[lbo-talk] NY Transit strike or solidarity in the US and the UK

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Dec 22 08:46:12 PST 2005


Mark Bennett:


> But can't the strikers and their representatives do better than this:
> "Transit workers are tired of being underappreciated and
> disrespected,"
> TWU chief Roger Toussaint said.
>
> God, does that sound lame. I think this is symptomatic of
> the problem that Woj has been positing: the left can't come
> up with a plausible constructive program and too often
> resorts to what appears to be whining. If the MTA workers
> have legitimate economic grievances that need to be redressed
> by this strike, then shouldn't their spokesmen be hammering
> away on those issues every chance they get? Appearing to go
> on strike and shutting down most of NYC because they feel
> "disrepected"
> isn't going to get them very far.

Yes and no. The problem is that unions cannot go alone - they need "civil society" - to use that forgotten Gramscian concept - to represent their interests in the political, social and cultural sphere. They need a political party that would press for labor friendly legislation and thwart labor-hostile one, they need cultural institutions, like academe, "organic intellectuals," and the media, that would develop and disseminate labor friendly point of view, they need labor friendly voluntary organizations and churches that could mobilize popular support. However, almost one of that labor friendly civil society exists in the US - no labor party, no labor press or academia and only a few rather obscure labor friendly think tanks (sorry Max, but EPI is not exactly on front pages of the NYT or the Washington Post), very few alliances with labor friendly NGOs and churches.

So it is difficult to blame a union for not doing the job that properly belongs to the entire host of institutions aka "civil society."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4550830.stm

Wojtek



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