>Nathan Newman wrote:
>
>>If a similiar strike happened in the US, every major shop floor
>>union leader would be told the next day that there was no job for
>>them to return to. And the courts would not only uphold that
>>decision but issue an injunction against any other union member
>>threatening to strike in solidarity over those firings.
Chuck wrote:
>Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
-You said in four words what I was about to say in 40. I never thought -of myself as a typical can-do American, but I'm amazed by Nathan's -fatalism and negativity.
Me, fatalistic? I'm the eternal optimist and think we're doing quite well on the progressive front in a whole range of areas. I just think bashing unions for not deliberately getting their members fired is a silly criticism.
-Lose a single-payer referendum in -California, and just give up on the whole thing. Don't figure out -what you did right and wrong and how you might do better the next -time, just get really really small in your ambitions.
Me-- I haven't changed my ambitions at all-- the goal is universal coverage with every person having good health care coverage. Part of figuring out what went wrong is deciding that single payer isn't the be-all strategy. In fact, single payer doesn't end private medicine; all it does is put one element, the insurance companies, out of business.
The problem is that folks don't think Illinois providing health care for all children is exciting or that Massachusetts creating a universal health care obligation for all employers with more than ten employees is exciting. If you can't win it all this year, right now, why bother? If it takes three or four steps to get to the goal, it's all just liberal sellouts.
- And don't look -to French unions as something we might learn from - everything's -different here, so it's hopeless. One thing we could learn - the -French unions think and act on behalf of the whole working class, and -are deeply political (and not in the sense of giving 35 million euros -to some hacks).
What do you mean? The french unions underpin much of center-left politics in France. Yes, they have a legal framework where they can also engage in political strikes without fear of legal reprisal, but what is there to learn from that?
Or how about that those same French unions don't do squat a lot of the time when French corporations come to the US and open non-union? They may think about the "whole working class" when they are French, but their solidarity has traditionally stopped at the national border.
And given the fact that SEIU was running security as 500,000 folks in Los Angeles were protesting anti-immigrant bills, this seems an odd week to be attacking the unions for only looking out for their own members, since that was a pretty broad-based mobilization.
What's amazing to me is that this list is all so excited about the French protests with relatively little celebration of the largest rallies in Los Angeles history (along with other cities), led by a truly amazing coalition of immigrant, union and religious activists.
Nathan Newman