Sure. So, why not discuss immediate, intermediate, and long-term strategies, and also how to link them up? (And let's do so in a language that's clear and accessible.)
I think that critical comments on the UAW on this list are stemming from the fact that the UAW seems to be lacking in the immediate strategies department as well, not to mention anything beyond it. For instance, Diane Feeley writes in "The Stakes of the GM Strike":
>Thirty-four hundred GM workers at the Flint, Michigan Metal
>Fabricating Facility, a stamping plant, walked out June 5. The
>United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 659 voted to strike last January
>over health and safety issue, but the International union
>authorised the action only after management removed new dies
>(used to form parts for GM's 1999 pickup trucks) from the plant.
>They were spirited out over a traditional three-day holiday
>weekend and sent to GM's Mansfield, Ohio plant; at least one was
>damaged in transit.
>
>Officials from the Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW), when faced
>with a similar problem last year, occupied GM's Oshawa, Ontario
>plant, disassembling and hiding the dies before negotiating with
>the company. But in Flint union officials at the local and
>regional level did not take pre-emptive action. Two days before
>the strike, however, when management attempted to move racks
>holding metal parts, 300 workers--including workers from nearby
>plants--blocked the loaded trucks. Later the racks were removed
>by train.
>
>As soon as the dies were brought to Mansfield, the union local
>got in touch with Local 659. But they didn't launch a sympathy
>strike because under the UAW/GM contract those are outlawed. The
>UAW International leadership could have authorised them to strike
>on the basis of ongoing health and safety violations, shutting
>down the Ohio plant, but that didn't happen either. (International
>Viewpoint * Inprecor * Inprekorr)
And we have to discuss the above and more, _without_ thinking that frank discussions of issues + problems will destroy the union. We can't correct the problems if we don't know what they are. _Both_ autoworkers and those of us who are neither on strike nor laid off now but would very much like to do something to strengthen the labor movement need frank + honest discussions. (Actually, autoworkers need such discussions _even more_ than we do.) Let's take it as given that lbo-talkers think that all workers need job security, better working conditions, stronger + more democratic unions, etc., so that there's no need to 'circle the wagons.' And with this premise, where do we start? Where do we go? How? What immediate, intermediate, and long-term strategies do autoworkers need? What of the rest of us, here and abroad, who are also workers? How can we help one another?
Yoshie