> Yes, incredibly obscene. The AFL-CIO headquarters sits on 16th street
> just two blocks from the White House. The damn building looks like it
> belongs on the Mall. It's really fucked up that workers are falling
> further and further behind while AFL-CIO fat cats sit on their asses in
> their palatial digs.
Let me add a few thoughts to my previous rant. The reason these unions are holded up in these palatial digs has to do with prestige and the illusion of power. Apologists for the big unions will argue that the unions need to be located in Washington in order to lobby the government. Basically, they need to be in Washington like the associations and special interest organizations.
My anarchist argument would be that workers aren't helped by unions being headquartered in Washington. But let's take their argument at face value. If you want your union to engage in lobbying in DC, there is no reason why you have to have a multi-million dollar building two blocks from the White House. You can locate your main headquarters in some working class town that needs the facility and the employment, say, Flint, Michigan, and you could set up your lobbying office in Prince Georges County (MD), Reston (VA), or Arlington (VA). There is plenty of public transportation in Washington which your *lobbyists* can ise to get to wherever they need to go on the Hill or wherever. For example, the American Library Association has its main HQ in Chicago, while it maintains a lobbying office in Washington.
Oh my god, I think I just freed up several million dollars for basic organizing with this obvious argument about an obvious waste of union member monies.
Chuck