Steir throws shade on the AOC victory and the Caban campaign in Queens and makes some points. He mentions MORE but he doesn't touch about the reality that MORE shrank rather than grew since it's founding - more talk about their recent election debacle in more detail. I met a woman at a DSA event whose son came to MORE through DSA and she put out the line about the red state strikes offering hope. I asked her if her son, a 3rd year teacher, has to work a second job like so many vets in red states have to. She said No. There you have it I said. There will be no similar rebellion as long as salaries are decent. And by the way, compare the lousy working conditions in NYC to the even lousier working conditions elsewhere. Now if there's a depression with massive layoffs, some things may change. But even then I don't believe MORE has the organizing chops to even make hay then.Rooted as this analysis is in pie-in-the-sky perspective, it makes the assumption that bringing in more-militant leadership would bring the city to the feet of the union and increase its power, rather than leading it to be marginalized. And, as long as the DSA is playing fantasy political football, convince the great majority of UFT members who have repeatedly voted for the established leadership group by wide margins over dissident groups like the Movement of Rank and File Educators—which the memo states includes “many DSA members”—that it’s time to go way left.... Richard SteierIt’s also labor history from the Neo-Insane School of Political Thought.
As to the strategy from these groups, I only know what MORE does in the UFT based on their strategy. I will parse what is wrong and right in that in future posts.
Here's what I learned from socialists I've been in groups with. They are always optimistic and always live on the sunny side of the street. Every strike is a sign from heaven that the point of no return has been reached toward socialism. I believe the point of no return will be reached on climate change way before. Can socialism flourish under water?
Razzle Dazzle
Meet the New Left, Just As Daft as the Old Left
Last
Monday, a friend who’s a retired union leader wrote to express concern
about an Aug. 14 article in Politico New York detailing a memo the city
branch of Democratic Socialists of America had disseminated discussing
how to engineer a quiet takeover of a half-dozen city unions, among them
District Council 37, the United Federation of Teachers and Transport
Workers Union Local 100.
The rationale behind this master plan shimmies and shakes.
DC
37 is targeted both because Executive Director Henry Garrido “is more
politically and organizationally ambitious” than his predecessors dating
back to the 1990s and due to the “general disengagement of members
& a layer of leaders and staff who appear unable or unwilling to do
the organizing needed to regain our power.”
TWU
Local 100 is seen as a prime target for a takeover because of its
“history of militancy, internal democracy, and rank-and-file activism,”
notwithstanding the fact that it represents people whose “jobs are
generally well-paid with excellent benefits,” which would seemingly make
members less-susceptible to radicalization, especially since the
union’s 2005 strike ended badly for both its leadership and its rank and
file.
UFT as Gateway to ‘Working-Class Solidarity’
The
memo speaks of the “social/political leverage” of better infiltrating
the UFT, stating, “With public schools located in every borough,
neighborhood, and district, education workers’ social and political
leverage is also potentially enormous. Teachers and other education
workers see everything students and their families go through, and we
can highlight issues of homelessness, economic insecurity, racism, and
inadequate healthcare and educational resources. Teachers and other
education workers have access to communities beyond our worksites that
can build solidarity across the working class.”
On
the other hand, it stated that the UFT “is tremendously influential
politically, but fails to exercise the full potential of its power. Its
strategy rests on electing fairly centrist/conservative Democrats and
holding them to commitments on maintaining basic standards in treatment
of educators.”
Rooted as this
analysis is in pie-in-the-sky perspective, it makes the assumption that
bringing in more-militant leadership would bring the city to the feet of
the union and increase its power, rather than leading it to be
marginalized. And, as long as the DSA is playing fantasy political
football, convince the great majority of UFT members who have repeatedly
voted for the established leadership group by wide margins over
dissident groups like the Movement of Rank and File Educators—which the
memo states includes “many DSA members”—that it’s time to go way left.
Mr.
Garrido did not respond to a request for comment on the DSA analysis,
but he questioned the memo’s thrust in an interview for the Politico
piece in which he said, “The union movement, for the most part, has been
one of the few that has pushed the progressive policies that the left
is pushing for right now, before they became popular. It’s only going to
divide a movement that seems to be really taking momentum,” citing the
major increase in New York’s minimum wage and pension divestment from
fossil-fuel manufacturing firms.
He
then noted that DC 37 members’ political views were hardly monolithic
saying, “I have people who lean left—most of them—people who lean right
and people who are in the middle. If you try to push one organization in
any direction, you’re going to end up alienating and splitting a very
large number of people who believe in labor but may not agree with the
tactics the DSA is pursuing right now.”
That
was precisely the point our retired union leader friend was making in
his e-mail, which described Mr. Garrido’s assessment as “dead-on
accurate” and noted that DC 37 was at the more-liberal end of the labor
spectrum. “Other unions,” he wrote, “have a different mix (more
conservative or middle-of-the-road-leaning members), which exacerbates
the problem.”
