> By the way. It pains me to burst this bubble, because the ue was the
> conscience of the us labor movement for decades... but does anyone on this
> list know how badly the ue has been run? They have shrunk by the hundreds
> of thousands since their heyday in the fifties.
Jim, you're leaving out a very obvious part of the story, which is that a unified AFL-CIO spent decades consciously and systematically attacking UE with the intention of destroying it. This agenda became consderably less conscious and systematic some time ago, but after an organization has spent enough time in rapid decline, as UE did, it passes a point of no return.
> The
> labor geeks and professors are too busy talking about P9 and tdu to ever get
> to it.
Funny that you mention P9, since criticism I've heard from others of Ray Rogers' part in that mess reminds me a great deal of your criticism of UE. Just as I would like to see Rogers' critics organize a successful strike while being backstabbed by the international of the local in question, I would like to see you hold together an international while under attack by the whole of organized labor.
If the rest of Change to Win rejoined the AFL-CIO and the reunited federation turned en masse on SEIU, how long do you think you would keep your job?
I'm not saying that either Rogers or UE don't deserve any criticism. The tragedy is, we'll never know how much of it is valid. Once labor officialdom sticks a knife in your back, it becomes very hard to tell how long you might have lived otherwise.