> The fact is that the auto industry in the US is basically organized.
So what about all those Toyota plants in Kentucky and Tennessee, or those Daimler-Benz plants in Alabama?
I still agree with the main thrust of Leo's points: industrial unionism is best, and the free-for-all that's going on in industries like healthcare is shameful. Here in Western PA I know of not only a broad SEIU local (Local 585, which has janitors, county government employees, and so on in addition to nursing home workers) as well as 1199P/SEIU, which have health care workers, but also the UFCW, the Laborers, and -- in areas north of Pittsburgh especially -- the Mineworkers who have organized nursing homes. And as Leo has mentioned, the AFT in some cases and -- in other parts of the state -- the Pennsylvania NEA have organized nursing home and hospital workers. In the case of the UMWA, you have a union in an industry which is just plain dying, and they're trying to survive by taking in health care workers because that's what's hot. Unfortunately, it's just not good for industrial bargaining power. It's to the credit of 1199 that they organize health care workers, and health care workers alone.
>From what I've seen, even the UE has been pursuing something of a "hot shop"
strategy lately, and they've also been trying to get all kinds of hitherto
independent unions to affiliate with them. But despite their great militant
and unsurpassed democratic tradition, they're also shrinking, as Leo has
correctly pointed out. I still think that if the rest of the labor movement
were more like the UE, we would all be in better shape. But that's a
utopian "wouldn't it be nice" fantasy, isn't it?
John Lacny