The New Republic

Serious question, but why aren't there web-based alternatives for organizing that don't require people to meet on an employer's campus? I'm not very close to this issue, but if the Obama campaign was successful at organizing hundreds of thousands of volunteers, why couldn't unions do the same without legislation?

- wchobbs

January 16, 2009 at 1:20pm

Even if employers put the workers in some version of the Tower of London, racked them, thumbscrewed them, and put them in the "iron maiden," as long as they could then still go into a booth and vote anonymously for the union their will would prevail.

- lesserliz

January 16, 2009 at 1:27pm

On-line organization requires that potential new union members have on-line access away from their workplaces. Given the socioeconomic demographics, that requirement may not be met. IOW, union organization may still require low-tech 20th (or even 19th) century approaches.

- hrlngrv

January 16, 2009 at 3:04pm

Is there even a single campaign promise Obama made that he has any intention of  keeping?

And you have to wonder which of the conservative pundits he bedded with at Will's mansion offered the best argument for shafting the wokers? Or maybe it was one of the liberals.

Of course, his alternate ways of achieving the same goal might work. After all, when the Treasury department swiched from TARP to just pouring billions of dollars into the financial system, look how extradinarily successful that alternative turned out to be.

Fortunately, if Obama turns out to embody the DLC on steroids, millions of Americans will take to the streets demanding justice for all segments of society.

Unless of course they choose an alternative strategy, like the one they have now: bitching and moaning about Wall Street and lobbyists and 'the rich" and how nobody seems to care about them. I think Phil Gramm called it "whining".

If history has taught us anything at all, it is that those in power take care of their own. Those on the lower rungs change things only when, from the bottom up, they organze, take to the streets, and demand it. Conservatives [and by now most everyone else] love to mock and deride "the sixties" as the feckless flower power generations. They skip over the part where the Sixties actually started in the Fifties...with the civil rights movement. Then came the Women's movement, the anti-war movement, the gay movement and many other changes.

I figure there is a window of opportunity between the ways things are now and the way things can get a lot worse if the economy goes under and/or another 9/11 happens. If both occur, the federal government may well morph into its own tyrannical alternative. If that happens, anyone found oragnizing workers or marching in the streets will pay a visit to the Dick Cheney Re-education Camp

george walton

- iambiguous

January 16, 2009 at 3:40pm

george:  "Is there even a single campaign promise Obama made that he has any intention of  keeping?"

I guess working toward universal health care, developing a sustainable energy economy, establishing a new, more globally attuned foreign policy, closing down a war, and bringing science back into the White House aren't enough for you.

Also, may I point out that he isn't president yet, and that normally we give guys a chance to settle in before tearing them down?

- ironyroad

January 16, 2009 at 4:09pm

Card check is a dead duck and Obama knows it.  Is the NLRA insufficient to protect labor's legitimate opportunities to organize?  If not, is the administration of the statute by the NLRB wrong, or is the agency seriously underfunded?  If so, wouldn't Democratic appointments to the Board and increased appropriations suffice to meet labor's legitimate concerns?  What would Senator Wagner think?

- lsernoff

January 16, 2009 at 4:10pm

I once saw a really big male dog try to mate with a little bitch. It was pretty funny to watch and I am never sure if it came off. The labor unit has been a little bitch for too long, it would be nice if they can be on top for once. I say go for card check, you don't think Bush would have tried, that mother f-er tried to gut social security. Ram that sucker through Congress.

- blackton

January 16, 2009 at 6:44pm

ironyroad:

I guess working toward universal health care, developing a sustainable energy economy, establishing a new, more globally attuned foreign policy, closing down a war, and bringing science back into the White House aren't enough for you.

Also, may I point out that he isn't president yet, and that normally we give guys a chance to settle in before tearing them down?

george:

Okay, touche, you're right.

The guy isn't in the White House yet and I'm already writing his political obituary. But, hey, if I approached it from that angle, how could I vent my usual apoplectic spleen?

You can't have it both ways. I have my reputation, honor and dignity at stake here. On the one hand, I have to live down to the expectations of others at TNR; while, at the same time, helping them to broaden their own narrow-minded mainstream media mantra mentality. I mean, it's not like I'm getting paid to do this, right? I could essily go back to Slate and Salon.

Facetiously, though, do you really imagine Barack Obama is going to be our own Mr Smith? And, as I noted at The Spine, the corruption Smith had to deal with back then was a minnow compared to the Big Buckmeister whales that control the revolving doors today. And every once in a while you do have to remind yourself that Smith was just a cartoon character in a potboiler movie that had more cartoon character bromides in it than the Republican National Convention.

And every once in a while you DO have to measure the gap between rhetoric and reality. And while the reality part so far consist only of probing the tea leaves of the transition phase, you'd have to be a fucking idiot not to be concerned that he is going to cave on the promises he gave to unions.

Personally, I'm pissed off that he goes into the rust belt states promising the world to the "bitter" woking class; and then a few days after an elagant dinner with the union movement's most reactionary and vitriolic foes in the media, it's reported in the Washington Post that Obama now says,  "there may be other ways to achieve the same goal without angering businesses. And while many Democrats on Capitol Hill are eager to see a quick vote on that bill, he indicated no desire to rush into the contentious issue."

Well, as you can imagine, I don't actually follow the news, so you tell me: Has he fleshed out what those "other ways" might be yet?

Slick Willy might have some real competition when Barry takes command.

george walton

- iambiguous

January 16, 2009 at 9:09pm

lsernoff said:

Card check is a dead duck and Obama knows it. Is the NLRA insufficient to protect labor's legitimate opportunities to organize? If not, is the administration of the statute by the NLRB wrong, or is the agency seriously underfunded? If so, wouldn't Democratic appointments to the Board and increased appropriations suffice to meet labor's legitimate concerns? What would Senator Wagner think?

george:

Are you living in Martin Spleen's television version of The West Wing Washington?

Asking if the NLRA or B is sufficient to protect labor rights, is like asking if the SEC is sufficent to protect American tax payers againt corporate fraud on Wall Street.

And if you actually believe that when it comes down to the big meat and potatoes economic issues, the Republicans are on Mars while the Democrats are on Venus, you've been reading way too many High School civics text.

george walton

- iambiguous

January 16, 2009 at 9:22pm

george:  "And every once in a while you do have to remind yourself that Smith was just a cartoon character in a potboiler movie that had more cartoon character bromides in it than the Republican National Convention."

I guess we're recalling two different movies.  Most of the characters surrounding Jimmy Stewart, if I remember correctly, are either corrupt or cynical, and that mix nearly destroys him.  There is an invocation -- celebration, if you like -- of political idealism in the movie, of course, but does that make it a "potboiler"?  It seems to me that the Roosevelt administrations that are the historical mass behind the symbolism of the movie had a lot of energy, ideas, and, yes, idealism too.

- ironyroad

January 17, 2009 at 1:02pm

I have been through a few Union Drives and voted in one or two.  There is nothing at work that I found to be more stressful or intimidating.  And the people on both sides only made it worse.  

Seeing people you like and resptect lose their job trying to bring a union in to your plant really sucks, and the options for helping them are very difficult.

But Card Check is a new set of problems.

The problem with Card Check is that there is no timing to this.  A signed card is good indefinately, and who holds them?  The union holds all the cars and never has to report who is a supporter and who ism't.  I would hate to be in that pressure cooker trying to figure out what to do.

if you do card check, then you have to let management hold cards too.  Otherwise they can't manage their operations.  They need to know who their supporters are, and be able to challenge the cards when counted.

