> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>
> Nathan, it's impossible to separate organizing from real world
> politics--this
> merger movement will do nothing for organizing. It will only
> make it harder to
> organize.
There I disagree. The skills needed to get already organized people to phone banks to support local politicians is a very different set of skills from supporting new organizing. There are many CLCs with good COPE programs and lousy organizing programs.
You may be right that this restructuring will make things worse, but I am skeptical of that given how many CLCs do so little. The current structures were a product of dismantling the old CIO councils after the left-led unions were expelled, then creating new institutions after the AFL and CIO merged. Instead of the orientation to new organizing that had been the hallmark of the CIO councils, the new CLC structures were part and parcel of the virtual end of serious new organizing in the 1950s. They increasingly became arbitrators of turf conflicts and executors of COPE political programs - and often little else. Obviously, the CLC structure is not itself solely responsible for the drop in organized labor from 35% of the private workforce down to 10%, but its birth coincides with the beginning of that slide.
The last discussion we had was about "centralization" versus "decentralization" but the other big issue in labor organizing is lateral separation between different unions in the same location. IN many mays, decentralization of the labor movement between different local unions helps encourage lack of mutual support at the local level, since any wins for one union does llittle for the others.
The new CLC structure by centralizing control from the AFL-CIO down will create structures at the local level that are ideally more responsive to cross-union support and imperatives of new organizing, instead of being responsive merely to the largest unions in an area that are already organized.
That may have bad effects in some areas where the large local unions have been progressive and innovative, but in other areas it will shift power from conservative building trades and self-satisfied large locals to those seeking to organize new immigrant workers and other peripheral industries that have little clout in such local councils, but have become a priority in national organizing strategies.
I'm not going to bet the farm on one result or the other, but I find your faith in the wonders of local CLCs to be a bit odd. Has your experience with them been that great?
--Nathan Newman