The concept of working class solidarity and working class interest that is generally used in these discussions, and which Doug seems to be using here, is altogether too abstract and ungrounded for my taste, operating without reference to what unions are capable of doing in given circumstances. Every union, even the biggest and most powerful, has limited resources -- only so much staff to do the organizing, only so much money in its budget to spend, only so many occasions on which it can mobilize its membership, only so much political capital it can expend. These limits are not of a strict zero-sum game nature, although they do have a zero sum game aspect: to the extent that you use the resources wisely, informed by a sensible political strategy with the hope of attaining concrete wins and goals, the resources have an elasticity that allows one to extend them further then they might ordinarily go. But that elasticity also works even stronger in terms of contraction: political capital foolishly used and squandered means that the remaining political capital will contract dramatically, given the extent to which such capital is at least as much a matter of perceived as actual political strength. Looking at the 1997 mayoral elections in terms of the political capital a union has to expend, it simply made no political sense, I would argue, for the UFT and 1199/SEIU to pour resources into a losing cause, and one in which they would end up with contracted political capital and a vindictive prick gunning for them.
Certainly, to the extent to which different unions can coordinate their resources and political capital in campaigns, the chances of success are a lot greater. That made the difference, for example, in the first 1989 Dinkins-Guiliani contest, which Dinkins won. It was the political ineptness of the Dinkins administration, which managed to turn incumbency into a disadvantage by alienating its own base, that led to the reversal of fortune in 1993. This was true not only with respect to labor such as the UFT, but also with respect to the African-American community, which turned out in smaller numbers for Dinkins in 1993. He would have won in 1993 if his African-American vote simply turned out the way it had in 1989. But it is not as easy as one might think to coordinate union efforts, because union interests do not always coincide, and on some occasions are in direct conflict. [Try talking to an AFSCME official representing prison guard locals about how the increased state funding for prisons and the corresponding decreased state funding for education must be fought.] As a political concept, the 'working class' operates at a very high level of abstraction; the closer one moves to the concrete conjuncture at specific times and places, the more all sorts of cross-cutting divisions appear. Unions have to fashion political strategies that work, deploy limited resources to good effect, in these concrete conjunctures, and not at the high levels of abstraction which generate interesting philosophical discourse and conversation.
I do believe in a notion of union responsibility to working class solidarity, but in a more limited and more concrete way that it is generally used, or that Doug seems to be using it. It seems to me that a union like the UFT has a responsibility to pursue solidaristic, pro-active policies with respect to public education, policies in the interest of students and their families as well as in the interests of teachers and other educational workers. Similarly, 1199/SEIU has such a responsibility with respect to health care, and so on. It is an altogether different matter, I would argue, how such unions deal with all sorts of other issues outside of their specific bailiwick: I do not think that it is reasonable to expect unions to expend a lot of their resources on such issues, no matter how deserving of support they may be. As a general rule, I think that NYC unions do a better job of exercising class solidarity in the sense that I define it than Doug gives them credit for -- certainly the two largest, the UFT and 1199/SEIU, do so in a context where the consumer partners in a broad based provider-consumer ['class'] alliance [students and their parents, patients and their families] are notoriously unorganized. We discussed this in a past thread some months back, but the UFT organizes a lot of parent initiatives; that is not going to be front page news in the NY Times or the Village Voice, but it happens.
Mark Meier's analysis of city unions I find unhelpful, but that is a different subject of discussion.
> The overwhelming majority of NYC unions - or unions representing the
> overwhelming majority of unionized workers - were either supportive,
> complicit, or silent. While I appreciate the finer grain of detail, that
> fact still stands.
>
> I don't know what you mean by a "charge of the light brigade." What I'd
> like to see is some sign of the unions representing the general interest of
> the working class. Why no common cause between teachers and parents to
> defend the schools? Between municipal workers and citizens to defend the
> quality of public services? Between hospital workers and patients (actual
> and potential)? Transit workers and
> riders? One reason union-bashers can get away with painting unions as
> self-interest groups is that there's enough truth to the charge to make it
> stick. Mark Maier said in City Unions that when NYC was first recognizing
> its municipal unions in the early 60s, it made the renunciation of
> alliances between workers and municipal service users a condition of
> recognition. That was 40 years ago.
>
> Doug
>
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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