{"id":163,"date":"2008-03-29T13:59:03","date_gmt":"2008-03-29T13:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2008\/03\/29\/review-of-john-sweeney-andy-stern-by-steve-early-2007\/"},"modified":"2008-03-29T13:59:03","modified_gmt":"2008-03-29T13:59:03","slug":"review-of-john-sweeney-andy-stern-by-steve-early-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2008\/03\/29\/review-of-john-sweeney-andy-stern-by-steve-early-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of John Sweeney, Andy Stern – by Steve Early (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nReview of:
\nAmerica Needs a Raise: Fighting For Economic Security and Social Justice, by John Sweeney (New York: Houghton Mifflin) 1996, 167 pp. USD18.95.
\nA Country That Works: Getting America Back on Track, by Andy Stern, (New York: Free Press) 2006, 212 pp. USD24.
\nAs politicians pursued voters and media coverage around the country in the fall of 2005, labor\u2019s most voluble and highly visible national spokesperson was out on the hustings as well. A non-candidate himself \u2014at least for now\u2014SEIU President Andy Stern had a new book to promote. It is packaged very much like the \u201ccampaign bios\u201d manufactured every four years to burnish the image of Democrats and Republicans seeking the presidential nomination of their respective parties. Stern\u2019s A Country That Works also reminds one of John Sweeney\u2019s 1996 manifesto America Needs a Raise, which landed in bookstores during the AFL-CIO president\u2019s own brief ascendancy as a widely-acclaimed \u201cnew voice\u201d for labor.
\nTo find out how the political thinking (and book marketing) of American labor leadership has evolved\u2014for better or worse\u2014during the intervening decade, it\u2019s worth examining these two slim volumes. Laid side-by-side, they shed considerable light on the over-lapping SEIU careers of the authors and the dramatic developments, within the AFL-CIO, that gave birth to their respective ghost-assisted literary efforts. (The title page of America Needs a Raise credits former White House speech-writer David Kusnet as Sweeney\u2019s main wordsmith; meanwhile, A Country that Works buries its \u201cspecial acknowledgment\u201d of Jody Franklin\u2019s \u201cexcellent writing and editing skills\u201d on page 201).
\nEach book appeared in the wake of a high-profile AFL-CIO shake-up. Sweeney\u2019s collage of childhood memories from the Bronx, old SEIU war stories, public policy prescriptions, and a modest account of his 1995 bid for the federation presidency was published when he was still basking in the glow of that election victory\u2014the first by a non-incumbent in 100 years. Aided by a chorus of outside academic boosters (in Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice), Sweeney\u2019s PR handlers were trying to position him as the main public spokesperson for \u201csocial movement unionism\u201d in America. He was a labor leader who would not shun \u201cappearances on national television\u201d–like his pallid, conservative predecessor Lane Kirkland often did, leaving labor without \u201ca strong voice and a visible presence in the debates of the 1990s.\u201d
\nInstead, as the head of a new, media-savvy AFL-CIO, Sweeney received rave reviews from leading figures in politics, feminism, the civil rights movement, and academia. The author of America Needs a Raise was hailed as a \u201cvisionary leader\u201d (Cornell West) who, \u201cwith the audacity and diligence of FDR during the Hundred Days, has transformed American labor\u201d (Daniel Patrick Moynihan). After Sweeney\u2019s election, progressives looked to \u201ca newly militant labor movement for a larger vision of American business than the next quarter\u2019s stock market index\u201d (Betty Friedan) and \u201ca compelling strategy for how working Americans can restore not only their living standards, but also the traditional American values of work, family, and community\u201d (Marian Wright Edelman). Said Julian Bond: \u201cAnyone concerned with economic democracy and social justice must read \u2018America Needs a Raise.\u201d
\nReading Sweeney\u2019s book jacket copy ten years later, it\u2019s hard to recognize, in such descriptions, the low-key septuagenarian still hanging on to the AFL-CIO presidency long past his promised retirement age. Nearly 73 and quite pass\u00e9, Sweeney looks more like an old Irish-Catholic priest than a \u201clabor militant\u201d or \u201cvisionary leader.\u201d He is, in fact, presiding–with extremely low visibility (but still very high pay)–over a greatly diminished flock. Five million of his former parishioners belong to another congregation.
\nThe media spotlight has shifted accordingly to the flashy \u201cmega-church\u201d minister down the block who spirited them away and replaced Monsignor Sweeney, on the public stage, as America\u2019s most-quoted labor leader. A number of former SAWSJ members have left Sweeney\u2019s parish as well, moving to new pews specially reserved for the amen chorus of Change To Win (CTW). According to one of them, best-selling author Barbara Ehrenreich, \u201cthe future of the American dream\u201d is now \u201cin the hands of Andy Stern,\u201d who has a \u201cvital agenda for change\u201d and \u201ca bold vision for reform\u201d (as opposed to Sweeney\u2019s dusty old sermons from a decade ago).
\nStern first seized the microphone (not to mention the blogosphere) from his one-time mentor during the 2003-4 media campaign that accompanied his creation of a \u201cNew Unity Partnership\u201d with Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm, leaders of the yet-to-be married UNITE and HERE. Round Two of Stern\u2019s PR blitz unfolded in 2005, when NUP morphed into CTW, its affiliated unions stopped paying dues to the AFL-CIO, and then boycotted the federation\u2019s national convention. Stern\u2019s resulting \u201cfifteen minutes\u201d of personal fame and media acclaim–in outlets ranging from Business Week and Fortune to 60 Minutes and the Sunday Times Magazine–has been very long indeed. It was recently extended further via the fall 2006 nationwide book tour that followed publication of his new book.
\nStern\u2019s superior preaching style notwithstanding, his emergence as labor\u2019s premiere pitchman in the marketplace of ideas leaves us with a serious \u201cmessaging\u201d problem. The SEIU president may be a much better \u201ctalking head\u201d than Sweeney–on TV, radio, in print, or in person. But his recent statements, on a number of political and economic issues, have aroused growing concern among progressive trade unionists, including members of his own union. His conservative pronouncements\u2014usually made in front of business audiences and dressed up as creative new thinking–don\u2019t improve with repetition or further elaboration between hard-covers. In Stern\u2019s book, CTW\u2019s demand\u2014\u201cMake Work Pay\u201d\u2014comes across as a cosmetic re-working of Sweeney\u2019s mantra, \u201cAmerica Needs A Raise.\u201d Furthermore, Stern\u2019s \u201cbold unassailable plan\u201d to \u201cget America back on track\u201d actually falls short of Sweeney\u2019s 1996 proposals on similar topics\u2014workers rights, retirement, health care, education, energy, and taxation. And definitely missing from Stern\u2019s laundry list of \u201cvital reforms\u201d is the warm and fuzzy feel of Sweeney\u2019s valiant defense of the post-war \u201csocial compact\u201d and the good old days of the Great Society and New Deal.
\nAccording to Stern, \u201canyone who might long wistfully for a return to the New Deal policies of 1935 should consider that America today is as far from the time of FDR as the New Deal was from Abe Lincoln and the Civil War.\u201d Instead of such liberal nostalgia or the politics of Democratic Socialists of America\u2014a group which still counts Sweeney as a member\u2014Stern serves up a brand of futurism that\u2019s just plain fuzzy. Inspired by the likes of Alvin and Heidi Toffler, A Country that Works is a breathless celebration of \u201cchange processes\u201d in politics, government, the economy, and unions which fails to assess the actual positive or negative impact of particular changes on workers or society. (The word \u201cchange\u201d itself is used 50 times in just 212 pages; in the mind of the author, it clearly denotes something good coming down the pike– regardless of content or circumstances.). In fact, in the church of Reverend Andy, Americans are urged to\u201d
\n[
\nP]ause and take the time to appreciate the glory and grandness of our future. Humanity faces a quantum leap forward, and we are engaged in building a remarkable new civilization from the ground up. No single generation has ever been offered such possibilities; we should seize them with passion and zest.\u201d
\nNot surprisingly in light of passages like the one above, Stern has started communing with a fellow \u201cchange agent\u201d named Newt Gingrich. The author reports that he and Change To Win chairperson Anna Burger were \u201cpleasantly surprised\u201d by the former House Speaker\u2019s thoughtfulness and candor,\u201d plus his \u201csmart, contemplative demeanor,\u201d when they all met at a Republican Main Street Partnership meeting in Chicago where the speakers included Burger.
