File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9712, message 471


Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 18:27:05 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: NY March for Workfare Union


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

>It kills me to think just how much money AFL-CIO spent on campaigns for
>democrats. With that much money, they could have hired full-time organizers
>and ads to mobilize people and change the media presentation of welfare.

According to the AFL-CIO's own estimates, it'd take about $300 million a
year worth of traditional organizing (professional staff organizers,
lawyers, etc.) just to keep union memebership steady in the U.S., and
around $1 billion a year to make it grow. If, however, they were to turn to
real grassroots organizing - having workers organize other workers - this
would change the equation markedly. But even the "new" AFL-CIO leadership
is deathly afraid of mobilizing the membership. So it ain't gonna happen
unless the members make it happen.

>The lack of mobilization, of national orientation, of demand for systematic
>changes (as opposed to amelioration) also had to do with the *hegemonic
>ideas* about welfare. Many recipient activists here, rightly or wrongly,
>believed that the better off workers also despise them and figured that in
>such a demoralizing context of no widespread support for AFDC, going for a
>bigger change was beyond what they could dream of.

Yes, but part of the reason that these ideas are hegemonic is that
virtually no one has ever made the argument that workers and welfare
recipients have common interests - that the generosity of the welfare state
acts as a floor under the wage. The foundation-funded groups do this for
obvious class reasons; they want, in the best traditions of upper class
uplift, to improve the lot of the poor (with an emphasis on the
moral-behavioral aspects) without challenging the fundamental social
hierarchy. Others, with less class consciousnessness, have just fallen prey
to the American political disease of localism - pushing a single issue, or
a single ethnic group, or a single neighborhood, with no interest in how
they all fit together. This is part of the malign heritage of Alinsky-style
community organizing here, with its anti-theoretical, anti-intellectual
bias, and its emphasis on the small and the possible. And the unions, well,
they've hardly given half a shit about the lot of the poor - about anyone
outside their immediate membership, in fact.

>I don't know ACORN personally. So I'll refrain from specific comments. But
>if your speculation is correct, what do you think we should be doing
>instead?

Organizing workfare workers, for sure. (In response to Justin, I don't know
about ACORN's legal status as a potential union, but the cards they were
getting people to sign had no legal standing as union representation
cards.) I'm afraid the NYC municipal union, a stinkpot of corruption &
political inertia, is organizing folks to keep them quiet. There are some
very fine people working on organizing NYC workfare workers - like Heidi
Dorow of the Urban Justice Center - but it's too bad that there are 3 or 4
separate efforts going on. And that the municipal unions - in exchange, no
doubt, for tacit no-layoff guarantees from Rude "Il Duce" Giuliani - have
given up their opposition to workfare. A dissident slate within the transit
workers union, led by Solidarity member Tim Schermerhorn, may well take
over the union in next week's election, which might change workfare
politics a bit here.

Doug





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