--Doug Henwood
Call me for a consultation after the Republicans and other allies pick-up an unexpected 30 house seats in 2000.
TL
JW Mason wrote:
> >
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > [anyone know more about this?]
>
> > Wall Street Journal - October 6, 1999
> >
> > AFL-CIO PLANS RESTRUCTURING, LOOKS TO REBUILD LOCAL GROUPS
> >
> A little. Most CLCs have no staff, are dominated by one or a few locals,
> typically from the building trades, and have no mission in life other
> than supporting Democrats in local elections (and providing second
> salaries
> to local officials.) Consolidating them sounds like a good idea to me; if
> Tom
> Lehman thinks otherwise, I'd be curious why..
>
> A more interesting aspect of this restructuring not mentioned in the
> article is a
> change in the rules around organizing. In the past, the Article 21
> procedure for establishing jurisdictions was just based on who got to a
> workplace first--it encouraged the "hot shop," low hanging fruit
> approach to organizing that's often been criticized. Under the new
> system, affiliates with a dominant presence in a certain region or
> industry will have the exclusive right to organize there (with exceptions
>
> for some crafts, companies where another affiliate already has a
> presence, and a few other things.) Part of the point of this seems to be
> to force affiliates in declining industries to merge rather than
> opportunistically organizing outside of their core.
>
> Apparently Andy Stern wanted to go farther, and have a formal table
> indicating
> exactly which industries were reserved for which affiliates, but some
> other
> International heads, especially Doug Dougherty of UFCW, refused to give
> up their right, in principle, to organize wherever they chose. More
> broadly, any attempt to organize more strategically faces three
> problems: Some unions, like UFCW and UAW ("The Union of All Workers")
> are built around being amalgamated; organizing is often driven by the
> locals; and most unions in declining industries don't want to merge, and
> don't want to be stuck in them.
>
> Personally I think this could be important, though whether it will
> happen is another story--I'm told something similar was tried under
> Kirkland and never got off the ground. And before Jeff St. Clair
> writes another article attacking me for saying labor is too
> decentralized,
> consider this: historically and conceptually, the dominant place of the
> local in American unions arguably is closely connected to their craft
> basis. So why are people who are so quick to denounce the one kind
> of particularism so ready to defend the other? Whatever happened to
> One Big Union?
>
> One other thing: At the same Executive Council meeting where this stuff
> was approved, the AFL-CIO also voted to support lifting the
> embargo on Cuba for food and medicine and closing the the School of the
> Americas. Not earthshaking news, but worth noting.
>
> Josh