Summer 2010 Labour Movements
Contents
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David Correia
Financialization and Corporatization as the End of Union Democracy“What has been the consequence of labor’s embrace of conservative politics and financialization? Pension fund values have collapsed, public sector employees are under assault, benefits have disappeared and layoffs are commonplace.”
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Kenneth Couesbouc
On the Persistence of Hierarchy“Labour’s collaboration has strengthened property’s dominion. It has legitimised property, the way that voting legitimises the state.”
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Cal Winslow
California Labor’s Civil War: Huge Elections Set at Kaiser Permanente“These are workers who don’t do concessions. They have seen a union grow. They know what a strong union is. They want one back.”
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Steve Early
SEIU Funds New Book to Rewrite History“If people don’t want to watch a movie about SEIU, maybe they’ll buy book a book about it – like a 276-page, largely wart-free organizational portrait penned by the husband of the union’s general counsel?”
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Yonatan Preminger
Sandwiched between Zionism and Capitalism“Like many capitalist democracies, Israel has seen the rapid erosion of the stable job with peripheral benefits and union protection. It is estimated that over 40% of families under the poverty line are living off wages, not welfare.”
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Michael Barker
Liberal Elites and the Pacification of Workers“By focusing on the individuals and organizations involved in guiding the evolution of corporate unionism to pacify the workforce, it becomes clear why their main sponsors, so-called liberal elites, pose just as large a threat to democracy as do ultra-conservative elites.”
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Paula Cerni
Review of Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work“Crawford does not want to romanticize the mechanic’s life, but his upholding of it as a model turns out to be a personal escape plan rather than a blueprint for social transformation.”
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Little Big Pine
Labor, My Savior“At the dawn of civilization, as it were, Labor suffers the catastrophic defeat of being enslaved to the gathering forces of wealth and power. Surely no coincidence; for Labor’s bondage, more than anything else, creates the ‘civilization’ we’ve received, and keeps it going.”
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“There hasn’t yet been is a concerted project of investment in the local agricultural system, and that’s the key priority. If they did that Haiti could meet its own food needs very easily and quickly. It would meet its own food needs if it wasn’t for foreign interference.”
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Cihan Aksan & Jon Bailes
Revolution Stalled? Venezuela and Bolivia: An Interview with Mike Gonzalez“The crossroads at which Latin America stands today is not just a matter of defending a more liberal democracy. But a state which survives within the rules of the global market cannot usher in the people’s power that Morales and Chavez both promised.”
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Cihan Aksan & Jon Bailes
Keynesianism – Capitalism’s Cure? An Interview with Esme Choonara“Keynes’s critique is very useful, but I think his methods weren’t sufficient in the 1930s, and I don’t think they are necessarily sufficient today.”
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Cihan Aksan & Jon Bailes
The Changing Face of Imperialism Today: An Interview with Jonathon Shafi“The US ruling power, and those putting pressure on the state to expand, will once again want to mobilise militarily I think.”
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Matt Fisher
The Politics of Social Intelligence“What happens if we as a society simply carry on as we are, for the most part unwilling or unprepared to understand the complex dynamics between the social brain and the social conditions in which we grow up, live, work and age?”
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Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Iran’s Presidential Election One Year Later – Why the Greens Failed“Mr. Mousavi and other Green leaders could have played an important role in furthering individual liberties and democratic ideals in Iran were they not committed to the base objective of destabilizing and overthrowing the people’s duly-elected government.”
