A major reason for the perception that unions mostly help insiders is that it’s true. Though unions sometimes help out in living wage campaigns, they’re too interested in their own wages and benefits and not the needs of the broader working class. Public sector workers rarely make common cause with the consumers of public services, be they schools, health care, or transit. and then you quote Bob Fitch apparently approvingly:
Essentially, the American labor movement consists of 20,000 semi-autonomous local unions. Like feudal vassals, local leaders get their exclusive jurisdiction from a higher level organization and pass on a share of their dues. The ordinary members are like the serfs who pay compulsory dues and come with the territory. The union bosses control jobs—staff jobs or hiring hall jobs—the coin of the political realm. Those who get the jobs—the clients—give back their unconditional loyalty. The politics of loyalty produces, systematically, poles of corruption and apathy. The privileged minority who turn the union into their personal business. And the vast majority who ignore the union as none of their business.
It is hardly surprising that the U.S. labor movement based on Gompers type business unions is mainly out to advance its own interest. However it often also advocates progressive causes such as minimum wage laws, fights against right to work laws etc. Businesses too are out to further the interest of shareholders or are supposed to be and self interested. But consider this. A successful company that gives great returns for investors is regarded as a great public good. A successful union that gets g ood salaries and benefits for its members is often regarded a public bad and needs to have its rights limited and gains reduced. A successful company is a model for business people but a successful union is envied by many workers who rather than use it as a model they help the corporate elite reduce its power and destroy it.
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From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Thursday, June 7, 2012 1:20:33 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Karl Rove's plan
On Jun 7, 2012, at 1:57 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Charles Post has done a pretty exhaustive
> history of who did the fighting (initially at least) in all the great
> upsurges of working-class struggle, and almost _always_ it was that sector
> of the working-class which too many leftists (including Marx, Engels, Lenin,
> & Trotsky) have sneered at -- the so-called labor aristocracy.
No such sneers from me. I don't like that term at all. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk