[lbo-talk] help

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 26 15:35:13 PDT 2007


If unions are anachronistic, someone should have told that to workers polled by mainstream outlets after Enron/Worldcom, etc., scandals that now feel like decades ago, but which was only a few years ago. A majority of workers said they'd love to join a union at that time.

One of the tragedies of this decade, besides the US wars in the Mid East, was organized labor's failure to connect up with that desire. (Or perhaps workers were emoting in a fleeting fit of outrage at corporations, and weren't serious in the end?) . Unions are still incredibly important; among other things they link folks' day to day, bread & butter concerns (food on the table, roof over head, healthcare) with larger, more abstract issues, like capital's conflicted state of being indebted to labor while also resentfully wanting to crush it.

-B.

Eric wrote:

"Can someone remind me again why unions are so vital to leftist politics? As far as I can tell, really existing unions are actually retreating from politics, toward the national interest and away from any sort of working-class mutual aid. I know this is not a new development, but after the UAW deal, it seems like it might really be useful to evaluate the left's undying faith in the anachronistic political form called the union."



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