> In any case, attacking the messenger does not
> strike me as the very effective way of addressing
> issues identified in the message. If the US
> unions are so good, why are they so bad in
> protecting interests of the working class?
Since this post will put me over limit, I will only respond to correct any misinterpretation of what I've been saying. I have not said that "US unions are so good." I have said that Fitch's list of reasons for union failures in the USA are superficial at best and factually-challenged to a high degree. Just among things that have been posted here, we have seen Fitch say that home care workers are not really workers (demonstrably false as well as sexist and insulting) and that Sweeney voted against a single-payor proposal within the AFL-CIO executive council because SEIU had members who worked in private-sector health care (even though Sweeney's toughest internal opposition within SEIU came from health care locals that were militant about endorsing single-payor -- further, Fitch is apparently arguing that unions shouldn't organize health care workers, but should spend their time on beefy male proletarians).
The explanation for union failures and decline in this country is roughly the same as the answer to the question "Why is there no socialism in the USA?" Which is to say, you could write a whole book on the subject. My own analysis -- and I believe it to be the correct one -- is that unions ended up in decline because of the red purges and because of failures in the South, which in turn led to an increasingly hostile Sunbelt political climate that has led us to the place we're in now. All of this is another way of saying that union weakness can be explained with reference to racism. But that is a much more complicated story -- and in fact, a much more alarming and much more damning one for union leaders -- than one where union leaders' ideological shortcomings on the health care issue can be explained solely with reference to petty venality ("simple self-interest," Fitch would have us believe).
Now, unions are conspicuously weak, so much so that we cheer when we have a year in which we don't decline. Fitch argues that recent organizing gains don't count because unions have been organizing broads and broads aren't real workers, but then he turns around and says that "Despite shrinking membership, organized labor still has enough money and muscle to get behind a campaign for national health insurance," a statement that reminds me of the late Rick James' immortal words on the "Chappelle Show": "Cocaine is a hell of a drug."
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories