Nathan Newman wrote:
>I always find these discussions kind of bizarre-- unions not only directly
>have $5-6 billion annually in income, but they indirectly control or
>influence trillions of dollars in private and public pension fund monies.
-Except that the law severely limits what they can do with that cash - -and sometimes leads unions to make alliances with shareholder rights -types whose interests are fundamentally anti-working class.
You really think Sun Szu was an idiot, that you can't divide the enemy against itself for strategic advantage? Since labor doesn't like to talk about what it's doing with corporate campaigns for a bunch of legal reasons, the following description from a management consultant is one of the best I've seen on why union corporate campaigns work:
Jarol Manheim "Corporate Campaigns: Labor's Tactic of the Death of a Thousand Cuts." Capital Research Center (a corporate-funded anti-union site). http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/x3760036252.pdf (pp. 1-7)
Here's a key section:
"A Campaign Strategy Primer When interest groups compete, no one group-business, labor, and advocates of diverse causes-can control public policy. But a corporate campaign strives to create an apparent confluence of interests that can pressure the target company. It seeks to identify every stakeholder relationship on which a target company depends and align them all against it. Customers, bankers, creditors, shareholders, financial analysts, principal regulators, employees, advocacy groups, and even civic and religious leaders-all have some stake in the company that is open to exploitation. Corporate campaigns are based on company-specific research and give rise to company-specific actions. Consequently, their strategies can appear idiosyncratic. But we can identify several types of action they regularly employ.
[snip]
* Attack shareholder value. Corporate campaigns often threaten the price of a company's publicly traded stock. They aim adverse publicity at shareholders, financial analysts, and the media. Non- huprofit research groups supporting the campaign will issue "white paper" reports that question the company's business, accounting, and reporting practices. They aim to mobilize shareholders to complain and propose changes in corporate governance. Advocacy groups and unions focus on institutional shareholders whose influence is substantial and immediate. An example of this is the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees' (HERE) recruitment of Institutional Shareholder Services, a company that advises pension funds and other large investors, to press HERE's point at a 1998 shareholders' battle at Marriott, a target of union organizing efforts.
[snip]
These tactics are not meant to get banks or consumers or regulators to redefine their self-interest. Rather, they encourage these constituency groups to act selectively in their own self-interest. The campaign tries to create a business environment in which that self-interest actually promotes the goals of the unions and anti-corporate groups. Thus, the company's essential supporters become de facto allies of its opponents. This is a very sophisticated organizing strategy."
This is the key to understanding what unions are doing in corporate campaigns-- exploiting the selective self-interest of shareholders and playing it off the selective self-interest of management in order to leverage broader goals in an overall organizing campaign.
What is annoying to me is that capitalists think that unions are incredibility sophisticated opponents, while a lot of leftists read the mainstream press and buy into the idea of unions as uncreative dinosaurs.