[lbo-talk] Andy Stern: dupe of Leslie Dach?

Jim Straub rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com
Tue Mar 27 08:08:21 PDT 2007


This would explain wal-mart's interest in the whole thing, but not stern's. Remember, they do not share our values, but the stern team is very smart--- in fact, they are arguably one of only two teams with a clear record of success in our contemporary labor movement (the other being the wilhelm posse in HERE, whose wierd maoism I much prefer to andy's labor snuggle). I believe at base, stern's steering the union into a healthcare coalition that includes wal-mart reflects two things, which are part of a single strategy:

1. The desire to be seen as a 'responsible' labor leader by corporate america, and thus lull more companies into caving in to corporate campaigns and grant organizing rights. This is not even a medium-term goal on wal-mart; the corporate campaign there has not really even begun yet, and wade rathke's program he's run on wal mart for CtW is underwhelming to say the least. Andy is talking to the HCAs, Sodexhos, Securitas, etc executives of the world, indicating that granting their workers organizing rights and thereby winding up with a bunch of seiu members in their ranks, is not the end of the world for them, so just get it over with and cave already cuz we want a million new members a year god damn it.

2. A political strategy that reflects what makes his team different than that of the AFL. The AFL is essentially a center-left institution today, which is perfectly happy to make center-left demands in the public sphere that it can't and won't win. This traditional labor positioning and acceptance of powerlessness has permeated the AFLs approach to organizing, unfortunately, so that other than the public sector (and to a lesser extent CWA), the AFL unions don't succeed at new organizing and have basically really reconciled themselves to that fact. The Stern team on the other hand, wants only one thing, results--- it wants to achieve whatevever it sets out to achieve. But it has concluded that most of the traditional left in the US will never be able to win anything.

So the way they approach all politics, is instead of being just the turnout machine for the democratic party, it wants to create a bipartisan consensus in favor of some basic technocratic solutions for contemporary american society. The main one is organizing rights--- give workers trying to organize certain basic rights, and they will mostly all join unions, and then we can make non-offshoreable jobs the new equiavalent of what manufacturing jobs used to be, and that will stabilize the loss of the middle class and the income chasm we have developed here. They know that such a bargain will never be agreed to by the far-right that controls todays Repub party, so for now CtW unions are, just like AFL ones, the turnout wing of the DP. But in the long run Stern envisions realignments taking place probably. His healthcare coalition is a clear example of this political strategy of using bipartisan consensus in favor of a technocratic solution most would favor, that falls well short of a traditional left goal. Note the presence of James Baker, the recent guru heading that other technocratic solution proposal which was not at all the left--- the Iraq war study report. The funny thing is, as the Bush people reject stuff like that, they look more and more like nutjobs who cannot be trusted by capital. Stern on the other hand, says, 'capital, we can be trusted.'

I think there's some stuff in this thats smart and will succeed in rebuilding the labor movement gradually, esp the stuff about organizing rights. But there is a lot that is simply not the left, and much that is simply vile. But you know what? The left cannot win anything. Thats the ugly truth stern and co. are working around.


> [from a profile of my college classmate, political PR whiz Leslie
> Dach - looks like Andy Stern's falen for it]
>
> <http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/02/070402fa_fact_goldberg?
> printable=true>
>
>
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