I totally agree with you, except that I'd qualify one critical point: the fact that many labor-leftists find themselves in the "permanent opposition" ghetto, rather than running any major union, is not due to their choice.
Rank-and-file labor leftists who have been involved in union democracy campaigns and so forth had an idea of a long march through an institution by winning over fellow union members to a campaign of democratizing unions, getting out of the rut of concessionary bargaining, and running their unions on better industrial strategy (e.g., organizing for power, rather than just numbers, as Jane Slaughter put it -- cf. <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2002/2002-November/026408.html>). The problem is that they didn't get very far on the long march. The farthest they have gotten is the TDU's temporary success with Ron Carey and the UPS strike, which was promptly beaten back by the old guard who put forward Hoffa, Jr.
So, I'd say that the problem is not the lack of vision and strategy in this case but an inability to capture the levers of power in any union to put their vision and strategy in practice.
> I
> agree that the most important thing for the UAW to do is to build an
> energetic, ruthless and effective nationwide organizing program to win
> elections innon-union parts and assembly plants.
> They need to stop fucking
> around with organizing nurses, grad students, writers and whatever else
> because they need to bring some easy quick dues money in
> to support the
> pension funds of their staff and officers, and do what they did in the 30s
> and 40s--- organize auto plants. It will be tough, there's no guarantee
> they'll succeed. But they are not yet even making the right effort
> consistently.
See, what you are saying above is precisely what many labor leftists have been saying for a long time.
> But in addition to that, no matter how hard they try, they won't make big
> gains till we change the labor law. With card check you could probably
> bring in most of those non-union auto plants.
Labor needs a spring offensive on card check if it wants to get it at the federal level.
<blockquote> December 11, 2006 How Union Member Drives Garner Local Support Elected Officials Try to Get Employers to Accept Process That Avoids Secret Ballots By KRIS MAHER December 11, 2006; Page A2
Unions are gaining increasing support among local elected officials for a streamlined organizing approach that avoids federal oversight and highly charged secret-ballot elections, even as national legislative backing for the practice remains improbable.
Last year, according to the AFL-CIO, organized labor gained more than 150,000 new members using a method called card check, which has emerged at the forefront of labor's efforts to stem declining membership. Under that method, employees can unionize if a majority of them sign cards expressing support for a union during a set period, such as 60 days.
Under federal law, an employer can insist on a secret-ballot election, which is often preceded by a company-led anti-union campaign. Companies also can appeal election results to the National Labor Relations Board, a process that can take years, during which time some pro-union employees leave or give up on the organizing drive. Companies oppose the card-check approach, saying that workers are denied the right to secret elections and that workers are often pressured by the union to sign the cards.
The card-check method is at the centerpiece of federal legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act that would allow unions to choose to use a card-check campaign, rather than a secret-ballot election. During the weekend, more than 600 AFL-CIO organizers met to discuss how to push the legislation and more card-check campaigns.
Democratic leaders, while supporting the act and saying it will be introduced in the spring, appear more intent on boosting the minimum wage than on the card-check legislation, which would likely pass the House but be stalled in the Senate and would face an all-but-certain veto from President Bush. Business groups are lobbying against the act, which would impose stiffer penalties for companies found intimidating pro-union workers.
Still, unions have had increasing success in getting state and local elected officials to push employers in their areas to voluntarily accept card checks, even in typically union-averse regions such as the South and Southwest.
Allen Halsrud, a 54-year-old mechanic at a Peabody Energy mine in Sturgis, Ky., said support from local officials, many of whom have worked in mines, is critical to getting the company to agree to a card-signing process. "It's really important to have the backing of officials at home," he said. "Our employees elect these people, and they can put pressure on the company."
Since 2005, the Communications Workers of America organized more than 20,000 workers at Cingular Wireless, attributing the success in part to the backing of local officials including those in largely nonunion Mississippi, while the Service Employees International Union organized 5,000 janitors in Houston by getting workers to sign cards.
In the Houston janitors' campaign, city council members, state representatives and members of Congress attended worker rallies, signed letters of support and sought meetings with companies that employ the janitors. "Most of the elected officials that I'm aware of were very willing to get involved from the get-go," said Houston city council member Adrian Garcia.
Many elected officials said they throw their weight behind organizing drives outside the NLRB process after visiting the front lines of organizing drives. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, from Illinois, for example, said she decided to support the effort by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees to organize 10,000 nurses and other workers at nonprofit health-care center Resurrection Health Care, in part after being barred from entering the company property when accompanying workers who were delivering a letter about staffing issues. She has been joined by an Illinois delegation of Democratic senators Richard Durbin and Barack Obama and 10 House members in signing a letter, asking the health-care concern to meet with the union.
Brian Crawford, a spokesman for the health-care system, said it can't meet with a union that hadn't been elected to represent its workers, adding that "we do not see any movement toward that."
In some cases, local officials clash over the card-check campaigns. Last week, Sacramento's city council passed a nonbinding resolution in a 6-to-3 vote urging Blue Diamond Growers to agree to a card-check agreement with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which wants to represent 600 workers at a processing facility there. Councilman Robbie Waters opposed the resolution, saying Blue Diamond "is a private business in town, and I don't think it's our business to tell them what to do."
Councilman Steve Cohn supported the resolution, saying he believed the company, which received city funding to open a facility in Sacramento, Calif., had intimidated pro-union workers.
Blue Diamond spokeswoman Susan Brauner denied the intimidation charge and said the resolution won't affect the company's decisions. "We believe that every employee in America deserves a secret-ballot election," she said.</blockquote>
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>