An alternative view to the Union hierarchy on the Verizon strike

I read this article about the Verizon strike that was published in the Boston globe by a former Union organizer. It was just the same old stuff from the bureaucracy's point of view.  I had to respond to it and my response is below.

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Here's a major difference I have with the views of Steve Early here that are commonly expressed by former full time staffers or other paid officials in the Union bureaucracy. 

Firstly, he makes no reference at all to the role leadership has played and is playing in this strike or through all the events and strikes that have led us to this point.  It's as if there is simply a "Union" the leadership doesn't exist for him.  But the role of leadership is crucial and the major cause for the predicament organized labor is in today (excluding the boss of course) is the leaderships policies both in the workplace and industrial plane and in the political sphere. Steve Early completely ignores their role and this is not an accident.

If we are all simply "the Union" then the members are equally to blame and that is not the case.  Not only that, it would mean the workers at Greyhound, Hormel, or Eastern, or Stalely, or Pittston or the California grocery strike who sacrificed so much attempting to defend us all against the capitalist offensive (even though they would not call it that) are to blame for these defeats after as much as a year on picket lines at times.

Early's article says, "This grim negotiating climate creates a great opportunity for Verizon to take back what it can."

 But we've had the most favorable objective situation in years in the past period. The US Chamber of Commerce even discovered through its focus groups that it could not use the term capitalism in its campaign to boost support for the system after the collapse.  They discovered that people associated it with the strong devouring the weak. In numerous instances throughout the country where rank and file members opposed concessionary contracts  UAW at Chrysler, UAW at Freightliner, Accuride, SEIU and ATU here in the Bay Area, the leadership of our organizations went after them in the press and eventually forced them to accept the concessions.  In some cases they have collaborated with management in firing Union rank and file fighters who dared resist concessions.  We also have had in the 1990's where profits reached a 40 year high, Labor was tight and yet still, the leadership of these potentially powerful organizations refused to go on the offensive.

Early talks of widespread Labor and community support and all that is fine but what sort of support is Steve Early talking about and how does the Union movement draw it in?  By moral claims about Union picket lines being sacred and solidarity is important coupled with fundraisers?  That won't do it.

Most member have no idea who their leaders are or even to which Union they belong some times.  We can blame the members for this but the primary fault lies with the leadership at the highest levels.  Believe me, if they were fighting for them, if they had a significant presence on the job,  they'd know who they are and want to know when the next meeting  is.  The same with the 88% of workers with no Union, especially the youth. Yes, workers at the very end of the scale have made some gains, from $8 an hour to $10 say.  But there is a crisis in the Labor movement and working class in general that has to be addressed. It's like AA says about alcoholism; denial is the biggest obstacle to recovery but once you overcome the denial the road to recovery opens up.  Early doesn't only deny this problem, he completely hides it which allows the leadership a free ride, it allows them to avoid defending their ideas and the disastrous policies that flow from them.

I don't normally reply to these but I was a shop steward for 25 years and a rank and file official of an AFSCME Local and, for the most part, all the International and the District Councils did was take our money and hand a lot of it over to the Democrats.