But to have expected this successful organizing program to have already rebuilt union density? Seiu and unite here are doing better at private sector organizing than anyone else. CWA got card check for some comms workers, and aft picks up units of teachers and nurses here and there. The trades soldier on as municipal patronage machines, some skilled workers have traditional craft unions for the rest of the time their industry stays in the US, and everyone else is hemhoragging members.
But every day it happens that a hundred workers win an organizing drive in a cincinatti library system, a huntington nursing home, a hospital in st louis, a multi-service department in scranton, a security firm in minneapolis, a hotel chain in seattle, an airport food vendor in chicago. At present, no one but seiu and unite here is on a path to rebuilt power in an industry in the private sector. Will it come fast enough to turn around the decline, the ever-rightward drift of the american public? I don't know. I used to think we had it in the bag. These days, I'm not so sure. The quest stands on a knife's edge, and stern is about as charismatic as frodo if much less noble. I can't believe I just made that analogy. If I was sure we could do it I probably would still be on organizer payroll. But if the country's headed into the shitter either way I do believe I'll take me a sabattical while I still have my youth.
But its much too early to deliver the CtW eulogy. Its already been a success in forcing the ufcw, laborers, and teamsters to undertake corporate campaigns for organizing on major companies in their real industries. The fact that Hoffa today has a better position on organizing than tdu is a tragic historic irony and testament to the different successes of the industrial organizing strategy as set against the rank and file caucusing strategy. However, I agree- the numbers have not come in to the other CtW unions. I can testify firsthand at what a monumental, decades-long process it is to merely build an effective organizing department--- to say nothing of the challenge of then executing, winning, and putting numbers on the board. I hope the laborers succeed at their campaign to rebuild density in residential construction, the tar heel packers in north carolina win a vote finally, and teamsters breaks fedex. But don't expect to see a bump in the national numbers by September, dude.
> Jim, what you're saying boils down to Stern being the latest
> iteration of business unionism - only he's really emphasizing the
> business part. That's the kind of consciousness that promises the
> disappearance of organized labor in the US in about 30 years on
> current trends. For all SEIU's alleged organizing success, it's not
> showing up in the annual union density numbers. And Change To Win has
> proved to be a total flop. So even on the hard-headed, real-world
> metrics you like to cite, success is proving elusive.
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