‘Not Striving for Socialism’
He
continued, “The vast majority of union members pay dues to help ensure a
better economic life for themselves and their families, not to strive
for socialism. If this movement (Democratic Socialists of America) gains
traction within the community of labor, the AFL-CIO alliance may very
well shatter.”
Another retired
union official, former Communications Workers of America Local 1180 Vice
President Bill Henning, took a more-optimistic view while noting that
DSA, “being the broad-based group it is,” started with an advantage when
it came to organizing within some progressive unions.
And,
he said in an Aug. 27 phone interview, “We could use a little more
openness, a little more debate. It’s not like we have this enormously
powerful labor movement that is in danger of being fractured. We have a
crippled labor movement that is desperately in need of new blood, new
ideas. I’m really more concerned with having an open exchange of ideas
within the labor movement than that the exchange is going to scare
people off.”
Mr. Henning
continued, “Wage stagnation is a horrible problem. The idea that we can
rejuvenate that fighting spirit in organized labor is not something to
be feared but to be embraced.”
But
Vinny Alvarez, president of the AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor
Council, contended in the Politico piece that “it makes no sense that at
a time when solidarity is needed to fight for real gains in economic
opportunity and social justice for working families that the DSA would
sow the seeds of disunity by targeting some of the most progressive
unions in our city with plans for infiltration and disruption.”
An
official from one of the targeted unions, speaking conditioned on
anonymity, questioned whether those like Mr. Alvarez who were critiquing
the thinking behind the DSA manifesto were taking it too seriously,
saying, “This is an eight-month-old memo which no one’s taken ownership
of.”
The memo had no names
attached to it, aside from a reference at its beginning stating,
“NYC-DSA Labor Branch will pick five industries to target for our rank
and file work laid out at our last city convention.”
Oddly Capitalist Tools
It
also repeatedly described the path to power in the unions it focused on
as likely to be a lengthy battle, and in several cases dwelt on the
good pay and benefits of the jobs represented by those unions, as if
that would offer insurance that large numbers of volunteers could be
conscripted into the infiltration plans and then stay the course. In
taking such a long view, the memo was reminiscent of many of the major
changes sought by Mayor de Blasio, except that he will be gone from
office well before Rikers Island will supposedly close or a serious
evaluation can be done of his plans to desegregate the school system,
assuming he implements any of them.
One
reason Politico may have taken the memo seriously is that the DSA is
the group behind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset of
Congressman Joe Crowley last year and the near-upset victory of Tiffany
Caban in the Queens District Attorney’s race despite her having no
background as a prosecutor and policy positions that included favoring
the closing of Rikers but opposing the transfer of any of its inmates to
a revived Queens House of Detention.
Upon
closer examination, however, neither of those contests makes a
compelling case that the DSA is brimming with political masterminds.
Ms.
Ocasio-Cortez benefitted from being charismatic, photogenic and
passionate, placing her in stark contrast with Mr. Crowley, who took the
race for granted and sounded clumsy during their one televised debate
when he tried to respond to her question about why, representing a
district that straddled Queens and The Bronx, he and his family were
living in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. to give him an easy
commute to the Capitol. She also won with fewer than 17,000 votes.
Ms.
Caban took advantage of the Queens Democratic Party’s choice for DA,
Melinda Katz, splitting the votes of moderate and conservative residents
with Gregory Lasak, a longtime prosecutor who was endorsed by most
police unions.
And the DSA
Labor Branch’s memo as it pertains to Local 100 suggests a name-change
to Democratic Nihilists of America might be in order.
It
began its analysis by stating, “Public transportation is the lifeblood
of New York City, without which it cannot properly function. The 3-day
2005 transit strike, for example, is estimated to have cost the city
approximately $1 billion. The 3 citywide transit strikes since private
transit companies were brought under the purview of the state—1966, 1980
and 2005—all created major political crises in the city.”
A Skewed Analysis
That’s
all true. It’s also labor history from the Neo-Insane School of
Political Thought. While the 12-day 1966 walkout is widely considered to
have been a smashing victory for Local 100, even if you deduct points
for Local 100 founder and President Michael J. Quill dying shortly after
helping to negotiate the settlement from an oxygen tent at Bellevue
Hospital, where he had been taken after suffering a heart attack in
jail. By way of comparison with the DSA memo chortling over the cost to
the city of the 2005 walkout, the 1966 strike took a $1.2-billion toll,
back when that was serious money.
In
contrast, both the 1980 and 2005 strikes, however much some diehards
claim they were union victories, were major failures if the reaction of
the affected workers was any gauge.
