of a few smart guys fiddling with structure.
When the Sweeney team came in, all the talk was of creating a
"culture of organizing". Back then it was hoped that
this would come about through exhortation and vast expenditures
on field staff, national campaigns, pr. That worked only so well,
or it worked in the sense that unions organized randomly, without
any sectoral rationale, so now the NUP says this is a mess and
a different culture of organizing needs to be implanted, by force
of structure.
The assumption is that SEIU, HERE, UNITE,
the Carpenters and Laborers--the NUP five--have some superior
culture. Come on, guys; you all have your skeletons, some more
than others. If the Teamsters and UFCW succumb to the NUP's courting
(a dimmer prospect now that SEIU has snubbed their guy and Hoffa's
law school pal Gephardt), would that vault those two into the
ranks of bold, progressive unions? Humility isn't held to be
much of a virtue in organized labor; neither is honesty. It's
good that SEIU particularly has been direct in pointing out labor's
losses (something that until recently no one was ever supposed
to admit publicly). But it's a mistake to pretend it has hit
on the one solution, because it hasn't and it never will--not
because its guys aren't smart enough or sensitive enough but
because there is no one solution, no single "organizer's
toolkit" to class struggle. And, no, that doesn't mean everyone
ought to sit around, spectators to decline, waiting, as Kramer
snidely suggests, for worker self-organization to raise the dawn.
Though let's not disparage self-organization simply because it
doesn't operate by the rules of market density.
Woodruff argues that "market focus"
and restructuring for "unity based on industry strength"
must take precedence among union priorities. So let's think about
those. On paper, sectoral unionism makes a lot of sense: arrange
the unions by economic division, assign workers accordingly,
build density in those sectors, and density will translate into
power. Kramer says I pooh-pooh density. On the contrary, I said
it's not the only thing that matters. For one, how you get there
matters. Moreover, there are different kinds of density. There
is density by locale: numerous unions, of whatever size and structure,
that are able to act collectively to improve the atmosphere for
organizing, defend the working class (union and nonunion) and
fight politically for the people's interests. This is what the
state feds and central labor councils are supposed to do and
sometimes do do. At their best they lessen divisions among all
workers by taking on issues or pursuing political strategies
that reach beyond a narrow union agenda. The degree of density
makes a difference, but, again, commitment to work together and
to agree on a common, class-based agenda are more important than
density. Just look at New York City, with the highest union density,
little militant action relative to the numbers and incredibly
toxic politics, union and otherwise. The NUP would simply change
the structure of state and local bodies, but I'm not sure structure
is so much the problem as leadership. How do you develop and
support leaders capable of inspiring their members, getting disparate
people to cooperate consistently, working in coalition with communities
and exercising sharp political judgement? The NUP's answer is,
You appoint them. Others in a far better position to know than
I say it has to be an organic process. That is never satisfying
to those looking for quick solutions, because it involves time
and attention and the members; and the members might make mistakes
or things might get messy. And there's got to be collective accountability
and ongoing education and a feeling for culture, because one
of the huge things often bypassed in organizing discussions is
the alienation of workers already organized. That is not the
result of low density or sectoral confusion. Certainly it is
arguable that the less alienated, more engaged the already-organized
are, the more they are attuned to and informed about the issues
that unite workers, the more likely they are to participate in
community politics and, dare I say, class politics, including
organizing.
Then there is density by corporation.
Consider, for example, a giant multinational like General Electric.
Just theoretically, would its workers have more power if they
were all joined in one amalgamated union with international alliances,
or if those who make jet engines and appliances were all mustered
in a manufacturing union, and those at NBC in a media union,
and those in financial services in a service-sector union and
all of these different unions had alliances with similarly sectorally
based unions in other countries where GE operates? An argument
can be made either way, and NUP sympathizers can say, Ha, ha!
But you're still talking about jurisdictional rationality. Woodruff
does mention unity by company. And yet, except for size, the
one big theoretical GE union differs totally from the theoretical
NUP scheme in that there is no sectoral purity, so maybe there
could be exceptions. But who decides those exceptions? And what
would be the basis for decision? And where would the workers'
will fit into the picture?
I'm afraid none of this is as neat as
the NUPsters and their advocates would like. In either theoretical
GE example, for instance, who would have the right to tell GE
workers represented by the tiny, independent UE that the union
they or their relatives fought to keep alive in the period of
the CIO's anticommunist purges is really too small and old-fashioned
to deserve to survive? The NUPsters are right that unions, thus
workers, are in competition, undercutting a classic role of unions,
which is to take workers out of competition. (Leave to one side
the fact that historically unions have often divided workers,
not least of all on race, sex and ideology.) They are right that
there needs to be more cooperation, that better centralized research,
say, could save unions resources and duplication, that regional
and national coordination could be improved, that raids and inter-union
wars are counterproductive (though here the NUP unions don't
always practice what they preach). But sectoral rationality is
no guarantee against competition, as rivalry among UAW auto plants
has shown again and again. More than that, it's important that
we not consider the current jurisdictional patchwork simply from
the perspective of top leadership. Why do workers seek to affiliate
with unions that are sectorally inapposite? Why did booksellers
at Powell's on the West Coast go to the longshore union? or corner-store
grocery workers in New York City go to UNITE? or nurses in Buffalo
in the 1980s go to the Communications Workers?