\n\u201cAs only a history scholar can, Gingrich talked in broad historical terms of the change-making process, the challenges facing our country, and America\u2019s need to confront its future\u2026.he argued [that] labor would have to continually rethink its role in the changing economy\u2014specifically, how it could deliver increased productivity and better services to its members and employers. Gingrich\u2019s thinking reinforced much of my own\u2026.\u201d (emphasis added)
\nAs a personal memento of their conversations, Gingrich presented Stern with \u201ca set of diagrams he called \u2018Designing Transformational Change\u201d that communicate twelve steps to promote organizational transformation.\u201d Newt embellished this \u201cparting gift\u201d with \u201chis handwritten comments\u201d on the diagrams and \u201cfollowed up\u201d by later sending his new friend, Andy, \u201ca personally annotated edition of the Tofflers\u2019 Creating A New Civilization.\u201d
\nThe U.S. Army is among those civilizing institutions that Gingrich, joined by Stern, applaud for \u201cconsciously and continuously conforming itself to changing times.\u201d In their talks, \u201cGingrich cited his respect\u201d for \u201cthe army\u2019s management\u201d because the military \u201caccepts change as a fact of life and has worked for decades to reshape itself to meet changing security needs. It actually integrates change into its planning process.\u201d
\nStern notes that some Americans are still wondering, nevertheless, whether the army is to blame for the quagmire in Iraq. Drawing on the insights of Gingrich, Stern believes instead \u201cthat our political leaders rushed to war in Iraq without a plan and enough troops to secure peace\u2014over the objections of many in the military, as some former generals have revealed.\u201d He concludes reassuringly that, \u201cIf the Iraq fiasco was the outcome of ineffective planning, then my guess is the army will evaluate their planning process and make any necessary\u201d\u2014yes, you guessed it\u2014\u201cchanges.\u201d
\nThis example of what Stern\u2019s book jacket copy calls his \u201ceye-opening analysis\u201d would be fairly eye-opening even if the paragraph above wasn\u2019t the only reference to \u201cIraq\u201d cited in the book\u2019s index. One would think that a $2 billion a week war\u2014not to mention America\u2019s costly post-9\/11 military build-up\u2014might warrant a little more discussion in a book that, on its cover, claims to be a dissection of what\u2019s \u201cWrong With a Country That Helps the Rich Get Richer While Most Americans Get The Squeeze.\u201d
\nTo be fair, Sweeney\u2019s book, \u201cAmerica Needs a Raise,\u201d was similarly silent on the price that workers pay for the ruinous foreign and military policies of their own government. Yet, the AFL-CIO president wasn\u2019t writing ten years ago as the head of a union which, like Stern\u2019s, has adopted an anti-war resolution at its most recent national convention and then allied itself, through many of its local affiliates, with U.S. Labor Against The War. Like Stern, Sweeney indicts \u201cmean- spirited business leaders\u201d\u2014not capitalism or the military-industrial complex\u2014for making life worse for millions of Americans. Both denounce corporate down-sizing, the erosion of job-based benefits and employment security, and the resulting wage stagnation, income inequality, and longer working hours that take a terrible toll on family life and opportunities for civic engagement among working people.
\nThe root cause of such problems, as Sweeney defines it, is \u201ccorporate America doing business the wrong way.\u201d Too many short-sighted employers are meeting \u201cthe challenge of global competition\u201d by taking the \u201clow-wage path\u201d of \u201cdriving down wages and living standards.\u201d Instead of \u201ccooperating with workers and improving the quality of goods and services,\u201d they\u2019ve \u201cdecided to break the postwar social contract\u201d and utilize anti-union decisions by National Labor Relations Board to undermine labor and destroy the Wagner Act\u2019s Depression era \u201cpromise of industrial democracy.\u201d
\nEnter Andy Stern\u2014after a decade of failed efforts by Sweeney to \u201csave our bosses from themselves.\u201d In \u201cA Country That Works,\u201d Stern uses management consultant jargon to offer up a series of \u201ctwenty-first century policies to ensure America\u2019s continued economic leadership\u201d based on \u201ca bold future-oriented vision\u2026new ideas and a thoughtful, collaborative, nonpartisan approach.\u201d To entice management into the same \u201cvalue-added\u201d partnerships proposed more sparingly by Sweeney (but apparently spurned by employers after they perused America Needs a Raise), Stern distances himself from the \u201cclass struggle mentality\u201d that\u2019s so counter-productive in labor today. Union reluctance to embrace labor-management cooperation is, according to the author, a \u201cvestige of an earlier, rough era of industrial unions.\u201d
\nStern believes that organized labor should, like SEIU, better \u201cappreciate employers\u2019 competitive reality and attempt to create or add value to their business models\u201d as \u201ca basic operating principle.\u201d In the apt description of political consultant Donna Brazile, Stern favors a \u201cstrategy of adaptive cooperation.\u201d In essence, if you can\u2019t beat them, join them. In his book, he cites \u201calliances with hospitals and nursing home owners\u201d on both coasts, with Kaiser Permanente in California and between SEIU 1199 and the health care industry in New York. (To achieve the Kaiser partnership, angry union members had to shed their attachment to \u201ctheir own ineffective strikes and concession bargaining;\u201d In N.Y., 1199\u2019s \u201cpartnership approach challenged many SEIU leaders\u2019 traditional \u2018class struggle\u2019 attitudes about employers,\u201d a hang-up they\u2019ve apparently overcome while lobbying together for government reimbursement (and, more recently, hospital closings around the state).