And Union Elections are not the problem with the Union Movement.  Coporations have effectively changed their operations and the need for unions is much less.  The largest key to success for business was keeping their ooperations under 100 employees.  At these smaller sizes, it is easier to manage and you never get the large number of disgruntled workers that form the core of a union movement.  Kind of funny, but the only Washington Politician who ever spoke intelligently on the real union problems was Newt Gingrinch.

Nafta and chinese trade killed the unions.  I think the high percentage of government employees as Union workers also causes problems as business can always point to that incompetencte during a vote.  Basically the only union facilities any more are the ones that can pass on costs and have no competition.  Sports, Government, Utilities and Micorsoft.

Union Elections have helped get the few poorly managed workplaces to be a little bit better. But they will never come back.  Even with Card Check.

- CRS9TNR

January 17, 2009 at 3:34pm

irony:

I guess we're recalling two different movies. Most of the characters surrounding Jimmy Stewart, if I remember correctly, are either corrupt or cynical, and that mix nearly destroys him. There is an invocation -- celebration, if you like -- of political idealism in the movie, of course, but does that make it a "potboiler"? It seems to me that the Roosevelt administrations that are the historical mass behind the symbolism of the movie had a lot of energy, ideas, and, yes, idealism too.

George:

When I last watched Smith I was [or I think I was] either in the Spartacus League or the SWP. Whichever, the orientation of my mind back then gravitated toward Leon Trotsky and "workers of the world unite". Most everything got filtered through that. So for me every movie out of Hollywood was a potboiler. The assumption was this: The REAL cynics were those who produced the film. The plot was so far fetched [and so far removed] from anything that had ever transpired in the US Congress, we just assumed the producers knew this and wryly sent it out to make money from the suckers who would pay for the tickets and leave the theaters thinking, "Now THAT'S the way Congress SHOULD be run!!"

Meanwhile the way governemnt DID run revolved around shafting these suckers as much as they could.

But you're right: There are always going to be men and women who run for and win seats in Congress who are genuinely motivated [in whole or part] by a commitment to make this a better world for as many people as they can.

It's just that my frame of mind today is so deeply embedded in the manner in which the last six months has nakedly exposed the revolving doors that encompass the foundation of our POLITICAL economy, it's almost impossible for me to shift gears into neutral---let alone reverse.

george walton

- iambiguous

January 17, 2009 at 9:58pm

George:

Gosh, and people still wonder why I'm so cynical....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Wall Street may be bruised and battered, but it still donated more money than any other U.S. industry to President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural festivities on Tuesday, a study has found.

The Center for Responsive Politics said executives of finance, insurance and real estate companies and their family members gave $7.1 million to Obama's inaugural committee.

gw

- iambiguous

January 18, 2009 at 2:11am

From the LA Times, 12/25:

" . . . in keeping with Obama's promise of high ethical standards, his canvassers have operated under a limit of $50,000 per contribution from individuals. Obama's camp also banned any donations from corporations, unions and political action committees."

..................

"The inauguration budget four years ago was about the same as Obama's, but President Bush's organizers took contributions of up to $250,000 and accepted money and in-kind support from corporations and political action committees. Donations poured in with relative ease from companies with issues pending in Washington -- such as Exxon Mobil and Occidental Petroleum -- as industries took advantage of one of the last remaining opportunities to give directly to a president's cause."

Let's go easy on the cynicism until we have a broader perspective, eh!

- ironyroad

January 18, 2009 at 2:28pm

Irony,

Just as most American citizens have absolutely no idea how a corporate CEO can end up paying less taxes than his or her secretary, so most of them know even less about how the money collected outside the beltway gets to those it needs to get to inside the beltway----with the appropriate winks and nods, of course.

Whether it is foreign policy, national security or the economy, the information we receive from the MSM and the government about "what goes on where and for what reason" is a crack in the sidewalk next to the Grand Canyon what really happens, instead. It's just that, compared to other countries like China or Russia our Grand Canyon becomes the distance between the Earht and Moon for those citizens. Everything is always relative.

