« Bend over and let me drive | Main | The Votes Weren't There »

The light dawns?

By Owen Paine on Saturday June 11, 2011 10:54 PM

Contradictions within the job class...resolved?

The AFL has come blazingly into the single payer healthcare camp, after years of touting the union way to higher fringes. At long last, are the piecards realizing that class-wide interests are long-run union interests as well? (*)

One recalls an earler time when unions wanted pols to stay away from non-employer-based systems of universal healthcare.

After 60 years, NO MORE! A snail by any other name still moves real real slow, eh?

This link gives a snapshot of the heinous muddle in the collective union headquarters of America just prior to the Obummer ascension.

The Barrycare hodgepodge that squirted out the hind end of '09 seems to have cleared a few of those heads, in particular chief heads like the Trumka's.

Recall his home union, the UMW, for years was a big go-it-aloner on health insurance.

--------------

(*) Naaahhh. -- Ed.

Comments (4)

Al Schumann:

One does indeed recall that earlier time. Pensions too, and what a stupid idea that turned out to be.

I have my doubts about the leadership's ability to reform. They're contemptuous of the brothers and sisters. They dislike them, a lot, and they share a class interest with notional opposition management. They are management.

The move looks like another tedious effort to head off discontent, to be followed shortly by more fatuous hand wringing and lots more disingenuous beautiful losing. When they're buried, their tombstones should read "The Votes Weren't There".

op:

not to be too priggled about this
but despite the healthy scepticism along whither the piew cards and their trailing body of staff infections

we ought to draw a clear line here

between the two broad progressive american visions
of organizing
the job class

for short
the IWW vision vs the CIO vision

put me down under the CIO if i must choose

though the re invention of the labor movement
to me suggests
only this for now
plunge into the job site level action

only praxis praxis praxis yields insight
and much new in strategy and tactics
needs discovery and designing here
before the new movement can institutionalize itself

of course for those who equate institutionalization with fossilization

go read your walden pond hoo doo
and leave them poor strugglin wage critters to us bureaucratic sadists

Al Schumann:

You're a cruel man, Owen. I have a deep and abiding love for bureaucrats. I find them incredibly sexy, bouts of sadism notwithstanding, and my answer to most social woes includes expanding the civil service. But I also equate institutionalization with fossilization. The contradictions are killing me!

Loveandlight:

It still makes me want to poop my pants whenever I hear someone on liberal talk-radio say about Obamacare that "we have healthcare now". So much for being reality-based, I guess!

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Saturday June 11, 2011 10:54 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Bend over and let me drive.

The next post in this blog is The Votes Weren't There.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31