Sometimes they are drawn by the romantic
history of a union, or a trusted personal connection, or a union's
congenial politics, or its role in the community. Sometimes the
obvious choice doesn't have the capacity to work with them, or
is too occupied with bigger shops to be interested in them. Sometimes,
as in the case of those Buffalo nurses, they are revolted by
the corrupt, do-nothing leadership of the sectorally appropriate
local union. Woodruff et al. are right that, all things being
equal, workers favor unions. But all things aren't equal, and
they don't favor just any union. Those grocery workers who began
organizing themselves in New York went to UNITE Local 169 because
its president at the time was a political radical and immigrant
who embraced the vigor of a worker-community campaign to win
the simplest justice for super-exploited immigrant workers said
to be unorganizable. By the NUP criteria it was madness--expensive
in relation to the number of workers organized, unrelated to
the needle trades, disconnected from any concept of market share--and
indeed after the local president died, the International traded
the campaign to the United Food and Commercial Workers. It was,
as UNITE's Bruce Raynor said, much more logical, but the new
leadership was not as committed as the old one and the campaign
lost steam. UNITE, which has a patchy reputation among New York
immigrants, lost trust within the community. People really don't
appreciate being traded like commodities. And New York lost an
extremely energetic, cross-class mobilization that raised fundamental
questions about work, wealth, fairness and the power of collective
action. The campaign forced the state to take action on wage
and hour enforcement in an "industry" that wasn't even
paying minimum wage. It didn't build union power in the traditional
sense, certainly not in the NUP sense, but for a time it made
the union seem more broadly relevant than many of the campaigns
that do.
The NUP plan just rolls over the question
of worker choice, and I mentioned SEIU's deal with Tenet Healthcare
Services because it does too. Woodruff points out all the improvements
the deal brings, but from another perspective the deal shows
that SEIU's reverence for "unity" and "cooperation"
among unions (the theory Kramer characterizes as "everybody
work together to plan more organizing") applies only on
its terms. The Tenet deal is a good example of the contradictions
that can attend strategic market-share organizing. Tenet is the
second-largest for-profit hospital chain. SEIU represents the
largest number of health-care workers. Shop-by-shop organizing
is difficult, expensive and full of setbacks. NLRB elections
are hazardous in a system stacked against workers. But there
has been all sorts of organizing activity and the company, beset
by criminal investigations and more, wants a break too. So the
company buys labor peace in an agreement with SEIU and AFSCME.
They negotiate a contract the workers have had nothing to say
about. This is then to be presented for an up or down vote. The
problem is the California Nurses Association has been organizing
in some of those hospitals, so what have we got? A corporatist
labor-management partnership and a full-out war between SEIU,
embraced by the company, and CNA, which has petitioned the federal
labor board to intervene. I'll leave it to others to explicate
the ins and outs of all this. CNA charges that workers should
have a real choice, that contract provisions are inferior to
those it has negotiated elsewhere and that under the deal Tenet
nurses will not be allowed to exercise vigorous patient advocacy;
SEIU disagrees. It has criticized CNA as a hoary craft union
(though it has alliances with the independent Caregivers and
Healthcare Employees Union and the United Steel Workers) and
has also attacked it for leading strikes.
Unless one lives by the commandment that
big is best, and the smaller should always submit, this is an
unhappy story. Even if CNA wasn't in the picture, advocates of
such strategic deals need to confront the price of collaboration.
When companies hail a deal as a victory, as Tenet did, they usually
have more to gain than the workers. Tenet, by all accounts a
nasty outfit, has said it hopes unionization will help it with
government regulators. The Tenet deal was predated by SEIU's
deal with Kaiser Permanente. This year Kaiser opposed legislation
in California that would have restricted HMOs in the interest
of patients' rights. The LA County Federation of Labor and the
LA Central Labor Council, in both of which SEIU carries the greatest
weight, intervened on Kaiser's side. The legislation failed.
If we think of union members not just as dues' payers, not just
as workers but also as relatives of people not in unions, not
insured, as potential patients, potentially unemployed, as members
of the mass public that doesn't have enough power anywhere, how
did this serve the members?
