The death of the American labor movement

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Bosh
Hostile takeovers for the REVOLUTION! Its so logical that I'm surprised I've never heard it proposed, and it should be relatively feasible with union-run pension funds.

Prudhon proposed it in the 1840s. It worked so well the French government outlawed it. If you'd read your Marx and Engels, instead of poo-pooing them, you'd have learned that.

[Zkribbler]

UPDATE: The Food & Commercial Workers pulled out of the AFL-CIO today. That's the third major union. So far, the AFL-CIO has lost about 1/3 of its membership.

[Az]

let's recap thread.

-DanS opens thread over the major US union splitting, with all the mannerisms of a drooling monkey, and a hard-on of a blue whale, while trying to troll everyone to the left of Pinochet.
-Plan fails as everyone shakes their head at DanS while explaining to him that this actually has a very strong chance of revitalizing unions around the country.
-Zkribbler desperately cries "can't we all just get along?", and "nooooo, come back!!!!"
-D. Bosh comes up with a radical paradigm of "workers owning the working place".

great thread.

As long as the unions don't fight each other on the ground, or keep that infighting to a minimum, this will be awesome.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Az
-Zkribbler desperately cries "can't we all just get along?", and "nooooo, come back!!!!"

[joncha]

Originally posted by Az
let's recap thread.

-DanS opens thread over the major US union splitting, with all the mannerisms of a drooling monkey, and a hard-on of a blue whale, while trying to troll everyone to the left of Pinochet.
-Plan fails as everyone shakes their head at DanS while explaining to him that this actually has a very strong chance of revitalizing unions around the country.
-Zkribbler desperately cries "can't we all just get along?", and "nooooo, come back!!!!"
-D. Bosh comes up with a radical paradigm of "workers owning the working place".

great thread.

As long as the unions don't fight each other on the ground, or keep that infighting to a minimum, this will be awesome.

Good summary

[chequita guevara]

Well, Sweeney has already said that the departing unions cannot work in the Central Labor Councils (regional union councils). They are for the AFL-CIO only. So it doesn't look as though the AFL-CIO is in a forgiving mood.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Bosh
Hostile takeovers for the REVOLUTION! Its so logical that I'm surprised I've never heard it proposed, and it should be relatively feasible with union-run pension funds.

Wouldn't the scheme you proposed be illegal, though?

[pchang]

Only the strike to manipulate stock prices bit.

[Kuciwalker]

That's a rather important part of it

[Imran Siddiqui]

1. Get administrative control of workers' pension funds (definatley doable, but unions have often been very very bad/corrupt at managing them in the past which really really needs to change)

The bolded part is key! The biggest messes of misuse of pension funds (as opposed to underfunding, which can be just as bad) has been with unions. A lot of workers have gotten screwed because union bosses have taken the money and used them for other endevors. The DoL would probably prefer that companies kept the pension plans. There seems to be more checks on employer managed pension plans than union managed ones at the very least.

[pchang]

Can union run plans be taken over by the PBGC?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yes, they can, the employers and unions whose plans the PBGC has taken over are listed at www.pbgc.gov , unions would be listed under the option to list by "Company".

[Bosh]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Prudhon proposed it in the 1840s. It worked so well the French government outlawed it. If you'd read your Marx and Engels, instead of poo-pooing them, you'd have learned that.

I know quite well what Proudhon proposed, I've read my Proudhon but he focused much more on co-operative banks. I also know about Blanquist-style cooperatives a bit later, but again those are not what I've been proposing especially since the mechanisms that I descibe didn't exist at the time.

And I will continue to poo-poo Marx thank you very much

The bolded part is key! The biggest messes of misuse of pension funds (as opposed to underfunding, which can be just as bad) has been with unions. A lot of workers have gotten screwed because union bosses have taken the money and used them for other endevors. The DoL would probably prefer that companies kept the pension plans. There seems to be more checks on employer managed pension plans than union managed ones at the very least.

As things stand, everything you say is true. But if unions ever really got their act together then things would be very different. You would need some very thorough internal union reform before working towards my proposals would make any sense at all.

Also I'm comparing different things, basically I'm of the opinion that would be more effective for unions to nominally own co-operatives rather than the workers for a number of reasons, which I will get into if you want.

[chequita guevara]

Once the Mob is run out of the unions for good, managing thir own pensions shouldn't be a problem.

[pchang]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Once the Mob is run out of the unions for good, managing thir own pensions shouldn't be a problem.

I just can't see that happening, ever.