> What prevents the UAW from organizing 93,100 new automotive repairs
> and maintenance workers? Or 51,100 new motor vehicle dealership
> workers? (Not to mention 229,000 and 169,300 current ones,
> respectively.) Why can't CWA and OPEIU team up to organize hundreds
> of thousands of finance-sector workers? When will the old plant
> unions notice that pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing isn't
> going anywhere?
==============================
I don't know. Why?
These are always fair questions, and whether the failures are essentially ones of leadership, as you maintain, or objective ones pertaining to the nature of the workforce (eg. dispersed and transient vs concentrated or in short supply), the working conditions (eg. white collar vs. blue collar), and the relative bargaining power of the two sides - as the unions with jurisdiction would undoubtedly claim - these questions can really only be answered by those with knowledge of these industries and the considerations which have shaped the union responses. Certainly, I'm not in a position to know, and neither I suspect are most of the people on this list with very definite opinions on these matters.
If the SEIU template can be so effectively transplanted to these sectors, why haven't the other union leaders simply adopted it? Why wouldn't the UAW choose to organize more than half a million body shop workers and car sales personnel if, as you suggest, there is nothing other than inertia preventing this? Why wouldn't the CAW and OPEIU welcome hundreds of thousands of new dues-paying members? Why have organizing drives in the finance, high-tech, and other sectors fallen flat?
Does it all really boil down to the fact that Andy Stern and the rest of the SEIU leadership have a greater interest in expanding the reach and power of their union - and, by extension their own power and privileges - than do Ron Gettelfinger and the heads of the other unions?
And if that is the case, what is Change to Win doing to organize these sectors? Jurisdictional lines are no longer an issue, anymore than they were for the CIO in the 30's when it split from the AFL on identical grounds that the existing leadership was refusing to organize new sectors which were ripe for unionization. It should not be difficult for CtW to put this proposition to the test in today's changed circumstances.
There are other reasons for faulting and discriminating between labour leaders, but I don't think a stubbornly irrational refusal to add new members is one of them.