Let me get to the point that you raise in the latter part of the post first of all:
At 6:40 PM -0400 10/12/02, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> >Most likely,
>>there will be no electoral campaign unless and until the leaders of
>>the endorsing unions decide it's time to run one.
>
>In what sense would it be a 'labor' party if the unions involved didn't have
>the primary say?
I'm not necessarily saying that it's wrong for the endorsing unions to have the primary say in the Labor Party. Such a structure does raise several issues, though:
(1) Currently, the majority of American workers are unrepresented by any union, but in the Labor Party they will have a marginal voice at best if they join it. Why should they join only to be marginalized in it, especially given that those who are interested in Third Parties are the ones who deeply care about having an equal chance to have their voices heard in a political party of their own, the chance unavailable through the Dems and the Repubs?
(2) Let's remember also that the "shadow welfare state" has come about in part due to organized labor's own attachment to job-based benefits and employer mandates. It is _the currently unorganized_, not the better off workers represented by even the most progressive unions, who have _the biggest stake_ in fighting for universal health care and other social democratic programs. While the Labor Party's program favors what the currently unorganized need, its structure and voting allocation disenfranchise them in favor of those already organized, especially the leaders of the latter. That doesn't make sense to me.
(3) Some of the endorsing unions are the most democratically run among US unions: UE and ILWU. Others are much less so. As union democracy has been in deficit, interests of union leaders do not necessarily coincide with those of rank-and-file unionists, as the latter have difficulty holding the former accountable.
At 6:40 PM -0400 10/12/02, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> >***** ...THE BREACH BETWEEN CHAPTERS AND THE MAIN ENDORSING UNIONS.
>>Although there are exceptions, the separation between the chapters
>>and the four initial endorsing unions seems fairly complete.
>[...]
>>For many or most of the delegates from those unions, the convention
>>was probably their first LPA meeting. One OCAW delegate, asked why
>>he was there, said, "Because my district council is having its
>>meeting here." Attendance of both UE and OCAW members was enhanced
>>when the unions scheduled regular district or political conferences
>>for Cleveland June 6-9.
>
>To me, that's a good thing, a way to get OCAW leaders to learn about the LP.
>But some people think dues checkoff was the end of the union movement in this
>country. Whatever.
Slaughter's point, though, is that rank-and-file unionists of the endorsing unions are seldom actively involved in the Labor Party, their relation to the party ending with dues checkoffs and at best reading about it in union newsletters on the web and in print.
At 6:40 PM -0400 10/12/02, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> >C3 presents a circular problem: you want to run an
>>electoral campaign so as to increase members, but you are not allowed
>>to run one unless you already have a significant number of members.
>
>Bullshit. If you can't get people to join without running a candidate, it's
>not much of a party.
You can probably have a "political party" that does not run candidates and make it even grow. The Labor Party's _raison d'etre_ is, though, to become an electoral alternative to the Dems, no? That's the main reason why many labor and other activists said, "it's about time," when they heard of its founding. If it's not gonna make an electoral challenge any time soon, you might as well keep doing whatever activist work you've been already doing, while waiting to see if and when the LP leaders who control the party decide it's time to go for those who have felt they had no party to vote for or had to vote for the Dems for lack of alternatives.
I'll respond to other points later. -- Yoshie
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