The
1966 strike was largely responsible for the passage of the state Taylor
Law, which replaced the draconian penalties of the Condon-Wadlin Act,
including the firing of all participants and a three-year ban on their
being rehired, with the far-more-realistic punishment (how was the city
going to find and train 30,000 new transit workers on short notice?) of
fines for strikers equal to two days’ pay for every day away from their
jobs.
While the 1980 strike
resulted in Local 100 being fined $900,000, it was actually the loss of
dues-check-off rights that forced it to petition the judge who assessed
that penalty for relief from potential bankruptcy by restoring the right
to collect dues via payroll deduction. The loss by members’ of 22 days
worth of salary for the 11-day strike gave them a ready excuse for not
going into their pockets when union shop stewards resorted to the old
method of collecting dues by hand.
The
2005 strike produced only a six-day fine for individual strikers, but
left enough bitterness that the contract terms that ended the walkout
were narrowly voted down, and roughly 25 percent of the rank and file
later fell into bad standing as union members for failing to stay
current on their dues payments. The union got more coal in its stocking
when Mayor Michael Bloomberg convinced a Brooklyn judge to continue
suspension of automatic dues-collection even after the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority supported Local 100 President Roger Toussaint’s
request that it be restored.
Started Toussaint’s Downfall
Mr.
Toussaint, who had won his first re-election bid with 60 percent of the
vote, got just 45 percent in winning a three-way race a year after the
strike, and his hand-picked successor lost a bid to gain a full term
three years after that.
And so
anyone putting stock in the DSA’s wisdom based on its plan for seizing
power in city unions might fairly be accused of a Trump-like disregard
for reality. Except that the DSA, like the Justice Democrats who gave
AOC her Chief of Staff until his intemperate tweets first ignited a feud
with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then drew the President into the
controversy with predictably sulfuric results, seems intent on providing
fodder for Mr. Trump and his supporters to use against whoever emerges
as the Democratic nominee for the White House next year. (Actually, the
DSA analysis of unions ripe for takeover features the same kind of
cluelessness that undercut the Green New Deal, with its first draft
stating that a guaranteed income would be provided even to those
“unwilling to work.”)
From the
Trump 2020 standpoint, why pitch your campaign against a mainstream
party choice to unseat the incumbent when you can get more mileage out
of convincing undecided voters that there are forces behind that nominee
who should repulse them even more than The Stable Genius at his most
obnoxious?
That is the
underlying message in Mr. Garrido’s warning against dividing “a movement
that seems to be really taking momentum,” and behind Mr. Alvarez’s
words about “a time when solidarity is needed to fight for real gains in
economic opportunity and social justice for working families.”
No
doubt Mr. Trump has seemed unhinged in recent weeks, with polls
reflecting the growing national disillusionment. The real significance
of a Quinnipiac University poll released Aug. 28 showing Joe Biden with a
16-point lead over the President and three other Democrats leading him
by double digits was that South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg would
beat Mr. Trump by nine points at a time when he was the top choice in
the Democratic primary of just 5 percent of those who responded.
It’s
possible the incumbent will continue to self-destruct to the point
where not only will he be certain to lose but the unions can send Mitch
McConnell back to his old Kentucky home, or at least get him demoted to
Minority Leader as Democrats take over the Senate. But the 2016 results,
and the specter of Vladimir Putin and his operatives looming over the
2020 vote, offer two large reasons why neither the party nor the unions
that have growingly looked to it as their savior will take anything for
granted this time.
Eye on Swing Voters
They
know that a key element of Mr. Trump’s win three years ago was his
support among white blue-collar voters in battleground states like
Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio. They also know that the
President’s failure to live up to promises he made to those voters,
whether they involved protecting jobs in struggling industries, securing
a meaningful infrastructure bill that could create tens of thousands of
jobs for which they’re qualified, or looking out for their interests
rather than those of the wealthy and corporations, gives them a serious
chance of winning them back.
And
while the Trump re-election machine will try to paint his opponent as a
dangerous radical no matter who the candidate is and how mainstream his
or her positions are, any signs that fringe groups on the left are
shaping the party platform will be used against that Democrat, and might
create enough doubt in the minds of those voters to bring them back to
Mr. Trump or convince them to stay home.
Our
retired union friend recently offered an anecdote about heading off a
potential rebellion in his ranks early in the decade when same-sex
marriage was still a hot-button issue, even in a liberal bastion like
New York. When one of his members asked during a union meeting whether
he believed it should be allowed, he said, his response was, “No, I
don’t think it should be allowed—I think they should be forced to get
married, too.”
The laughter
that followed defused the issue, subtly making the point that this labor
leader’s members had more-important issues that directly affected them
to worry about. At a time when a half-baked proposal regarding
long-range union takeovers can send a ripple through labor circles, it’s
a reminder to avoid being consumed by the kind of thinking from the
left that once got Richard Nixon elected over Hubert Humphrey because
that was expected to trigger the revolution that would topple the power
structure for good.
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