After Andy

Dissent Magazine: Melvyn Dubofsky on "The Legacy of Andy Stern"

The distinguished sociologist Daniel Bell wrote this in 1995 about the alliance between intellectuals and organized labor that flourished in the aftermath of Sweeney’s rise to power: “For the intellectuals it’s a lot of wishful thinking; I don’t mean that in an invidious way. The real test will be whether labor has the ability to expand its numbers. Simply becoming more rhetorical and becoming more active politically is not in and of itself enough.” The same can be said about Andy Stern and his creation of [Change to Win.] It was indeed a lot of wishful thinking.

EFCA w/o Card check is like (blank) without (blank)

according to politiBLo:

Despite the backing of President Barack Obama and congressional leaders, plus a multimillion-dollar union advertising blitz, Senate leaders can’t muster the 60 votes they need to avoid a GOP filibuster on labor’s top priority: the Employee Free Choice Act.

So a group of Senate Democrats is reportedly considering dropping the bill’s controversial “card check” provision to break the legislative impasse. That will help, but other formidable obstacles lie in the path of long-overdue changes in U.S. labor law.

So what is EFCA without card check?

its like herb without THC
its like coffee without caffeine
its like freedom without forty acres and a mule

(reasonable and non-comical discussions about the actual ramifications of or the remaining provisions of the bill are welcome as well)

well, thank god andy stern is on top of this development....

"Unions OK drop of 'card check' in bill "Union leaders present at the talks have included AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern and Communications Workers of America president Larry Cohen.

A compromise would allow unions to get a vote on something that can pass and achieve some goals.

Without better protection from employer anti-union campaigns unions will not gain anything. It is hard to see how EFCA w/o card check still moves that ball...

Another Idea That's Time Has Come

Fuck yeah! Andy Stern!

and/or

Perez Stern!

Go figure, huh....?

Obama meets with who????

so I read that the Obama's had a sit down with progressives, and asked them to help support "big progressive" ideas, and I liked the first part.....

“The gist was, `We’re gonna need people out there telling the story of the stimulus and telling the story about how much we need big health care reform and clean energy and green jobs,’” the attendee says.

but then I spit coffee all over my computer at this:

Among those on the guest list: Labor leaders Jimmy Hoffa, Gerry McEntee and Andy Stern; MoveOn’s Eli Pariser; Sierra Club’s Carl Pope; Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richardson; and Joe Solomonese of the Human Rights Campaign.

Maybe Eli and Joe could be characterized as progressive, but Carl, Jimmy, and Andy???

on the question of what is a freakin progressive, I recommend this piece by nate silver @ 538...he discusses two distinct strains in progressive thought, what he calls rational and radical progressives:

...Rational progressivism tends to be trusting, within reason, of status quo political and economic institutions -- generally including the institution of capitalism. It tends to trust these institutions because it believes they are a manifestation of progress made by previous generations. However, unlike conservatism, it also sees these institutions as continuing works in progress...
Radical progressivism is more clearly distinguishable from "conventional" liberalism and would generally be associated with the "far left" -- although on a handful of issues such as free trade, it may find common cause with the "radical" right. Radical progressivism embraces the tradition of populism and frequently adopts a discourse of the virtuous commoner organizing against the corrupt elite. It is much more willing to make normative claims than rational progressivism, and tends to view conservatism as immoral and contemporary American liberalism as amoral (at best). Its project is not reform but transformation.Rational progressives sometimes regard radical progressives as impractical, self-righteous, shrill, demagogic, naïve and/or anti-intellectual. Radical progressives, in turn, regard rational progressives as impure, corrupt (or corruptible), selfish, complacent, elitist, and too quick to compromise.

I don't suppose there were too many "radical progressives" invited....

Stupid with an S

Anyone else watch Fox News' Trillion with a T? I tuned in for the promised Andy Stern action, but there was very little of it. He got in two sound bites, one supporting the S-CHIP expansion and one about the funding of NCLB. The program was the expected propaganda job, with little pretext to fairness or balance, but I'm not bitchin', I knew what I was in for.

I did like this guy though. I mean, not as a human being or anything, but as a Republican who is young, can speak to a microphone without looking like a jackass, and is a sweet piece of meat, if that's your thing. He's extremely conservative and from Arizona so I guessed he was Mormon (not that there's anything wrong with that) and, of course, I was right. Does this hurt him for president or will Mitt's failed bids pave the way?

The answer is yes.

Crap/Not Crap: US Labor "Getting the Band Back Together"

for reference purposes, please see Labor Calls for Unity After Years of Division - NYTimes.com

The union presidents issued their joint call after the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama signaled that it would prefer dealing with a united movement, rather than a fractured one that often had two competing voices.

David E. Bonior, a member of Mr. Obama’s economic transition team who withdrew from consideration as labor secretary, helped arrange and oversee a meeting of the union presidents on Wednesday in Washington.

The leaders are hoping, by April 15, to approve a plan to reunify, one union official said. But some officials said they might fail to reach agreement.

Mr. Bonior, a former House majority whip, said he would organize meetings with labor leaders over the next few weeks in the hope of hammering out details about what form a reunified labor federation would take.

BHO saying it'd be easier to work with a united labor movement, and potentially using EFCA as a quid-pro-quo to consolidate his base/our movement? Not crap. Bonior as master of reconciliation ceremonies? Not crap. But then comes tougher questions:

1. Is this "rotating two-year presidency" idea even more flaccid and in-efficacious than the UN-... I mean, the AFL-CIO's situation?
   
2. Trumka? He's not crap, but the "pale/stale/male" tradition he embodies is undeniably so.
   
3. Seriously, a new name? Can we call ourselves "The Leopards?"
   

Cousin Oliver

I feel a bit like John Frusciante over here. I've followed the lads (and lady) at the OG here for years, even have the OG logo tattooed on my left butt check, and now I am the luckiest guy in the world because I actually get to jam with these mofos. Plus, Wobs has started to dial it in like he was Flea and Lex is busy trying to become an actor by playing a small-time thug in a Keanu Reeves vehicle. The parallels are uncanny. The only thing left for me to do is propose that we do a really ripping cover of Higher Ground.

As always when the new guy comes in, you will hate me. You will sit around and talk about how you used to read the OG before they sold out. (Speaking of which, can we get some motherfucking ads up in this bitch? I got two cats to feed.) But then the OG will conquer the known blog universe, win Grammies, and everyone will look at you funny when you say you liked early OG and drop a reference to Freaky-Styley. dave3544 Hillel is dead, long live me.

Still, the new guy has to be able to play the classics, if only for encore purposes. Hell, it's why I fell in love with the OG in the first place. So here's this:


Seriously, FUCK ANDY STERN. He's a Stalinesque piece of crap who wants power. His transparent need to grow his union to collect dues, not help workers, but to collect dues and expand his power is obvious to anyone paying attention. The deals his union works with employers, locking in low wages for years while pledging to work on the employers behalf is unconscionable. His ongoing battle with the California Nurses and now the UHW is not about helping workers, it is about power and control.

Alright,the classics done, let me point you to LaborNerd. For reasons I can't explain, I have hopes for this blog. Young people writing about labor, yes! Unfortunately, so far we have a strong endorsement of Robert Reich and a complete unwillingness to take sides in the SEIU-UHW affair. I mean, it's handy to have a clearing house for the info, but pick a motherfucking side. More calls for everyone to get along are not going to help. One side is more right than the other. Declare or shut the fuck up.

o + btw

fuck andy stern.

players in their own right: Stern, Biden, Reuther, Christie

1) Andy Stern on the New Moment
here's the Nation editor KVH swooning a little bit over Andy. it's an interesting opportunity to hear Andy spew forth, and you can always count on Big Purple for some interesting frames:

It's a different world – the free market ideology has been discredited," Stern said. This was "a clear election not on small things." And he argues, "We've redefined the center. Universal health care is now centrist."

2) BIDENLAND! amidst all the appointments, my question is, how do we ensure that my man Joe Biden always has the ear of the pres.?
3)Harold Meyerson puts forth a superior reading of the Big 3 Bailout that doesn't fail to evoke the era or Reuther:

The United Auto Workers’ pamphlet is nothing if not explicit in criticizing the direction of the American automobile industry. New cars cost too much relative to the buying power of the American public, it says. They are oversized. Their fuel efficiency is appallingly low.

This indictment of the Big Three appears in "A Small Car Named Desire," published by the UAW in 1949 (when the Tennessee Williams play which its title invokes was new). It was written by the social democratic labor intellectuals with whom the UAW's new president, Walter Reuther, staffed what was then the world's largest and most vibrant union. During World War II, the union, along with the Steelworkers, had won the first contracts that committed its employers to paying for its members' health care. In the first years of Reuther's presidency, it won the first contracts ensuring that productivity gains would be shared with the workers and devised the first annual cost-of-living adjustments so that paychecks would keep up with inflation. The union also won decent pensions for retirees and coverage of those retirees' medical expenses.

In other words, the UAW did more to build the era of postwar American prosperity, when workers' paychecks kept up with productivity gains, than any single institution save the federal government itself. That's one reason why it's such a target for conservative attacks as the Big Three beg the government to bail them out: In an era when no productivity gains are shared with workers, when workers’ incomes have been stagnating for decades, the UAW still preserves some of the gains that were broadly shared among American workers three and four decades ago.

read on!

4) and then there's NJ US Attorney and soon-to-be GOP candidate for Governor of NJ, Chris Christie, whose made hay through taking a creative, expansive approach to making political corruption cases. in addition to Christie's ingenuity, the Garden State's long-infamous culture of party patronage, etc., echoes neoliberal political culture's common-sense skepticism not just towards government, but towards politicians, and by extension, towards politics itself:

"After 35 years as a defense lawyer, I find it has become far more difficult to defend public officials," says Joseph Hayden, a prominent Democrat who also has been mentioned as a possible successor to Christie. "People simply don't trust them -- and those people become jurors."

Jurors, says Hayden, "don't care about legalities. They care about the smell test. If it smells like corruption, they'll convict."

Our team

I love it when we're the ones who can speculate about our Dream Team Cabinet. As for who will run the show at Labor...

• Former Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.)
• Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union
• Kay Hagan of North Carolina
• Jeanne Shaheen, former New Hampshire governor

As of right now, I see one and only one politically acceptable name for this post. Et tu?

SEIU anti-McCain

What.a.weird.commercial.

Is the bit about keeping your kids "looking nice" supposed to cut right through the moral semiotics of Working America?

Primer: Labor, (almost) right this second

This much good labor writing, within 72 hours?

1. Wow, check out Chris Hayes' thoughtful take on the "pro-labor" Republican event and SEIU's "Take Back Labor Day" concert feat. Andy "is healthcare in the house?" Stern and Tom Morello*.
   
2. Then chase it with Ezra Klein's very sage distillation of the SEIU/UHW struggle (ed - link updated after Wobs' heads-up - thanks Wobs.)
   
3. Then, for a local dessert, check this R-G profile of Lane County's labor day festivities, and our AFT brother's, uh, pretty plain dismissal of EFCA.

* Btw, an anlaogy - Andy Stern is to Walter Reuther what Tom Morello is to Guy Picciotto...

* Btw, pt 2. Have you all seen "American Rights At Work"'s pro-EFCA ad on the cable channels? As far as I know, this is the first time labor has gone to a "fight television ads with television ads" strategy over the proposed bill. Three months before the pres. election, and almost half a year from the soonest possible moment during which the 2009 Congress could pass it; amidst a hard-fought, historic presidential race and all of the down ballot business, both unions and business are trying to get their brands/frames out around this issue? Can you imagine what kind of a Senate fight we're in for if this thing were ever to make it to the floor with an ice cube's chance in hell?

More Carnage, More Shame

The big purple bummer continues.

Hollow Unions

One of the foundational purposes of this blog was to be an place for five people currently or formally involved in America's labor movement to comment on the current state of the movement. Much like unions themselves, we have been easily distracted by electoral politics and bright shiny things.

Back to basics.
I don't want to speak for my fellow OGians, but I am a believer in strong membership involvement and control of the labor movement. Whether the goal is to build a vibrant social justice movement centered on union rights or to win better wages and benefits, the membership must lead. They are the union's strength. Not just in terms of a strike, but in the everyday maintaince of the contract, knowledge about workplace issues, and (yes) political news.

Those of us who have spent way too much time debating union-race politics in Detroit in the 1940s know that "the will of the membership" is not always progressive, community-based, or farsighted. One the other hand, at times the union membership can be far out ahead of what is realistic to achieve at a bargaining table or in a grievance hearing. The key to success is to be open in communication, constantly talking, always in touch, and to know that it is the members' union.

As such, regrowing our labor movement will be very difficult. It is a lot of hard work getting the membership involved in a union. People tend to be busy these days. No one has free time. Getting people to make time in their schedule for a union meeting is difficult. And having a meeting with the goal of making sure everyone has a voice and everyone feels comfortable with the decision reached is not easy. But it is this hard work that cements people to their union. People will fight for something they have built.

Unfortunately, our friends at the Service Employees International Union have taken a different approach to unionism. In many areas of the country and in different service sectors, SEIU has negotiated agreements with employers whereby employers allow SEIU to organize certain workplaces, but not others. But "organize" is a misnomer. Before SEIU even enters the workplace, they negotiate the first contract with the employer, setting wages, benefits and working conditions without any input from their future members. Some contracts have provisions that prohibit employees from reporting unsafe working conditions or violations of state and federal laws. These agreements are usually secret and only leak out when disgruntled union members speak out.

Inside Higher Ed has an article on what happened at the University of North Carolina when SEIU signed one of their secret deals and left a motivated workforce with no union.

SEIU routinely denies that these agreements exist, but when presented with overwhelming evidence, SEIU typically falls back on the argument that without these secret deals, workers wouldn't be able to unionize at all, given employer resistance to unions. Better to have a quarter of the workforce in a union with a non-negotiable contract than to not have anyone in a union at all, they argue.

Except that once in the union, SEIU members aren't allowed much of a voice there either. The members of United Healthcare Workers-West have dissented from SEIU's secret deals for nursing home workers in California, so SEIU is attempting to break up that local and put those members in more compliant locals. Even SEIU members who are generally happy with and proud of their union complain that they have little to no say in what their union does.

For his willingness to completely leave the members out of decisions about their union, SEIU President Andy Stern is hailed as a visionary. Mostly he is hailed as such by people outside of the union movement. Mostly he has been hailed as such by people who have a vested interest in seeing a weak union movement. It is no coincidence that he became a media darling right around the time he was dividing the labor movement. When Stern speaks of creating one big labor movement that speaks with one voice, he can sound like a 1930s union radical. He sounds like the kind of powerful labor leader that we look back on with nostalgia. Unfortunately, SEIU operates in a a way that makes it clear that there is only one voice that matters, Stern's. He does not seem terribly interested in building a movement of workers who seek to challenge the power of the bosses.

We must find a way to prevent the SEIU model from becoming any kind of national model. SEIU cannot be the future of the labor movement, only the end of it. While SEIU is rightly celebrated for diversifying the American labor movement, we cannot forgive their efforts to create hollow unions. No lasting structure can be built on such a weak foundation.