Hundreds of Jim Straubs in the world? Man, that would be excruciating! I say that, and I should know, I'm Jim Straub! Ick!
If I'm an intellectual, I must be of the Noam Chomsky self-hating type. ; )
Yoshie pointed to Andy Stern as the 'quintessential organic intellectual of the labor movement.' I do not think this is the case. There are many different unions, with vastly differing organizational compositions and strategies and ideological leanings, and among union membership today there is more ideological heterogeneity than perhaps at any time since the nineteenth century. Does Stern represent a perspective similar to that of building trades masculinity aligned with municipal political machines like IBEW or painters or roofers locals? Or like the big-city primarily afro-american public sector unionism of an afscme? Or a left-oriented, exclusivist craft union like the california nurses association? Or the tough militancy, immigrant-bashing, high-wage high-skill International Association of Machinists? No, Andy doesn't speak to any of these segments of the very small amount of the US working class that is in unions today.
He does, on the other hand, come from one of the very few successful organizing programs in the US. Andy was not much of an organizer himself, but rather was very successful at administrating the program and reorganizing the structure of the union to maximize possible gains. For this work he speaks with some credibility as a pres, and in a big union of two million workers who have any number of different opinions on politics but all pretty much agree they want the union to grow so their power increases, Andy is very popular, because of his success at acheiving that goal. His own ideological orientation owes alot to his background; middle class kid, in soft-socialist NAM during the 60s-70s, was a rank and file social worker, and climbed the ranks of leadership from there largely on the basis of his extremely savvy structural planning and administration. The real geniuses of organizing itself were more radical, grittier people (mostly with, uh, with drinking problems); but Stern is not really emblematic of this milleu as far as I know, he was just organizationally bloc'ed with them in the international.
But of late, Andy has gone a bit beyond that. The press department of the international has portrayed more and more of seiu's strategy as a facet of andy's personality; an unsophisticated press (and sadly, some lefties on a list like this) have taken that at face value. They have done this partly because smart folks like dennis rivera on the exectuive board think that since the US is such a celebrity-driven culture, we need an seiu celebrity. Well, I don't agree with that, but I also don't care much, since Andy's messaging to the general anti-union press and public changes nothing about strategy or tactics out in the trenches of the class war where nursing home workers are fired for organizing, nurses walk out on strike, and janitorial firms squeeze very poor workers, every day.
What I do have a problem with, is the increasing frequency with which Andy states opinions of his that drift from his typical milquetoast liberalism to a post-left labor snuggle optimism, which directly contradict actual official positions of SEIU. He says things like maybe we're not against social security privatization, maybe we're not against school vouchers, blablabla, which are actually not the case--- we ARE against those things, and it is not up to him to contradict the decision-making bodies and chain of command at his whim. Now when his enthusiasm for labor snuggle nonsense actually begins to negatively impact the future of our organizing, there will be a confrontation at some point. I am as close to the bottom of the seiu food chain as one can get, but everything I hear thru the grapevine about stuff coming out of his office for the future, is rankly idiotic.
But what will this mean for the future of organizing and seiu? I do not know. The people who are driving this very successful organizing program are very averse to getting into any kind of seriously contested election for the presidency, they prefer to do that stuff by consensus, so peoples' energy can be entirely bended to the task of organizing to rebuild the labor movement. But there are clearly major tensions building. Some things may change as the 3 different industries in SEIU light out for independent existence; or as CtW is either successful or not, at getting other unions to organize seriously and successfully; or as the US electorate either does or does not begin to come back from the brink of the far far right.
I'm relieved to have quit the union temporarily to work on other things for a few months, because honestly its demoralizing in the extreme to do nothing all day but talk to workers in the thick of real-world false consciousness and class struggle, and then come home after a 14 hour day, turn on the computer, and read andy stern on the one hand saying fucked up shit, and on the other read leftists fantasize extravagantly about US workers and bitterly demean political engagement with them from where they're actually at as acts of running dog collaborationism. Hopefully when I return to the purple machine later this year some more things will be clear about where internal seiu politics are headed, and I can better couch my articulations of our organizing strategy with an evaluation of what stern's crappy vision will really mean for the 5 million workers who'll hopefully be in seiu in a few years.
One last thought, tho; Yoshie indicated with this post her recurring philosphy that unions are less a potential vehicle for class struggle by workers in the US than religion, or schools, which she has noted more workers are in than are in unions. I'm surprised nobody has challenged this assertion yet with the observation: that people do not go to church or school for political reasons (and to the extent they do, its evangelical christianity that has an ideological orientation today, and it is to the far right). You go to school because you have to (till you're 16); and also, because training and accreditation acquired therein may increase the amount of cultural status you have and how much money you can make. You go to church because you seek a relationship with the divine. Certainly ideologies widespread in society will be reflected any place there are lots of people, including church pews and behind school desks. But there are also many more workers who eat at McDonalds every week than go to any of the major churches or universities; many more workers use eBay, google, and watch Lost every week than are in unions. I personally believe religion is immensely important in understanding US society and the working class in particular (and school too what the hell, altho I'm a highschool dropout who makes his disdain for pointy-headed types known whenever possible). But the fact that more workers in the US are members of the methodist church than are in the Green Party or the UAW or Freedom Road does not mean workers are appointing the methodist church as representatives of their class or ideology. It just means a lot of them go to church (altho that fact is a very important one, I agree). In fact, this whole line of reasoning from Yoshie I admit is provocative and insightful, but, anything that seeks to correlate socio-cultural developments among people in the United States with the middle east (ie the 'religious populism is more marxist than traditional marxist organizations') to be highly suspect; I can think of few societies with less in common today than Tehran and Phoenix. Besides which, a theory like this would have to be squared with the rise of the world's number one political religion, Pentecostal Christianity, which is huge and getting huger, from Latin America to East Africa, Korea to Poland, Russia to Texas. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20070212/a817e65c/attachment.htm>