>I've been yakking around a bit over the last couple of days, as background for a Feedmag piece on the Flint strike, and I've got to say that the UAW deserves lots of demonization on this one. The bosses have permitted locals to strike sporadically over the last few years, and they hindered the Flint local from striking until after the offending stamping equipment was removed from the factory. They're pretending that the strikes are really about local issues when they're really about outsourcing, speedup, and disinvestment - issues which, to paraphrase Schumpeter, go to the very core of the capitalist process. They're doing nothing to get the support of other unions or the general public - even though support, at least across the industrial Midwest, is very strong. (There are so many volunteer pickets that they've set up guestbooks for people to sign in.) In other words, the spontaneous consciousness of the working class right now is that the Flint strike is over issues of gre!
at interest to the whole class, but UAW HQ is blowing this opportunity badly. They have no strategy, as I've been saying. Ok, so they're not corrupt. Gee, isn't that a sterling endorsement?
>Doug
Is there a UAW democracy movement comparable to the TDU who could use this as opportunity?
P.S.
A random thought. Do you think it would be any use in the campaign against making the Teamsters a company union to refer to Hoffa as "Baby Hoffa" or "Hoffa lite"?