\nTo build \u201cnew relationships with public employers in the South and Southwest,\u201d SEIU introduces what Stern calls \u201cthe \u2018IQ\u2019 program\u2014innovation and quality,\u201d while \u201ceschewing traditional collective-bargaining issues and focusing on improving public services.\u201d However, in states like North Carolina, Mississippi, or Texas. it\u2019s not hard to eschew \u201ctraditional collective bargaining\u201d because it doesn\u2019t exist in the public sector. One would think that the real challenge there\u2014which has been taken up by other unions\u2014is to build membership organizations that can fight for and eventually win collective bargaining rights for government employees. While it\u2019s always a good idea to link demands for better pay and benefits to public service improvements funded through progressive taxation, Stern\u2019s focus, as usual, is on forging SEIU\u2019s own institutional \u201crelationships with employers.\u201d Worker activity, community engagement, and political action that might actually change the balance of power between labor and management\u2014all get short shrift, unless \u201cthe power of persuasion\u201d fails, and the union must then resort to the \u201cpersuasion of power.\u201d
\nAs Stern admits, most employers are not being persuaded, either way, that they need a union \u201cpartner\u201d (proving that Jesse Jackson-style alliterative rhetoric only gets you so far\u2014even if you\u2019re Jesse!) As part of his peripatetic speech-making to human resources managers and open letter writing to Fortune 500 CEOs, Stern has been promoting the idea that \u201cresponsible unions\u201d should embrace outsourcing. At the PC Forum, a national meeting of high-tech entrepreneurs, he \u201cshared a variation on the outsourcing concept,\u201d providing \u201ca straightforward intellectual argument that made solid business sense–but there were no takers\u2026\u201d Much to Stern\u2019s dismay, \u201cChanging nonunion employers attitudes\u2026remains a monumental challenge. They often don\u2019t believe that partnerships with unions are possible, nor are they able to overcome their prejudices against unions in order to establish a different kind of relationship that could add value to their bottom line.\u201d
\nA Country that Works contains no thoughtful discussion about the pros and cons of the labor movement \u201cmoderniz[ing] its strategic approaches to employers in order to take into account their competitive business needs.\u201d The California Nurses Association has compiled an impressive record of organizing, bargaining, and legislative success, while remaining a leading foe of \u201cjointness\u201d in health care. Yet its ideological and organizational dissent merits only a two-sentence dismissal from Stern. \u201cNot every union agrees with our approach,\u201d he writes. \u201cTo this day, the CNA still criticizes SEIU\u2019s arrangement with Kaiser and has chosen not to join us in the process.\u201d Readers of the book are left to wonder why CNA abstains\u2014or find out on their own what the downside of health care partnerships might be for the quality of patient care or the right of patients to sue their HMO (something SEIU has tried to take away from Californians as part of its joint lobbying with Kaiser).
