Organizing Workers

Past our best?

Thats not in the online dictionary of british slang I use to try to understand you limeys.

I assumed you are involved in labor since you don't have insane statements to make.

As for vision, strategy, etc. I think SEIU and the HERE side of UNITE-HERE are the only real examples of this in the U.S. at the moment. That may or may not change due to our efforts.

I'm saying what I would do if it was between doing whats right for me or doing whats right for the members.

I'm against staff complaining to the media so that bosses and the state can use it against workers. What would you do?

We generally agree with one another. There's a white paper called union organizing and the cowboy mentality or something you could read if your interested. It was a let down as I recall. But look, racism is abti-union so it should be stomped out. Thats not a staff issue. Its a union issue, regardless of whether its in respect to the staff person or not. I'm merely suggesting that Staff positions are tough and we should accept the reality of that rather than try to make duckets off of it like some market wage strategy.

Its not that I think staff shouldn't make legitimate complaints. Its that I think they have to wisely choose how they do that.

Yes, that is what I meant.

Yes. Obviously the ideal expression of the workers being your boss is the perfectly democratic union. This is not what you have. So your boss are bureaucrats who mediate for workers' control. There is an element of workers' power and an element of opaque bureaucracy involved. You know this... so the debate is resolved in that way. Not by stepping back to slogans again, and reducing the union to pure class organisation.

Well, first of all, Chuck was replying to the same para you were when you said "We generally agree with one another".

Anyway, come on. The point is not whether it's possible for union employees to act irresponsibly, but how you react to that possibility, and how your reaction incorporates a realistic picture of the union you're working for - the practical critique we've discussed earlier.

You say you can organise for power in the staff union? Then do it properly: use organisation to control irresponsible practices, and encourage responsible ones.

Also, picking up on your post before last, I think you're making arbitary distinctions - or rather, using arbitary language to make real distinctions. One case of this is the worker vs. union staff dichotomy, the more recent is this "Thats not a staff issue. Its a union issue".

So what does that mean? Basically, there are a sub-set of staff issues which are important enough to justify kicking up a stink, and these are now called 'union issues'. Somehow, I doubt this distinction is recognised by the terms of the settlement Chuck won through the battle he fought in his own staff union. Referring back to his original list of issues:

... doesn't say 'unless the issue is really important', does it?

Yes. See comments in paragraphs above.

But come on - you're avoiding the point. What I would do, as I've suggested, depends on the issue, the methods, etc. The question raised here is whether it's possible to have two things you appear to want at once:
a) transparency before the membership
b) no dirt ever getting into the press
I say it's not possible. You don't answer this; but your statement does seem to suggest you'd resolve in favour of b), against a), if it came to the call.

I think what you're saying here is "I might be wrong, but I don't care". Ummm, OK.

I mean power in the most general sense - e.g. the power that Chuck's internal faction used to defeat the FOUR leadership. Power can be used in different ways.

First, I said it was a real distinction but with arbitrary language - which, IMHO, muddies the debate. It's also not clear whether what you say rests on the distinction really does. Second, but you're not dealing with how that gets expressed structurally, that no distinction is possible in the formal structures. You also appear to disagree with Chuck here.

I don't even know what you're responding to.

I know you would. Which is why you were deceiving yourself when you wrote "I think a critique of how, say, SEIU operates is incredibly relevant to people in SEIU or people and institutions that SEIU affects. I'm certainly part of those discussions in an open and honest way."

if people aren't willing to put it about for their class then they can fuck off!

Congratulations. You sound like all the fucking bosses I've had in non-union places.

I hear what you are saying about organizers being accountable to the *membership* of the union, but that is just not the case for a lot of unions and non-profits I've worked at. The upper-level management always trots out this argument to prevent organizing attempts. Whether it is that it would go against the need of members (or consumers) for cheaper, more flexible "services," or that these members created the structure of the organization and it would be disrespectful and against the mission of the organization to form a union.

In most of these places, the on-the-ground staff is a hell of a lot closer to members, and can better represent what they want rather than someone who is not meeting and speaking to members with the same frequency. I was working at one place where staff went to speak to the member President about some problems with the organization such as turnover amongst staff and membership, questionable uses of time, racism in the workplace, etc. Our boss interjected and told us to shut the fuck up, and then took the President aside and told her not to listen to those crazy staff members. We were then threatened with losing our jobs, for this INTERNAL act of actually speaking to members rather than our boss who was taking hush money from the same companies we were supposed to be challenging. You gonna tell me we didn't need a union? Fuck you. Oh yeah, the most pissed off staffers were those who had been members of the organization and were low-income women and people of color - not white college-educated staffers.

I think even in an organization controlled entirely by working class members, the people they choose to employ should have the right to negotiate over their wages, benefits, and working conditions. If you get a bunch of sheep organizers who can't even stand-up for themselves to discuss their own conditions, how the hell are they going to be able to help others?

I think the problem is in using methods inconsistent with our aim. Then we don't prefigure the kind of society we're aiming at.

Let me suggest a possible solution. There is a tenant organizing group I work with that works sort of as follows. They have staff organizers. They don't elect an Executive Director to be the boss of the organizers. Rather, the members -- mainly low-income Latino immigrants -- elect a committee -- a board of directors -- which negotiates with the staff collective as far as what pay, benefits, work, etc. will be. I don't see why a union's staff couldn't also have this sort of negotiated relationship to the membership, via some appropriate union committee, membership approval of the negotiated plan, etc.

t.

You obviously missed the meaning of what I wrote. I said nothing of the sort. I was pointing out the fact that it is bosses who try to tell workers that their problems are theirs alone, and not any kind of group grievance, or that they don't point to some larger systemic problems. Chuck seemed to be doing that with his post discussing how a desire for a wage increase was a personal problem.

Point of clarification: Are you saying that your union doesn't hire "from the ranks". That paid staff are folks generally hired from outside the union?

Used to be a time when much of the staff came from the workplaces. I suspect they were still working class even if they became staff people. Why wouldn't they want tokeep up with the cost of living (and a bit more)and continue to want the same things they wanted when they were in the workplace? If you're saying that once you go on staff you become a "pie card"(my words), then it says something about the nature of staff positions.

Perhaps this is a problem then. It's cool to have idealistic young folks come in and work their asses off, burn-out and generally move on. Perhaps an appropriate policy would be to pay wages comp. to what they were making in the workplace. It surely would provide a greater rank-and-file charater and provide a wealth of experiance. I realize some (most) trade unions don't want that. It's too "toublesome". Creates a difference balance of power and relationships.

We negotiate lost time into our contracts so we always have memebers out for varying lengths of time but they almost never want to work long term because its miserable. Besides, we can't afford it and personally I'd rather have a great leader in the shop than doing the grunt work of an organizer.

Dude. We beg members to come out of the shop. Guess what? If you have a strong powerful union then your job is easier for more money. It would be irresponsable to pay our staff what our members make. We'd go broke. This is a right to work state. We have the lowest dues in the country.