Alterman and Rorty

Carrol Cox cbcox at rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
Wed May 27 12:52:47 PDT 1998


I have a more nuanced view of Clinton Mark One (in which I worked). In my view it consisted of: [SNIP]

(iv) a microeconomic policy staff (Bob Reich, Larry Katz, Gene Sperling) who had good ideas about marginal things that could be done to beef up the union movement and improve workers' opportunities. [SNIP]

Did those "good ideas" include repealing the ban on secondary boycotts? That is a far more dangerous constraint on the working class (not just particular union leaders) than is Prop. 226. In most of the years since it was passed there has been a democratic congress, who might at least have forced a president to veto a repeal.

Reform that was more than window dressing for further repression of labor would put that repeal at the top of its agenda.

And if organized u.s. labor had a less racist history, such repeal could also have been near the top of the agenda of the civil rights movement of the 1950s/60s.

Carrol



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