Here is something UAW dissident Greg Shotwell just wrote about labor leaders and OWS. What do people think of this?
I know that many labor union locals have been active in this, which is a grat thing. Top labor leaders, however, I am not so sure if there support is help or hindrance. They'll go for Obama in the end. Hopefully, as OWS expands, many organizations and institutions will be radically affected, including the wretched labor bureaucracy.
The Operable Word is Occupy
As Occupy Wall Street, the only genuine social movement to captivate American youth in fifty years, seizes the arena of debate from professional shills, union leaders rush to secure the privilege of bureaucracy.
Beware. Infiltrators are more pernicious than police.
Occupiers should be wary of trusting union leaders who have consistently undermined, sold out, and betrayed every militant uprising or cry for more democracy in the labor movement.
Most union leaders in the U.S. are wedded to the prostitution of social ideals. Every union in the United States is in thrall to the number one pimp on Wall Street, the Democratic Party.
Concession and compromise to the One Percent is the M.O. of U.S. unions.
Rank and file workers should be able to see themselves in the bloody skull of Iraq War veteran, Scott Olsen, struck dumb by Oakland police. Every day workers make heroic sacrifices to provide a dignified life for their families. Every day union leaders shoot down workers’ aspirations and incapacitate any chance workers have to shield their families from the latest act of economic terrorism.
Where is the union leader in the United States today who has the temerity to defy the capitalist oligarchy? For the most part, we don’t have genuine union leaders, we have corporate servants with union titles and six figure salaries.
When U.S. corporations invested profits “Made in America” overseas, labor unions in the U.S. cut wages for new hires and blamed foreign competition.
When U.S. corporations underfunded pensions, U.S. labor leaders forced retirees to make sacrifices.
The operable word for rank and file workers isn’t competition, concession, or compromise. The operable word is Occupy.