>>> dhenwood at panix.com 01/27/01 12:53PM >>>
John Halle wrote:
>Are you suggesting that the leadership had anything other than the best
>interests of the rank and file in mind in their support of that great
>friend of labor, Al Gore?
>
>How dare you!
Hey, blame Fitch, not me!
Fitch has an interesting dissent from the classic left critique of U.S. unions as "bureaucratic." Bureaucracies, he points out, operate by rules and, for all their stodginess, can be very effective. U.S. unions, however, operate on personality and patronage and are rarely very effective. He says a better model for understanding them is the urban political machine or even a kind of feudalism.
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CB: Marshall Sahlins has pointed out that the politics of universities are feudal too.