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

[Jim Straub]

Hey, good restatement, with one key distinction: by more union members,
stern's goal is not to grow the healthcare industry.  It will grow beyond
the labor markets capacity, for sure, no help needed.  And right now a very
small percentrage of hc workers nationwide are in unions.  His goal of more
union members is pursued rather by getting more companies to cave in and
grant their workers organizing rights which, in practice, make them vastly
more able to unionize successfully.  Its no longer a situation where like
all the steelworkers in the country are in uswa, and so uswa tries to pass
legislation for the us to make more steel.  Its rather a situation of
getting us steel to grant organizing rights in 1936, after which one can be
confident the vast majority of steelworkers will choose to be union, and
then we can start remaking their jobs and society with the massive
institution that results.

Also, I don't think his hc plan is to increase the number of people in
employer-based plans exactly, just make laws that they all have to either
provide hc or pay into a gov fund, have the gov provide it to many more
people.  Like the MA and CA plans.

I agree those plans are not a real longterm solution to hc. We do need
single payer: a society that values and will fight for a new set of
institutional arrangements where hc is not a commodity.  Unfortunately the
tide of history has been going the other direction in our country for
decades but fuck it lets roll up our sleeves.

 I also hate stern's positioning the union as this labor snuggle institution
that can rationalize the costs of globalization for our domestic population
and offer centrist technocratic solutions in partenrship with biz.  Bleh.
This worldview is held by really very few people in the chain of command at
seiu--- I have the impression only stern and burger get hardons from saying
this kind of shit.  I wish seiu would consciously position itself as part of
the left and work to rebuild the left.  That said, its not hard to see why
the stern team concludes the left is not a useful political formation for
getting results anymore.  Smaller- every year.

The radical left needs to do what the stern team has done- successfully
build mass organizations capable of moving individuals on political
questions, winning battles for gains, and institutionalizing and growing its
power in concrete forms inside a very fucked up system.   But not only is
the left not doing that, I'd say its on page sixteen of its priority list,
in between pupppetmaking and paper vending.

Here's the way I would rephrase your argument to make it perfectly blunt.
> Feel free to correct me if I've left out something essential:
>
> 1) Stern's top priority is more union jobs.
>
>
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