\nOn the subject of legislative and political action, Sweeney and Stern agree that Democrats are often a disappointment waiting to happen\u2014particularly in the area of worker rights and job-killing free-trade deals. Sweeney recalls that labor was extremely unhappy with the results of Democratic control of both houses of Congress and the White House during President Clinton\u2019s first term. \u201cAfter two years in which working people had relatively little to show from their friends, it is not surprising that, with their abstentions and even their votes, they helped elect their enemies [in 1994].\u201d
\nSweeney urges unions to move beyond \u201cpolitics as usual\u201d\u2014making COPE endorsements and donations to candidates\u2014to greater membership involvement in grassroots political initiatives, whether issue-oriented or election campaigns. He has few good things to say about Republicans. Stern, meanwhile, says that \u201chitching our fate to\u2026.Democratic politicians [has] proved to be a losing strategy for American workers.\u201d Unfortunately, his \u201calternative\u201d is more deal-making and check-writing involving the GOP. In this spirit, A Country that Works praises Republicans office-holders like George Pataki, John McCain, and Mitt Romney\u2014all for their dubious contributions to workers\u2019 rights, immigration reform, or universal health care. We learn also that, after his election as SEIU president ten years ago, Stern:
\n\u201c[R]eached out to the Republican Party chair, Jim Nicholson, and SEIU became an \u201cEagle\u201d\u2014a $10,000 donor to the Republican National Committee. It was an expression of my interest in engaging Republicans on issues of concern to America\u2019s workers, and I was promised a conversation.\u201d
\nStern remained undeterred when \u201cthe Committee accepted SEIU\u2019s contribution\u201d but never got around to having \u201cthe conversation.\u201d Ever the optimist, he reports that:
\n\u201cSEIU continues to keep an open mind and open door: At the Republican Convention in 2000, we honored several Republican legislators. We also employ Republican advisors. In 2004, SEIU was actually the largest contributor to both the Democratic and Republican Governors\u2019 Associations, a fact that confused both party establishments.\u201d
\nNevertheless, Stern admits, \u201cthe Republican Party\u2019s agenda on issues of work\u201d is still \u201coften not in our members\u2019 best interests\u201d\u2014particularly in states like Indiana and Missouri where SEIU dollars helped elect GOP governors two years ago who proceeded to roll back already limited bargaining rights for state workers (an outcome Stern neglects to mention). During the same round of elections, SEIU also aided a Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina who was running against a Democrat backed by the rest of the local labor movement.
\nWhile his book touts this \u201cindependent, non-partisan approach,\u201d Stern\u2019s true political identity is deeply Clintonite. As Atlantic Monthly editor Joshua Green recently observed, “veterans of Bill Clinton’s White House often speak of themselves as having been a \u2018modernizing force\u2019 in the Democratic Party….Their guiding idea was that a more pragmatic, results-oriented approach held greater promise for achieving traditional liberal goals.” Stern (who\u2019s trying to be a \u201cmodernizer\u201d of labor) couldn\u2019t agree more, in terms of both medium and message. \u201cIf the Democratic Party wants to win elections,\u201d he argues, \u201cit needs a permanent infrastructure, not controlled by the party\u2019s elected officials,\u201d that \u201cemploys and integrates the modern techniques of data management, marketing, mobilizing and new communications technologies.\u201d
\n\u201cBill Clinton\u2019s two [presidential] victories were not due to a Democratic Party infrastructure but were the result of his self-assembled, highly talented campaign staff and consultants, his finely honed, disciplined message that directly addressed issues of concern to voters, and his extraordinary charisma and leadership.\u201d
\nThe tragedy of Stern is the tragedy of Clinton\u2014a fellow product of Sixties liberal idealism whose similar media savvy, organizational drive and ambition, personal charisma and formidable political skills all could have done much to advance a real progressive agenda, but instead have always been deployed on behalf of a cramped, technocratic, and triangulated politics, which has achieved very few \u201ctraditional liberal goals.\u201d
\nLike Clinton, Stern is part of that generational cohort shaped by Vietnam-era campus activism and the liberal anti-war politics of the McCarthy, Kennedy, and McGovern presidential campaigns of 1968 and 1972. In Clinton\u2019s career, youthful idealism quickly gave way to a pragmatic centrism and the search for business-friendly policy prescriptions that broke with the Democrat\u2019s traditional New Deal nostrums, like reliance on \u201dbig government.\u201d Since Stern became a social worker union activist in the early 1970s, after a stint at the Wharton School of Business, his ascendancy in labor has followed a similar political trajectory. Like the former president, he sees himself as courageously challenging official orthodoxy on behalf of \u201cnew ideas.\u201d In the media and before business audiences, he counter-poses his persona–as a smooth, sophisticated, globally-minded \u201cchange agent\u201d– to that of blue-collar troglodytes in the rest of labor who \u201cjust don\u2019t get it,\u201d don\u2019t want to \u201cchange to win,\u201d and, instead, remaining sadly wedded to \u201cclass-struggle unionism.\u201d
\nWhen Stern travels\u2014and he is quite the globe-trotter\u2014the results are inevitably path-breaking. We learn in his book that he\u2019s been to China six times. On one trip, braving as always \u201ca backlash from my American labor-union colleagues,\u201d he went to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to meet Mr. Wei Jianxing, the appointed president of a red company union, claiming 137 million members, that has shown little taste for workplace struggle of any kind.
