> A local comrade tells me over lunch today about a
> group of interns that the AFL-CIO brought to Kansas
> City as part of their "Working America" program. It
> seems that the AFL-CIO lied to these kids, telling
> them that they would be trained to be union
> organizers. They got to Kansas City and found out
> that their real work was to go door-to-door to
> campaign for John Kerry.
Young people who want to get trained as organizers through the AFL-CIO go to the Organizing Institute. Working America is not conceived of as a union but as "the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO," working with non-union workers. It's kind of naive for people to have expected to work with such an organization in an election year as critical as this one and not do electoral work. What else does the AFL-CIO do, anyway? If you want to do actual workplace union organizing, you go with one of the individual international unions -- or eventually a local -- not the federation. The federation is not responsible for organizing, and can't be as long as the affiliates are bound to squabble with one another over jurisdiction. The most it does is enforce Article 20, which basically says that whatever union gets there first has dibs on organizing the workers.
Does Chuck have anything but third-hand information on this situation? I have my doubts.
- - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!