>Max and Nathan and Doug and Dennis R and all the others who worry about
>"attracting" people and "not preaching to the choir" will in fact spend
>their whole lives writing only for people who already agree with them.
>It is only by consciously focusing on those who (more or less) already
>agree that one will ever even begin to reach, indirectly, those who
>don't yet agree.
***** ...[T]he process of union building [in the auto industry] rested in the hands of a relatively atypical nucleus of militants who waged shop-floor warfare with management for the allegiance of the large majority of still timid, deferential workers. Much tactical finesse -- even outright bluff -- was needed in this battle, for the union rarely enrolled more than a committed minority when it came to a showdown with the auto corporations.[8] The sit-down strikes were a brilliantly successful gambit, in large part because they enabled the militant few to stop production and demonstrate union power to those uninvolved in the struggle. To many workers, the formal recognition of the UAW finally won at General Motors (GM) and other corporations early in 1937 provided a protective shield that gave them some sense of liberation from older factory hierarchies and a visible link to their more forceful shopmates. It was a powerful symbol of the fact that the supervisor and the foreman were not omnipotent and that the union cadre represented an alternative nexus of legitimate authority in the plant.
Given this social context, it is not surprising that the spectacular growth of the new CIO unions came only after collective bargaining contracts were signed....
[8] This process is aptly described in Peter Friedlander's _The Emergence of a UAW Local, 1936-1939: A Study in Class and Culture_ (Pittsburgh, 1975), 3-53. Roger Keeran highlights the role played by the Communist cadre in _The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Unions_ (Bloomington, 1980) 28-59.
(Nelson Lichtenstein, _Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II_, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982, p. 12) ***** -- Yoshie
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