SEIU and the Working Class
I've been waiting for SEIU's aldermanic endorsements now that they're building a machine like organization,
McMullen said SEIU has a clear goal. “There hasn’t been a strong model for any organization to mobilize voters besides the Democratic machine. SEIU is trying to set up a political organization that is machinelike in its structure,”I've yet to see anything at the State Council's site as of this am. Instead I keep getting this,
Clock is ticking on first 100 hours in new Congress; SEIU members fight for middle class agenda.Unions used to be for the Working Class. College radicals used to shun the middle class. Sincliar Lewis ridiculed the middle-class in Main Street.
If pressed, I'll admit to belonging to Orwell's lower-upper-middle class but it's an identity I don't wear on my sleeve.
So I'm curious who SEIU sees below the middle class and whether SEIU intends to fight for them too.
John L. Lewis said of the working class,
I have pleaded (labor's) case, not in the quavering tones of a feeble mendicant asking alms, but in the thundering voice of the captain of a mighty host, demanding the rights to which free men are entitled."SEIU may have gone too middle class to thunder like Lewis, but tell us the middle class champions you're going to endorse; and the lower class those champions may leave out of their agenda. Those folks might need a modern day John L. Lewis.
10 comments:
Bill,
These clowns are not a union; they are sociology laboratory for lefties. Andy Stern pulls the purple strings on the Chicago local.
If you want a sad sight, take a look at their health and welfare package.
This is Commie Rhetoric made palatable to feel good dopes who never owned a union card in their lives. They have done a job on Denny Gannon like they did on Sweeney at the Nationals level. The clowns ( not the smart people like Steinberg and others)in the news media, especially at anti-labor rags like the Chicago Tribune, are too gutless or too complicit to portray SEIU as anything but working person's sweat-shop for the Commie Rhetoricians who control SEIU.
That's kind of the weird thing Pat... this middle class rhetoric isn't even very communist of them.
It sounds like consultant speak. Google around on John L. Lews and you don't get the impression Labor leaders of old paid too much attention to consultants.
I think class analysis pretty stale in today's American, but if you're going to use it, well, come up with something a little more analytically useful, not too mention more bite, than the middle class.
Bill,
Even Reds can 'think outside the box' and develop 'new paradigms for the Post-Industrial 21st Century' but essentially its the same okd same old class struggle and servants and masters BS.
Just traded the hammer and sickle for the broom and the bed-pan.
Labor Unions negotiate with management for the rank and file; demand and deliver good working conditions and good wagess; arbitrate grievances and protect the integrity of the membership.
These bull-horn and publicity addicted loud-mouths shoot off their mouths, stab their partners in the back and do nothing for their membership. But they do hold advance degrees in social work and play nice on Bill Maher and other half-assed messiahs.
Journeyman Plumbers Local 130 of Chicago need to stand up for the working men and women of Chicago and support anyone but Daley.
Funny. Over the years I dealt with a lot of SEIU folks, and didn't find any of them communists. Maybe I just missed it. It seems I miss a lot compared to the super-observant talents of many on this site.
I run the SEIU State COuncil political program and I am curious where all these Communists are hiding in our union. I would like to meet them. I didn't know any existed outside say, Cuba. What decade are you guys living in anyway? BTW I have a union card. I was an apprentice meat cutter in the UFCW. My father was a butcher for 30 years and most of my family were steel workers. My grandfather was at the Memorial Day Massacre so I think I have the pedigree to work for a union. And most SEIU staff have union backgrounds similar to my own. Sorry that we don't have our endorsements on the website yet but we have been so busy running our municipal campaign that we haven't had the time. I'll get to it Monday, first thing. rest assured the candidates know who we are with and against. If you would like to talk sometime drop me at line at morrisonjl@aol.com. I would love to get together for a beer and a shot...if you have the balls to drink with a Communist. I look forward to hearing from you boys but I won't hold my breath waiting for your emails. See you out on the streets.
We're allies with Communists today in Iraq. One of my problems is the left doesn't support them. My posts on Abdullah Muhsin, Hadi Saleh, and Raïd Fahmi. Fahmi and Muhsin comrades I'd be honored to buy a beer. Saleh brutally tortured and murdered by terrorists in Iraq.
I was in the Steelworkers Union over at the local over on Laramie and Harrison in the 70s when Ed Sadlowski was a raising star in the Union.
I knew all kinds of Communists... I met Albert Weisbord once over at the Meatcutters Coop bldg at 47th and Lake Shore and remember an ancient man thundering we [the left] should arm the negros, and I remember Jay Schaffner from United Electrical who ran the Young Workers Liberation League nee Young Communist League on the West Side of Chicago who later had changed his mind on Communism according to Gus Hall,
One of the most absurd examples - but representative in its viciousness and the fact that it was written by an ex-Party leader - is the letter by Jay Schaffner (a CoC leader) to his parents, also former Party members. In this widely circulated letter, which has been posted for public access on the computer network, Schaffner wrote, "I can only be thankful that we did not have socialism in the United States I if we did the mockery of the socialist principle would have been on a par with that of Pol Pot in Kampuchea. Needless to say, with these bastards [the CPUSA leadership] in power, your son would have long been dead, and probably also my children and wife, and you too, my parents."
Of course I remember when the Butchers Union made it illegal to buy meat in Chicago on Sundays or after 6pm on week days too.
Anyways, I'll send you an email on the endorsements and I'm always available to ruminate on what's become of the left in Chicago and the US and the rest of the world over beers with anyone...balls or not.
Hi Mr. Morrison,
You sound like a great Union man yourself.
It would be nice to hear from you - I sent you an e-mail - and I'll spring for the amber liquids. Maybe, you can explain to me the logic of Andy Stern's methodology - sure goes way over my pointed little head. I could never get past his mobilization mass movement orders to the rank and file.
When I held a card in Local 25, a members whole family had Universal Health Care - now all I hear from or about SEIU is marches and bullhorn sessions.
Pat,
Denny Gannon has a real problem with the rank and file on many issues. On the political side they are fed up with lay offs, privatization, and non union companies (sometimes by union leaders) on city construction projects. Mayor Daley has been the most anti-union Mayor in the history of Chicago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd3_X7EmcPI
Hickey tell us what you think
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