[lbo-talk] Fitch on The Split

Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org
Fri Jul 29 13:13:35 PDT 2005


----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>

Nathan Newman wrote:
>This is one of the most sexist pieces of crap I've ever seen. Pisses me
>off
>to no end that as labor is struggling mightly to get child care, home
>health
>care, domestic work and other female-dominate professions recognized as
>real
>labor, this kind of piece comes out.
>
>It's quite reasonable to point out the dependence of some sectors of the
>labor movement on government money, but framing it in terms of home health
>care workers not being "really workers" is just the worse piece of crap
>I've
>seen in a long time.

-The tone of this reminds me of your old caricature of criticism as -"bashing." Why is this "disgusting" and "a hit piece"? Just because -you don't agree with it? -Relatives who are also caregivers aren't a lot like regular workers, -and "organizing" them is not much like organizing most of the labor -force. That's not an unfair point, nor is it sexist. It's outside the -discipline of profit maximization.

No, it's more like any kind of public sector work. Yes, the government may fund home health care work, but as I point out, they fund most of the unionized building trades work.

But "womens work" gets deemed not real work.

This is sexism, nothing more, which like racism is not on the order of normal debate in my view.

I'm fine with criticizing SEIU. I have a daily blog where we debate the relative merits of various unions and their organizing.


>Fitch can be provocative, yeah, but his provocations are almost
>always worth thinking about. SEIU is not the succees story its
>boosters say it is. Is it inexcusably cruel to say that?

No, but this piece is based on faked time baselines, distortions, lies and sexism. Real criticism of SEIU might be interesting, but this piece has almost nothing of real interest as substantive critique.

Is it cruel to say that?

Nathan



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