[lbo-talk] labor leadership not so sure about Wisconsin

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Feb 21 07:20:58 PST 2011


On Feb 21, 2011, at 10:10 AM, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:


> Exactly what I was thinking. Although isn't it just like a US news
> organization to find the union people who think that what unions are doing
> is risky, no matter what they're doing? They'd be writing almost exactly the
> same story if teachers had sat on their hands last week, just with some of
> them saying, "not doing anything is really risky. this could snowball and it
> could kill us."

I don't think they'd be writing that. But the story is an interesting window into the constricted brains of the U.S. labor leadership, which is always hypercautious and frightened - not only of their opponents, but of their members too.

Back in the late 1980s, I think it was, during a labor upsurge in South Korea, an AFL-CIO (or maybe it was AAFLI) hack on the scene was quoted in the WSJ saying that the problem with Korean unions was that they didn't know how to control their rank and file. Always a problem when your business is cutting deals and being the hopeless very junior partner.

Doug



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