\n\u201cMr. Wei was China\u2019s highest-ranking labor leader, assigned by the Communist Party. More important, he served as one of the eight powerful members of the Politburo\u2019s Standing Committee, China\u2019s highest governing body. Mr. Wei wielded enormous power over all the affairs of China, and his importance surpassed that of any labor leader I had previously met.\u201d
\nBased on this conversation and others described in the book, Stern now maintains\u2014with little supporting evidence\u2014that the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is demonstrating a previously unnoticed \u201cwillingness to transform itself to effectively counter the impact of globalization\u201d\u2014a development hailed by the author for its \u201cfar-reaching implications for workers everywhere.\u201d
\nIn their respective arenas, here and overseas, Stern and Clinton both command continuing attention because they represent \u201csuccess.\u201d In the case of the former president, his is based on being the only Democrat in the last 38 years to serve more than one term in the White House ; in Stern\u2019s case, proof of success comes from being, as his book-jacket proclaims, \u201cthe news-making president of the fastest-growing, most dynamic union in America\u201d who has \u201cled the charge for modernizing the \u2018house of labor,\u2019 taking unions out of the past and into the twenty-first century,\u201d while building \u201cstronger global alliances\u201d with the likes of Mr. Wei.
\nWithin labor, Stern\u2019s message boils down to this: he and his union are \u201cwinners,\u201d most of the others are \u201closers\u201d\u2014so, if any of them really want to be winners too, they\u2019d better get with the SEIU\/Change To Win program. His message for America is that we need A Country that Works and that \u201cgovernment, business, and labor must work together as a team in order for America to prosper in the new global economy.\u201d In Sweeney\u2019s ten-year old concluding chapter–\u201cChanging Lives, Changing America\u201d–there\u2019s at least a little hint that the motor force needed for major change might be mobilization of the rank-and-file. \u201cFor all our problems,\u201d he observes hopefully, \u201cthe labor movement can still draw on the energy, experience, intelligence, and resources of more than thirteen million members\u201d–if working people can better \u201corganize themselves to transform the economy.\u201d
\nIn Stern\u2019s closing argument for \u201ccommon sense ideas\u201d that would \u201cget America back on track,\u201d there\u2019s barely a nod to \u201cthe power of protest\u201d or the role that various social movements played during the 1960s, \u201cwhen the winds of change were gusting.\u201d Nevertheless, the author\u2019s list of \u201ccourse-correction reforms\u201d in the area of taxation, education, health care, retirement, and telecommunications are said to be \u201cso compelling, simple, and achievable that readers will find themselves enraged that they haven\u2019t yet been enacted.\u201d On the contrary, readers are more likely to end up wondering how any future Administration or Congress might be pressured to adopt such an agenda\u2014without some real big gusts of wind.
\nA Country that Works is thus far less convincing and coherent as a brief for reform than America Needs a Raise because it deals so little with the dynamics of successful, grassroots movement-building (Even the immigrant worker upsurge around the country in the spring of 2006 rates a mere two sentences). In Stern\u2019s book, we\u2019re left with the impression that what really brings about \u201cchange\u201d is not mass mobilization, but rather some well-oiled union organizational equivalent of the Clintons\u2019 political machine. In Stern\u2019s union, not surprisingly, one finds the same kind of finely-honed message discipline, \u201chighly talented staffers and consultants,\u201d non-stop fund-raising (ie \u201cdoubled dues\u201d because \u201cyou can\u2019t have a champagne union with beer money\u201d) and, last but not least, a maximum leader (or two) long on personal charisma, political opportunism, and relentless self-promotion.
\nSteve Early has been active in unions since 1972, as a lawyer, labor journalist, organizer, or union representative. He is currently working on a book about the role of Sixties\u2019 activists in American labor over the last four decades. (He doesn\u2019t plan to use a ghostwriter.) Address correspondence to Steve Early at Lsupport@aol.com or 11 Ely Rd., Arlington, Mass. 02476 He can also be reached at 781-643-1489.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}