It's just frustrating for folks like us, of course, because we really have no idea where one part stops and the other begins.

And I spent over 20 years in radical political organizations trying to close that gap. I didn't.

What is truly interesting to me [now] is that we have to assume that, in his transition from president elect to the Oval Office, Obama is now absorbing an enormous amount of new information he did not know before. How will that effective his priorities? We'll never know.

Indeed, what makes what we talk about at TNR exasperating is that we have to discuss thes "news" with only a sliver of all the infomation that can be known. That's what makes things like the release of the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the Iran/Contra scandel, the New York Times stories on the post 9/11 presidential surrveilance program etc. so extraordinary. We get to peek inside the curtain and fleetingly gape at what is down there inside the belly of the beast.

gw

But, sure, like you said, we will see how this all plays out 'in reality" when the pick up game commentary morphs over into an analysis that pours out about March Madness in colllege basketball....or about the plays we see watching the NBA Championship series.

- iambiguous

January 18, 2009 at 9:37pm

Interesting, george, is how you didn't respond to my main point, which is that the brief quote from the Reuters bulletin you pasted in to your post is quite misleading about the funding structure for the inauguration, as the LA Times piece indicates.  Now, you could have argued, but didn't, that Bush's inauguration funding was just more honest and upfront than Obama's, because corporations didn't hide their contributions back then.  That would indeed be an item that might suggest some underhand deal about Obama -- but it seems that Obama's people set up a more transparent framework (apart from the other constraints) than ever before, so the contributions can be searched on a data base.

So I don't know where that leaves us, except that one might want to avoid rushing into print on the basis of three lines torn from an agency bulletin.

- ironyroad

January 19, 2009 at 2:06am

irony,

Once you concede that reading the LA Times [or any other Times, Post, or Journal] does not fill the gap between what is reported and what is not, it then becomes a matter of how big you think the the gap is. My gap is just bigger than yours. So now we both have to wait to see and see what he does in office.

You speculate that the gap between Bush [2004] and Obama 2008] reflects, perhaps, the honesty and openness Bush embraced. Maybe. But after 4 more years of reverberations from the Cunningham, Delay, Abramoff scandals perhaps, instead, it reflects a more sophisticated manner in which doners are able to sli the cash underneath the MSM radar  

And it wasn't just three lines from Reuthers. It was the FIRST three lines. The article then went on to point out that contributions from the finance industry were the highest of all the corporate donations.

And, realy, why was it necessary to seek these contributions at all? Why should PEOTUS have to rely on corporate or union or any other special interest groups to fund these lavish extravaganzas? Especially give the hard times many Americans are experiencing. Why didn't Obama respond to the pain, fears and anxieties many citizens are enduring by scaling back all this bullshit Inaugural pomp in onder to send a message to America that all this inside the beltway puffery isa thing of the past.

If this isn't yet another example of, "the more things change, the more they stay reasonably close to the same", I'm sure Obama will think up new ones. A part of me wants to believe Obama is the real deal but another [vastly more experienced part] reflects the sort of thing Hitchens writes in his Obama profile at The Atlantic Magazine.

george walton

- iambiguous

January 19, 2009 at 4:00pm

"And, really, why was it necessary to seek these contributions at all? Why should PEOTUS have to rely on corporate or union or any other special interest groups to fund these lavish extravaganzas?"

Apparently, PEOTUS didn't, as the LA Times suggested.  And my point about Bush was meant to be somewhat satirical.  And the question of whether or not there should be an inaugural celebration is quite another issue (btw you have a noticeable habit of switching focus when challenged on an assertion).  Perhaps he shouldn't have, but there's a certain value to the ritual elements of a peaceful change of political leadership.

And -- I should attribute some superhuman enlightenment to Hitchens?  Why?  This is the Nation columnist who decided Clinton should be brought down over the Lewinsky case and ended on the same side as Kenneth Starr and the House GOP.

- ironyroad

January 19, 2009 at 6:51pm