Well, in fairness, that's really because I'm too much of a pussy to
participate in any of the civil wars.
:)
Here's my thought about unions sponsoring more intellectual discourse. It's an interesting idea but I see two problems with it.
One, unions already have a task at hand, know what they need to be doing, and it's organizing. THAT's what unions need to do more of. Still. Remember, all the sound and fury on here about unions is pretty much about a handful of unions that do the vast majority of the organizing. At some point its gonna matter less what seiu and unit here do, and matter more what it looks like when the other unions start building organizing programs on that model. The fact of the matter is only 5% of unions are really trying hard (and trying smart) to organize.
I'm thinking about this alot this month as that's what I'm doing in DC right now, with a district council of the laborers. The very fact that someone with as relatively little experience as me, is able to find work helping old-school unions try to figure out this 'organizing' thang, should alert everyone to the very bad situation where there is NO institutional force that exists to extend organizing capacity to more unions. Change To Win was supposed to be that, and would have been at least somewhat worthwhile if Woodruff had gotten to do some of that, but old habits die hard. Anyway, point is, unions need to do more and more organizing and not get distracted by doing teach-ins at the brecht forum or whatever.
Two, most intellectuals have a particular ideological outlook in one way or another. So the question of what flavor of intellectual discourse to sponsor would be highly contentious. Very few union members are trotskyites. A great many of them are actually republicans. And a great many do not give two shits about politics. So the more ideological, more political, more radical intellectual discourse around unions and political economy, by necessity will mostly remain semi-independent of the formal labor union structures.
Having said those caveats, I do think it would be useful for particular lefty unions to find ways of supporting and engaging in left discourse. Some of the CIO unions did this well, 1199 more recently did alot of it. Hell, my old local in Ohio didn't just sponsor Iraqi trade unionists to speak at a public event there, they actually set up some small group meetings with them and shop floor leaders from the rank and file. I think the usefulness of stuff like that is usually overestimated by leftos, but it is still somewhat useful regardless.
What I really wish would exist, is a structure in the labor movement for intellectuals who are specifically studying industrial relations. What I mean is, why don't we have a think-tank where nelson lichtenstein, jane slaughter and some other smartypants to work at, that has a formal role in the union federation, that is responsible for churning out studies and can be sic'd on thorny questions. I can't tell you how much light it would shed on all our debates if there was a department of the afl that produced a thorough qualitative and quantitative study on union shops organized through organizing rights agreements vs those not; or that could do a nationwide racial demographic analysis of union and non-union construction and building trades; or that come up with some metrics on member participation in different locals and unions. Like a research department, but big- picture research. I like an academic figure like Lichtenstein could do immeasurable good for the labor movement if his freelance role of support was formalized and integrated into the movement in some way. Even Comrade Henwood might work as a fellow at such a place, although he would have to play nice and not forget why we support organizing rights :)