Woodruff says workers just want unions
that win for them. "Winning" has always been one of
those contested terms. Last year there was a debate over it following
an SEIU strike of immigrant janitors in Boston. The local had
long been corrupt and was finally put under trusteeship, but
member records were in disarray, many of the workers were undocumented
and fearful, so the strike had to be limited. In terms of dollars
and benefits, the resulting contract did not make a huge difference
in the janitors' lives (though it was proclaimed "a huge
victory"), but the workers had done remarkable things: they
made themselves visible in a city that had ignored them; they
split elite opinion; they inspired wide support and tested their
own power. I thought they did win, but the struggle is not over
in that local and it's not clear how much power the workers will
have in it. An SEIU staffer whom I respect a lot said at the
time, "You've got to trust the class", by which he
meant that if people have a union, even if it's a top-down structure
spanning a couple of states and so designed to limit their participation,
they can fight for control of it. He's right, but he was also
under no illusions. It's hard enough for workers just to keep
everything together in their lives; most of them won't have the
energy to fight inside and outside the union. An SEIU member
who read my article in CounterPunch wrote about being reassigned
recently to a local organized-to-win on sectoral lines. "Everybody
in the local has similar interests", the letter said. "However,
this new local has an appointed leadership that has made only
the faintest step toward involving the rank and file in the day-to-day
running of the local. No mechanisms exist whereby the members
can empower themselves. Otherwise, I would not hesitate to recommend
that [sectoral locals]. If what is going on in my SEIU local
is any indication of what is in store for the labor movement
nationally, we're in trouble."
Kramer says I'm so obsessed with the
rank and file and so eager to bash the NUP that I don't care
if workers have the power to challenge huge corporations and
right-wing movements. He then offers the example of Spanish workers
from the '30s and South Africans in COSATU to illustrate the
age-old "tension between worker control and coordination
of large, multi-faceted campaigns". Who disputes such tension?
Of course, those workers were wrestling with it in the context
of a mass movement, quite a different kettle of fish from what
pertains in the US today.
Maybe the biggest difference between
my interlocutors and myself is in our perceptions of the relationship
between union power and class power, and between institutions
and movements. I know it's sacrilege to say this, but I don't
think that even if unions devoted all the money and people they
have to organizing new members, by sector or otherwise, it would
fundamentally shift power in this country in their favor or dramatically
change the situation of the majority of people on the short end.
And, just so I'm not misinterpreted, that's not to say they shouldn't
organize or innovate, and not to deny that, obviously, workers
want "the good things in life", as Kramer helpfully
reminds us. But two-thirds of the working class are employed
by small businesses, and unions, in the NUP or not, have no interest
and no strategy for them. More and more Americans are being destabilized
by the global economy, more and more internationals linked exploitatively
into the US economy, and the formula of politics-for-organizing,
advanced by the NUP and the AFL, has limited application for
them. Seventy million Americans have lousy or no health insurance,
others are teetering because, with or without a union contract,
the cost of coverage is battering employers, and not since 1992,
when Bill Clinton asked them to ease off, have the unions been
actively engaged on the issue. (The NUP seems actually to be
going backward, its document mentioning health coverage as a
benefit of employment. SEIU is on record for universal coverage,
as are a lot of unions that do nothing particularly to advance
it.)
For decades unions were powerful and
union members got a lot of the good things. They got those things,
though, at the expense of others, their unions by and large perceiving
their fortunes linked more to the needs of the state and the
capitalist class than to those of the mass of the people. It
was, additionally, an illusory power; when their "partners"
tired of them, the unions found themselves isolated and clueless,
remote from the vast working class, from the remnants of the
social movement they had disdained, even from their own members.
SEIU's discussion paper says power was illusory because all the
time their numbers were looking good, unions were losing density.
Surely the people at SEIU know that an explanation suitable for
understanding how a product lost market share, while true, is
insufficient for understanding the course of organizations subject
to human passions, peccadillos and politics. As an analysis that
points to a plan that can be drafted and measured, however, it's
terrifically alluring. So the strategy of some in the NUP (I
doubt Doug McCarron has such interests) seems to be: build union
power, i.e. numbers, and these restructured, beefed-up institutions
can lead a social movement. I don't think it works that way,
and historians like Piven and Cloward, and most recently Dan
Clawson, have amply illustrated this. If institutions can't create
mass movements, though, they can do things that help or hinder
their development. Currently no one constituency that we might
imagine as part of a mass movement is strong enough by itself.
How do they get stronger? Maybe by doing things that make everyone
a little stronger, by building their own base (physically but
also ideologically and culturally) while also championing the
interests of those beyond it--in labor's case, the working class,
which we might construe today quite broadly. There are plenty
of people in and out of unions who have been thinking about the
relationship between democracy and power, and about the interconnection
between labor (union and nonunion) and health care, labor and
housing, labor and poverty, labor and race, labor and human rights,
labor and the social contract, and so on. It would be good if
the same energy that has gone into seeking the magic bullet for
organizing since 1995, and that is now being diverted into the
deceptive NUP, was applied, in true unity, to these deeper questions
of the unions' relevance to their own members and the class at
large.
PS: About "the oily Tarpinian",
frankly this fellow has so perfected the distinctively American
style of the pr hack, slipping in and out of his principles to
suit his audience and moneyed client, that ethnicity is one thing
I've never attached to him. In old days this American type was
known as a snake-oil salesman; next time I'll use something more
modern--"sleazy", perhaps, or "slippery",
"eel-like". By the way, I believe Tarpinian is of Armenian,
not Greek, extraction, but I wouldn't dream of accusing Woodruff
of making an ugly ethnic association.
Joann Wypijewski
can be reached at: jwyp@thenation.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 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
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