Re: A highly critical take on Fitch
Marvin Gandall wrote:
(1) I think the differences between US and other union movements can be exaggerated. By their very nature, they all have to deliver bread and butter, and have seen politics as a means of doing this. There was more political militancy in periods of sharp class polarization, but this was also true of the US pre WWI. I don’t see much difference today between US labour’s support of the DP versus European support for its Labour and Socialist parties, although there is no question that the US’s role as the preeminent imperialist power has produced a reactionary chauvinism which has tied American workers more closely to the system and its values - but all levels, not only that of the leadership.
European unions may be weakening today - the situation in Germany’s looking pretty bad - but what a difference in the old days! Could you ever imagine a European union leader denouncing national health insurance as “emasculating,” as Gompers did? US unions have historically been far more concerned with narrow bread & butter issues than their European counterparts.
(2) I don’t understand your rejection of the closed shop where workers are required to join the union as a condition of employment, or even the more widespread check-off system, where workers are not required to belong to the union in order to hold down a job but are required to pay dues to it through the employer’s payroll office in exchange for receiving the benefits of a collective agreement. I understand thisis also Fitch’s position.
I don’t know what I think of Fitch’s position on this. But he argues that Euro unions got much further without a closed shop and a monpology. He prefers the continental model of multiple unions - socialist, communist, Catholic - that have to compete for workers. The US model of a monopoly union with a very detailed contract is rather unusual, or so he says.
A few years ago, France had something like 10% union density but something like 80% of workers were covered by a union-negotiated contract. How’d that work?
Doug