[lbo-talk] NYT on French unions

[Jerry Monaco]

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> "And you and they have to stop blaming US law, because that's not going to
> change. "
>
> I have been watching this debate with fear.  Mainly because I didn't see,
> at first, why Nathan was so angry at "this list."
>
> The problem of organizing U.S. workers (in and out of unions) is the
> problem of organizing in general, in and out of unions.  We should stop
> blaming unions for not organizing when we ourselves have not broken through
> - organizing, educating, connecting, mobilizing the citizenry at large.   We
> can be as pro-union as we want to, in our heads, but we have forgotten how
> to organize in solidarity with our own working class struggles.
>
> I am very pro-union.  I think even a corrupt union is better than no union
> at all.  On the other hand I know from first hand experience, that a union
> leadership can sell out its members even to the point of committing union
> suicide, just so the little selfish interests of the leadership are somehow
> satisfied. I see no contradiction in being very pro-union and being highly
> critical of practically everything most unions do - how they negotiate,
> strike, organaize, etc.  I think this is simply a result of my experience of
> being in unions and trying to get them to change.
>
> So I can be sympathetic with both Doug and Fitch in many of the things
> they write.
>
> But let me tell you the truth.  "We," non-union members, non "ruling
> class," are also responsible..
>
> The TWU was on strike here in New York, so who among us searched out a
> picket line and went there?  I did.  And it was a problem even finding where
> to go to do so.  At first I blamed this on the union....  Why isn't the TWU
> coodinating a "Subway Riders Auxilary" to experess union support among the
> citizens?  Why isn't the TWU putting out a strike newspaper, and why doesn't
> it at least have a good strike website and strike weblog, instead of the
> lousy thing that they actually had?  Why didn't any other unions organize
> protests when the dispicable Bloomberg (a member of the ruling class if I
> ever saw one) called the strikers thugs?
>
> But then I began to think!  Why didn't I help to do any of these things?
> I didn't contact the TWU and say "Are you guys doing a strike blog because I
> bet I could help get a bunch guys together to do one for you?"  Why haven't
> I been campaigning for a regular strike newspaper or for union owned radio
> and television stations?   Why weren't there even buttons, saying "I support
> the TWU"?  Everytime I go to an antiwar rally somebody prints up thousands
> of buttons.  They are everywhere.  Does the "left" in general ever do these
> things for organizing workers? for striking workers?
>


> Partially, the reason is  that now that I am not now a union member. I am
> "outside" the union movement.  But if you will notice above a mass of French
> non-union members don't consider themselves "outside" the union movement.
> So if I somehow "blame" American "working class culture" (or the lack of it)
> what I am actually doing is blaming myself.  All of us are to blame for our
> lack of organzing, or for our inability to change lousy labor laws,
> (Taft-Hartley, Landrum-Griffinth, the Taylor law in New York) whether we are
> in the union movement or not.  I think all of us who are not bosses are to
> blame, for not considering ourselves a part of a broader working class
> movement of which the union movement is only a subsection, and not
> organizing and mobilizing on that basis.
>
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