[lbo-talk] Obama: let my Teamsters go!

Mark Rickling mrickling at gmail.com
Tue May 6 19:44:47 PDT 2008


On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 10:25 PM, Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:


> I was being provocative. Unlike the Sparts I believe that in some respect
> these are strategic and tactical issues. NLRB recognition and regulation is
> a different matter from a court ordered trusteeship over a whole union or a
> local. The former a union can live with and use just so it doesn't become a
> fetish. The latter has always been a bad deal. I don't know of an
> exception. Do you?

I agree; even though the labor movement embraced the state long ago Teamster-style trusteeships are not a necessary concomitant of that embrace. But there are those in academia and elsewhere who argue that this was a bad move and labor's current predicament can be traced, at least in part, to that embrace. I don't agree, but there is something to the argument that the legalistic process of collective bargaining tends to make workers spectators in their own drama, as one historian puts it.



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