I don't think I've ever written that word "boody". It could be "boodie," instead.
For those of us who support the old union ideals (as do many rank and file members in these unions), it does seem difficult to rally around what we have got as representative organization of unions today.
marta
Katha Pollitt wrote:
> Max, maybe I'm missing something in your analysis of govt and labor, but
> as I read the papers, I don't see labor even beginning to put on the
> govt the kind of pressure you would like to see. In its forays into
> electoral politics, the AFL-CIO has supported all sorts of conservative
> candidates (glenn Poshard for governor of Illinois, for example, in l988
> -- a conservative democrat who happened to support certain narrow items
> on the union agenda). After l988, AFL leaders said next time they'd
> throw some $$$ to Republicans as well! Around the country, labor has
> supported really retrograde candidates and ballot issues -- building
> sports stadiums with taxes, "mountaintop removal" in West Virginia,
> reelection campaigns of mayor Giuliani of NYC and Riordan of LA. The
> municipal unions in NYC are unbelievably corrupt -- fixing elections and
> contract votes (the vote to accept a contract that totally screwed the
> worst paid municipal workers was won by fraud) and stealing, stealing,
> stealing. Lots of municipal union leaders are now in jail because of
> this.
> On welfare reform, the unions were slow and waffly -- most unions did
> not even see how workfare would threaten their jobs (NYC transit
> workers leader, now under indictment I believe, actually allowed
> workfare slaves to take over union jobs as long as they were brought in
> by attrition rather than firing!) but if they saw anything, the threat
> to themselves was the only thing they saw. There was NO solidarity with
> the poor, with single mothers, with poor children. No vision of a
> broader social-welfare state.
> Internally, of course, unions are extremely undemocratic, and far from
> building solidarity and workers' power, they weaken both by agreeing to
> contracts that ban sympathy and wildcat strikes, provide for two-tier
> wage structures etc. Even now, with membership in freefall (the AFL
> would have to organize 800,000 new workers a year to get ahead of the
> declines caused by economic changes), they don't put into organizing the
> money they put into... real estate, public relations, huge salaries for
> union officials etc. Only a few ADFL unions really back the
> (theoretically) aggressive Sweeney program of putting resources into
> organizing-- the rest are just waiting for him to go away.
> Recently Sweeney backed Gore, came out in support of WTO. I think it's
> really hard to look at what's actually happening with organized labor
> and find much that is inspiring.
>
> Katha
-- Marta Russell author Los Angeles, CA Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract http://www.commoncouragepress.com/ramps.html