I have purposefully stayed back and read the posts to this until you all had your say. Now I will respond.

I will begin with general comments and then address specifics. One problem that I have always had is with people who attack institutions with no plan of their own. It is easy to point out what is wrong with Unions, when you don't have to come up with a viable alternative. Even though I am filled with revulsion at the opinions of Bill, at least he had some reasoning behind it. Clearly there are problems with Labor in todays world. Like other organizations, we are struggling with what our mission is as we approach the year 2000. That is the same struggle we had as we approached the years 1950, 51,68, 72, and so on. And that is, "What is our role at this place in history?". I have heard the claptrap about how we were relevant once, and needed but now we kill initiative every place I have organized. It is spread by those whose interest is in not providing health insurance, regularly scheduled pay increases, decent scheduling language, pensions and so on. And people who talk the nonsense about keeping bad employees are the same ones who don't believe in radical concepts like just cause for discipline, and progressive discipline. A Union contract does not take away managements ability to discipline. It just says that they must follow the rules. I will give you an example. I handled a grievance for a young man that got dischargrd for excessive absenteeism. Unions don't set these policies but we reserve the right to contest them if we feel they are excessive. The had set their policy and we had not challenged it. It was fair. It called for a written warning, a write up, a write up with one day off, then three days off, then discharge. It indicated that if a person went 90 days without a repeat, he/she would regress one step in the process. So I go to the grievance meeting and the Steward meets me before hand. She tells me that the company has the kid dead to rights. At the meeting the Manager verbally tells me that the person in question has been tardy at least 30 times over the past year and absent 15 days in the same time and 6 of these in the last 3 months. I ask to see the documentation and he shows me his notebook and the writeup that he did when he terminated the kid. I made him put the kid back to work, and pay him for the 3 weeks he had been off. Why? Because he had not followed the fucking policy that they had written. No writeups, no discussion with the young man about improving his work habits, nothing. And I got blamed for keeping a bad employee. The steward was even mad until I pointed out that the system had to be preserved. If I had let them get this knucklehead without following the system thayt they wrote, what was to stop them from getting someone else. I had a discussion with the young man and and predicted that he would not be there long, because they would document the next time. And within 3 months, he was gone. Because I made them follow the policy. BTW, he tried to grieve again and we discontinued because they followed the rules this time.

The horsepucky about killing personal initiative always cracks me up. That is usually spread by people who are pissed off that they can't come into a company and bypass people who are older than them, and usually don't want to kiss ass. Contracts usually don't stop folks from having initiative, it just doesn't let them exercise it unfairly. Just because you are young and aggressive doesn't mean that someone who is older, and usually not quite as physically attractive, should be put aside because you are in a hurry. If you want to operate without a contract to hold you back, become a member of management. The contracts only cover hours of work, compensation and conditions of work. The rest is up to you. And how many times have I seen Union Stewards promoted to management. Plenty, because they company recognizes that they are driven people who play by the rules.

There is a pertinent analogy with the Civil Rights movement. There are no signs in the US anymore that say "Whites only". No more "Back of the bus, Nigger", they are all gone. Racism got smart. It dresses in a suit and talks about the vanishing rights of the "White Race" whatever the fuck that is. It has become insidious, and hides itself well. It loves it when folks say that "Racism is gone, we don't need affirmative action. Everyone can make it if they try." Then people won't look at life in the ghettos and in rural poor areas. They won't see kids whose hope has vanished and they shoot each other with 9mm's over fucking tennis shoes. They will wash off as an aberration when some racist bastards drag a man to death behind a pickup truck. Oh, they will kill the perps eventually as if to say that "there, we fixed that". Then they will continue to ignore the conditions that spawned these sick bastards, and it will go on. But we will cover it up with words like "anyone can get ahead if they want to, we don't need laws like this anymore". What has this got to do with unions? It is the same story, just a different cause. We will continue to say they things that Bill says, and Big Capital will continue to sit in the boardrooms and chuckle. After all, the sweatshops are gone...........except in places like India, Pakistan, you know, those countries where they aren't white..........What? You mean they are popping up in this country again?....Yeah, but they are just Mexicans?...........Well guess what, when you ignore the least among us, and you let them erode the laws that Brothers and Sisters fought and sometimes died for, it is not long before it is you that is suffering. I am reminded of an organizing drive I was on about 10 years ago. I was in the apartment of a lovely young woman of about 30 years. She had three kids, the oldest 11 yrs old and the youngest 5. She was white, pretty and could have been the daughter of any middle class family you could imagine. But she had bags under her eyes. And she was a single mother. She wanted to sign the authorization card for me, but she wanted to do it too quickly. That is always troublesome to me as I want them to question why they should. I want the discussion of the issues. Why? Because it is a difficult process on the employess to organize and I want to make sure that they understand the issues, pro and con. It strenthens their resolve for the long haul ahead. I remember asking her if she had questions about anything, how about dues? She looked up at me with those tired eyes and said, "Mr. Lane you are a nice man, and I appreciate what you are trying to do. Do you see this child? (She put her arm around the 11 year old boy) He is only 11, but everyday after school he has to come home from school, and unlock the apartment, get his brother and sister from the neighbors and babysit until I get home from work at night. I have to work three jobs to keep things going because his Father pays no child support, and I don't have health insurance on any of them. If you can just get me health insurance for my kids so at least they don't have to go to school sick, you can have all the money I make on one of my jobs for dues." That young woman, with that statement, renewed my committment to labor and what we are about.

You see, Bill, it is not about the cute little cliche's, and the fucking intellectualizing concepts. It is not even about what YOU didn't get, or the promotion you couldn't get. It is about the erosion from the bottom that will eventually get to you too, believe it or not. We must have someone who speaks for workers. We have seen what happens when we don't. And as the conditions erode, you could see it too, if you would look. Woody's songs are relevant today to a whole group of people who are experiencing what he wrote about 50 - 60 years ago. And Big Capital loves that they have convinced people to think as you do. Is that to say that there are not problems in the Labor Movement. Absolutely Not. I see them all the time. But I learned as a warrior, that from the outside one can only attack and destroy. Change from the outside only starts after you have destroyed the defenses. From the inside one can modify, upgrade and strengthen defenses. That is why I choose to fight to change my Labor Movement from the inside. Slowly and deliberately, myself and others within struggle to make it relevant for the young ones of today. It requires that we listen and make the leadership listen. It isn't about us or those that went before. We honor those only if we continue to make the movement relevant for the future. By buying into the idea that its time has come and gone, we destroy all that they sacrificed to create. And we doom my little Ciara, and all the other wee ones to a bleak future. Over my dead body.

Mick