Re: A Right-wing ballot initiativer

["maxsaw" <maxsaw@xxxxxxxxx>]

> The name of this initiative suggests that it is a measure in favor of
> campaign finance reform.
>
> One effect might be to force unions to work on organizing more than
> cozying up to Democratic wing of the money party.

The new leadership of the AFL took as its
inaugural premise the need for a new, strong
emphasis on organizing.  I've seen a lot of
complaints, present company excepted, about the
new leadership's shortcomings, but no serious
analysis of how they are fulfilling their stated
objectives.  How much money they are spending,
how they are using these resources, their
strategic and tactical choices, and outcomes
should all be object of analysis and critique.

Instead I see scattered cries of outrage from
some super-lefts (mostly on the labor party
list, which I no longer inhabit) about specific
instances of 'betrayal,' and a more general
expression along the lines of 'of why don't they
do more?'  Assertions that they are doing
little or nothing are uninformed; what's at issue
is what they are doing, and how it's working or
likely to work.  I would even suggest that the
architects of these strategems at AFL HQ would be
interested in such analyses themselves.

On the ballot initiatives, one sidelight is that
this sort of thing threatens to drive the
building trades and all of the most conservative
unions firmly to the left, a welcome development.

Regarding the predominance of outside right-wing
money fueling the California campaign, it might
be noted that the Rooney role is a precise
parallel to the Teamster triangulation device:
Rooney supports the initiative, which helps GOP
in state and national legislature, and GOP
furthers health care privatization, in which
Rooney has a fundamental financial stake.

Regarding Mike E.'s criticism of the deal labor
made which took the California employers out of
the game (by foregoing a parallel initiative
aimed at corporations), if the object is to beat
the anti-labor initiative, rather than to secure
revenge by getting a parallel one for
corporations, then taking a big player off the
board is defensible, if chancey.  I think this
has less to do with 'business unionism' then a
debatable pragmatic judgement.  In the larger
context, as noted above, the real question is not
the fact of the AFL's stated commitment to
organizing, but the actual practice, about which
we should all like to know more.

MBS