When Andy Stern talks about "a new partnership with employers," he probably has his own experience of success in mind -- e.g.:
<blockquote>Stern talks about giving ''added value'' to employers, some of whom have come to view him, warily, as a partner. At about the time Stern took over the union, his locals in several states were at war with Beverly Health and Rehabilitation Services, an Arkansas- based nursing-home chain. The company complained that cuts in state aid were making it all but impossible to pay workers more while operating their facilities at a profit. Stern and his team proposed an unusual alliance: if Beverly would allow its workers to organize, the S.E.I.U.'s members would use their political clout in state legislatures to deliver more money. It worked. ''I do believe Andy's a stand-up guy,'' says Beverly Health's C.O.O., Dave Devereaux. (Matt Bai, "The New Boss," New York Times, 30 Jan. 2005, <http:// www.tech.purdue.edu/ols/courses/ols378/The_New_Boss.doc>)</blockquote>
What should be noted is, though, that the sector in which Stern's union SEIU organizes the best is one of the few where such partnership -- bosses and workers lobbying the state for fatter contracts -- can make sense. That cannot be generalized across sectors. Look where "partnership" -- e.g., teaming up with the bosses to lobby the state for more lax environmental standards (especially regarding fuel economy) and allowing US automakers to develop a serious case of SUV dependence -- got the UAW in the age of rising gas prices.
Jerry Tucker writes:
<blockquote>The CtW carves out most, though not all, of the "landlocked" employment sectors, leaving the AFL-CIO with the sectors most damaged by capital's ever increasing mobility and neoliberal motives (i.e., industrial and digitalized sectors), as-yet- unprivatized blocks of the public sector, and a loose collection of other unions. Among those remaining in the old federation's fold are the centerpiece unions (auto, steel, electrical, and chemical) of the great CIO upsurge of the 1930s and ‘40s -- along with the UMW and the IAM, most public employee unions, and the high-profile Communications Workers who have retained a somewhat aggressive organizing and collective bargaining reputation but, like many others, suffer from global capital's bare-knuckle agenda.
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/tucker041005.html></blockquote>
The CtW leaders may have some ideas of organizing service workers in the private sector (would their ideas work when the state makes more cutbacks?), but neither they nor the remaining AFL-CIO leaders offer much in the way of strategy with regard to "the sectors most damaged by capital's ever increasing mobility and neoliberal motives."
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>