At the convention on Sunday, before 2,000 Sweeney supporters, Linda Chavez-Thompson, Mr. Sweeney's running mate for executive vice president, laid into several entities that she said had sought to weaken labor - the Bush administration, the United States Chamber of Commerce, Wal-Mart - and then she surprised her audience by adding, "the Change to Win Coalition."
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New York Times, July 25, 2005
I read the first quote above in the paper the other day and wondered what Linda Chavez-Thompson has been smoking. There are three serious efforts to stop Wal-Mart from taking over the world.
Wake-Up Wal-Mart was started by the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), a Change to Win member union.
Purple Ocean was started by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the lead union in the dissident coalition. SEIU is also heavily involved in
Wal-Mart Watch, a multi-pronged effort including activists of all kinds that has been so so effective that there is a section of Wal-Mart's web site devoted to refuting them.
Count me in with Nathan Newman as someone who is not concerned about the AFL-CIO split. I actually think it's a good thing, and I used to work at AFL-CIO headquarters! The reason Stern and company are doing this is to organize workers, plain and simple. If Change to Win brings half the creativity that its member unions have shown to fighting Wal-Mart to the rest of America's corporations then labor is in for better days ahead. What we need is more organizing ASAP. If the situation turns out to be anything like the late-1930s, the two groups will compete against each other to see who can organize the most first.
My prediction: In ten years Change to Win will be bigger than the old AFL-CIO. Here's why: GLOBALIZATION. Jobs in the manufacturing sector are going to disappear right out from under the old AFL-CIO unless something drastic happens fast. Here's another quote from that NYT article:
Those who left the house of labor are weakening our house, and shame on them," said Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America. "Solidarity is more than saying, 'My way or the highway, and if you don't do it my way, I'll take my marbles and run.' "
Does Leo Gerard know that there are 254 steel mills in China right now and that:
China's steel output will increase by 44 million metric tons this year to 316 million metric tons before increasing further to 348 million metric tons in 2006, Abare forecasts, picking up an already robust pace that is likely to turn China into a net exporter of steel in coming years.
Does Mr. Gerard know that an obsolete steel rolling mill in Cleveland was recently taken apart and shipped to China where it can be reassembled and operated profitably because of China's cheap labor?
The steel industry in the United States will be disappearing completely in the not to distant future and taking the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) along with it. Don't get me wrong, I like the USWA; I study the USWA; but this is just reality.
The labor movement in this century will belong to unions that start organizing now. My hope is that Change to Win will call for the repeal of the National Labor Relations Act. This will stop unions from getting entangled in a Republican-controlled bureaucracy and will encourage yet more organizing as labor would need boots on the ground to earn contracts.
I'm happy the AFL-CIO split [It's not as if the union movement in America can do any worse]. If you hate Wal-Mart, you should be too.
JR