Subject: Re: AUT: unions as temp agencies
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 00:11:39 +0000


>ROWAN WILSON wrote:
>
>>An article in a recent issue of the Economist (June 12th '99) talked
>>of the new turn of the AFL-CIO in Silicon Valley, in the face of
>>increasingly flexible labor markets. The Economist asks: "How can
>>unions represent people who might be changing job any day? And how
>>can they recruit people who fear that a reputation for bolshiness
>>could stop them from getting another job?" Answer: by becoming even
>>more like middle management.
>>Amy Dean, leader of a local branch of the AFL-CIO, has set up a
>>temping agency, Together-AT-Work, planning to pay better and provide
>>benefits, pensions and training; in other words, to provide more
>>stability for people. Apparently, Dean would like this to become the
>>norm for the union movement. The Economist liken the move to the
>>craft unions of the 19th century which "proved so good at providing
>>[benefits] that they controlled the supply of workers".
>>This means that it is in the union's interests to throw lazy
>>workers of their books.
>>Does anyone know anymore anout this and the consequences?
>
>Dean seems very imaginative, a rarity in U.S. unions. For more, see
><http://www.atwork.org/>.



Why go back to the nineteenth century? This was essentially the role of NGA
up and till the eighties. It was only after the wapping dispute and the
abolition of the pre-entry closed shop that things changed. The same was
true with other unions, e.g. the T&G on the docks. Strong unions have
always relied on an element of control of the labour supply.

Fabian



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