>As for rank-and-file workers, a lot of them are immigrants and others
>reflect a lot of the mixture of cultural attitudes in our society. But the
>union leadership continues to educate their members and are moving them
>along.
Nathan, with all this organizing of which you give us examples, it was surprising to read in the WSJ last week about how much union membership and more importantly the number of strikes have plummetted over the last two decades (strikes were falling before Reagan's busting of the air traffic controllers). I suppose if these forms of the union led class struggle are disappearing, it is time to turn to trade politics, but I wouldn't want to accuse Sweeney of bad faith.
>As for subcontractors, it is literally illegal for the sweatshop workers to
>picket the main employer or picket for a boycott of their products in case
>of a strike. It is really hard to convey how abysmal labor law is in the
>area of subcontracting-- literally, you might as well say unionism is
>illegal in most sweatshops to all extents and purposes.
Gosh I didn't know that. Hey, why hasn't the AFL-CIO already called out tens of thousands of workers to protest that esp since the Harkin bill, import bans only mean more of those sweatshop subcontractors will be within the US (employing workers who labor long hours for little pay while their children are sent back to China as Somini Sengupta reported on the front page of the NYT a few months back)?
Yours, Rakesh