>Yes, but they also gave pretty good support to local and state public
>employees unions fighting privatization. . . .
-How? The only thing I know of was blocking -then Gov Bush from privatizing Medicaid & -Food Stamps. Not a small thing, but was there -anything else?
Along that lines, Clinton officials refused to allow a number of state programs, in health and human services especially, from handing over contracts to private firms. And the whole Project Labor Agreement approach made sure that in many cases, the local governments had no incentive to privatize just in order to escape unions, since they would just be exchange one union for another.
On the other hand, I always thought AFSCME was pretty lame not to be fighting harder to organize private sector companies that might replace the public employees. SEIU itself has been very aggressive in organizing the non-profit groups that have increasingly taken over social service functions from state employees, a much smarter and flexible strategy that an all-or-nothing anti-privatization stance that AFSCME has generally taken.
-- Nathan Newman