Re: general income, was RE: AUT: RE: fwd Ricercatori Precari

[Nate Holdren <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Harald,

Thanks for the info and for clarifying. I think I agree.

This is part of the concern I have over big campaigns by unions here
in the US using public pressure tactics etc -

There was a campaign some friends of mine worked on, briefly, at a
large hospital system (20 or 80 hospitals, I think) in California. It
was a joint effort of SEIU and AFSCME (and for a while the CNA, but
they walked away from the table and ended up fighting the SEIU/AFSCME
organizing drive). The unions put legislative and public relations
pressure on the hospital system - exposing their treatment of
immigrants and the uninsured, etc - until the company agreed to
neutrality in the campaign. The company agreed, a contract was written
giving something like 15-25%  wage increases effective as soon as the
contract was voted on, and the unions had a 90 day window per hospital
to get people to sign cards. It was still a tremendous challenge to do
so and I don't know if they won or not - the hospital workers had a
sense of "the union is big and powerful" but there was no sense of
"the union is ours, we control it", and some people were very
reluctant to sign up. Organizers basically had to act as sales-people
for the contract. (And of course, later on down the line if management
were to begin act up around interpreting/enforcing the contract
language, there's no shop floor organization with which to exert
power, and the unions signed an agreement not to attack management in
public for the duration - the only weapon employed in the campaign.)
I'm all for folks getting more money, but that doesn't sound like a
'working class organization' in any meaningful sense of the term.

best,
Nate


On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 11:44:18 +0200, Harald Beyer-Arnesen
<haraldba@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>despite local exceptions, the continued
> worldview of being just another *business* with a commodity to sell
> on the market, and that to hire some more sellers and some marketing
> idiots, is all that is to it; and then generally not being at all
> interested in 'investing' in the low-waged, smaller workplaces etc., as
> these have not seemed profitiable, little dues to fetch for high
> costs. Significantly enough, business-unionism was a label of own choice,
> with a whole philosophy attached, as that the union bosses
> to get respect during contract negotiatons, should match
> those other bosses, the other contracting party, in income and
> life-style. Of course, this is not the whole story of the contiuned
> declined, but, I think an important part of it, in particular
> on the background on the old market for long has been
> dwindling.
>        You have see this tendency here too, when some union starts
> focusing on campaigns designed after what they teach in business-
> and marketing schools, you know it is in deep trouble. Some bureucrats
> are still not wholly unaware however, that a wildcat strike or two
> actually brings in far more members and dues, and free at that,
> most times. So how to square the circle? They actually once
> used to be very good at that .. but have been loosing touch. Also
> seen from the other side, it certainly poses some dillemmas.
>
> I hope this went some way to answering your questions.
>
>
>
> Harald
>
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>


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