A ‘Post-Political’ Labor Movement

[Omaha Steve]

X post in Labor


http://inthesetimes.com/article/17250/a_post_political_labor_movement



Stanley Aronowitz argues in a new book that unions can't survive without reversing decades of timidity and bureaucratization.

FEATURES » OCTOBER 15, 2014

Stanley Aronowitz on how the labor movement falters and how it might recover.
BY DAVID MOBERG

After the Brooklyn College administration temporarily suspended Stanley Aronowitz from school in 1950 for taking part in a protest, he dropped out to follow a much more unorthodox route to an academic career. From the 1950s through the 1970s, Aronowitz—a lifetime New Yorker in spirit even when temporarily absent—was a factory worker, union organizer, civil rights advocate, influential contributor to New Left organizations, and a vivid, often flamboyant debater in a tumultuous political period.

Since 1983, however, he has been a prolific sociology professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, writing or editing 25 books. His latest, The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement, out from Verso this fall, expands his decades-long argument that unions need bigger goals and more direct action to succeed, or even survive. Aronowitz spoke with In These Times Senior Editor David Moberg about his strategies for reviving the labor movement.

You say in your book that the labor movement has become part of the establishment. In what way?

In the 2012 presidential election, unions contributed $141 million to the Democratic Party, one of the two establishment parties. Their main strategy for moving labor forward is electoral politics, yet they have not formed a labor party. Meanwhile, they have virtually given up the strike and any kind of harsh criticism of the capitalist system.

FULL story at link.

[socialist_n_TN]

1. I can't say I disagree with this analysis...

The problem is that most unions have bought into the "business union" model of organizing where they're as concerned with the company's profits as they are with their members needs. Which always struck me as weird. Why should a workers' organization be concerned with the company's bottom line? Does the company care about workers who they lay off and how they're going to get by?

I mean I see the surface reasoning, in that the company threatens to close down if they don't make ENOUGH profit. Notice too it's not just about profit anymore, it's about making ENOUGH profit. Every union should have a plan to take over their workplace and run it for themselves if the company closes down or locks them out. That's why I'm more in favor of occupation strikes or sit-downs rather than walk outs.