Seth
Doug Henwood wrote:
> [A friend deeply involved in single-payer agitation writes in answer
> to my question about what SEIU is up to...]
>
> I think the people who you're talking to are either drinking Andy
> Stern's koolaid, lying to themselves, lying to you or some
> combination of the three. SEIU has been actively involved in
> undercutting single-payer activism since before Stern took over.
> After he became president, he cut the deal with Kaiser, which put
> them directly in bed with the corporate health care industry, and
> they've fought against single-payer, or any other form of real
> national health care, everywhere ever since. And all this crap about
> how we can incrementally reform our way to social democracy with
> corporate partnerships has the stench of Bernstein and more cynical
> strains of class collaborationism all over it (to which the smart,
> Ivy League union staffers respond that that was then, this is now,
> and produce charts to show how the transition is going to come about
> if we can just increase "union density" a couple of percentage points
> by the next election and get a few more Dems elected). The pageantry
> of mobilization -- the carefully orchestrated Potemkin demos
> featuring spirited crowds of black and brown workers in purple
> jackets and t-shirts is a perfume over that stench. This is exactly
> what I've been saying about Stern all along. I used to think that his
> model of the union is One Big Company Union; in the last couple of
> years I've decided that it's more One Big Collective Human Resource
> Dept. It's telling that Stern/SEIU remain the darlings of the left;
> it's a measure of the left's dilettantishness, insularity and
> stupidity; the pathology of identity politics; and the Yuppieization
> of that wing of the labor movement. A few years ago I was struck to
> come away from a meeting with a young union official thinking that
> she reminded me of a combination of Alexandra Kollontai and an Ivy
> League-trained corporate lawyer. This is a longer conversation but
> one I'd love to have. Have you seen Steve Early's review of Stern's
> book?
>
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