Re: [Marxism] "Unions" & "Workers" are not the same

["andypollack@xxxxxxxx" <andypollack@xxxxxxxx>]

In 1998, the last year for which official figures are available, there were 
24,000 workers in the US who suffered reprisals for exercising the right to 
freedom of association, reprisals severe enough that the NLRB issued a 
"back-pay" or other remedial order.

24,000.  Assuming some of them worked in the same workplace, and even if most 
of them worked in small workplaces, that still means hundreds of thousands of 
workers were involved in organizing struggles in that year alone which led to 
these reprisals. That's not a movement?

Nothing much in 60 years? Have you ever heard of SANE, the first antinuke 
group, founded by a union? Have you ever heard of DRUM? PATCO? The miners' 
strike in 1978? DRUM?

One last of hundreds of possible examples: US Labor Against War. The most 
important part of today's antiwar movement.

It's embarrassing to have to even answer this line of argument on a Marxist 
list.
-- Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Lance Murdoch wrote:
>
>
> You think working for universal health care (never mind single payer)
> is probably more promising than work within union locals?

Working in any struggle that happens to come along! Revolutionary
movements emerge from mass popular struggles. As I said, we have no
crystal ball. Who three years and two months ago would have guessed that
there would be an anti-war struggle emerging within a month? The core
point is that nothing much for over 60 years has come from work in
unions. My wife was active in her APWU local for nearly 20 years
(president for 4 years); busy work. Before that she worked for several
years attempting to organize clerical workers at ISU. No political
results emerged from that either.

Something like a union movement will have to emerge sooner or later
(Marx's general arguments in _Wages, Price and Profit_ still hold), but
to make unions as they now exist a major part of marxist political
activity is simply quite silly.

Carrol


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