[lbo-talk] A highly critical take on Fitch

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Tue Mar 14 14:50:57 PST 2006


Doug writes:


> Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
>>Of course, for me the more interesting question, which goes well beyond
>>Fitch, is why have all these well-intentioned movements and their leaders
>>fallen short?
>
> My own answer would be a two-parter. First, any leadership position is
> likely to exert a conservatizing influence on its occupant, regardless of
> intention. You have to balance competing forces within an organization and
> deal with the real world outside. I've quoted before the observation of a
> guy who used to work in Manley's finance ministry in Jamaica: listening to
> a bunch of anti-World Bank radicals fulminate about what should be done,
> he calmly said, "You have no idea what it's like to have to come up with
> $100 million in hard currency next week." You could make a long list of
> the real-world pressures that force people - the ANC, Lula, Roger
> Toussaint (head of the NYC transit union), etc. - to make compromises that
> get denounced as "sell-outs" and "betrayals" by far leftists and Trots.
=========================== Agree completely. ============================
> And second, the US unions (like the rest of the US political system) are
> structured to emphasize this. They're extremely fragmented, and built
> around delivering a contract to workers in a closed shop. That forces them
> to be more businesslike and less interested in broad working class
> politics.
================================== Not sure about this on two counts:

(1) I think the differences between US and other union movements can be exaggerated. By their very nature, they all have to deliver bread and butter, and have seen politics as a means of doing this. There was more political militancy in periods of sharp class polarization, but this was also true of the US pre WWI. I don't see much difference today between US labour's support of the DP versus European support for its Labour and Socialist parties, although there is no question that the US's role as the preeminent imperialist power has produced a reactionary chauvinism which has tied American workers more closely to the system and its values - but all levels, not only that of the leadership.

(2) I don't understand your rejection of the closed shop where workers are required to join the union as a condition of employment, or even the more widespread check-off system, where workers are not required to belong to the union in order to hold down a job but are required to pay dues to it through the employer's payroll office in exchange for receiving the benefits of a collective agreement. I understand thisis also Fitch's position. The alternative to both is the Sunbelt-style "open shop", where workers are required to do neither, and which employers favour because it discourages unionization. What basis is there for thinking open shops will introduce more militant unions in the workplace? The left has tradtionally seen the answer to a poorly-led union as a change of leadership by the dues-paying membership or, if necessary, the certification of another bargaining agent of their choice - but always within a framework of the existing union security guarantees and a single contract covering all workers. That workers are "less interested in broad working class politics" is a political problem which has, in my estimation, very little to do with the issue of the open or closed shop, and I would expect that if there were a revival of trade union militancy, it would be accompanied by renewed demands for the "closed shop" as opposed to the check off - and certainly as opposed to an open shop. I could elaborate if necessary.



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