>No, it's because I disagree with the SEIU's growth at the expense of
>even marginal power strategy.
>You're the one who is confused here.
>People who oppose the SEIU's "dues farming" practices are not confused at all.
>People who support it because "it's better than nothing" are fooling
>themselves.
I recall many years ago at the chicken farm where I was working, attempting to get the Australian Workers Union organiser to come around a join some of us up. Or just trying to join, it proved impossible.
There'd been a bit of trouble about some workers the boss wanted to sack which resulted in a threatened strike being relayed informally back to the boss. At about that time, some of the workers who were threatening the strike thought it might help to actually join the union.
As I say, it proved impossible. The union didn't have an office we could go to, to sign up. And the organiser would promise to come around, but never actually did.
I discussed this with the secretary of another union, who I had known for years, a fellow who was known to his union's members as "The Angry Ant", after his diminutive stature and fiery nature. He explained to me that what the problem was probably that, without knowing it, we were already members of the union. The AWU was apparently notorious for the practice of unlawfully allowing employers to pay dues on behalf of their employees, to keep the union out. The workers would be on the union's books as dues paying members, without knowing it and without actually paying any dues.
It must have come as a shock to have some of those members suddenly asking to join. So the union organiser just hid from us. The irony is that the reason there was no union office for us to go to was that the policy of the union state secretary at that time was not to provide any offices for organisers, in order to stop them sitting around on their backsides. His theory was that they wouldn't be able to stand sitting around at home being nagged by their wives, so they would get out and do some actual organising. ;-)
Anyhow, our strike threat was successful, the workers were never sacked. The union organiser would probably have been more of a hindrance than a help, since he was obviously highly compromised by his deals with the boss. Moral of the story, sometimes workers are better off without a union.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas