Re: Andy Stern: dupe of Leslie Dach?
On Mar 27, 2007, at 11:08 AM, Jim Straub wrote:
This would explain wal-mart’s interest in the whole thing, but not
stern’s.
Stern wants desperately to be taken seriously by CEOs and the
business press. No doubt Scott and Dach understand this and saw him
as a big fat sitting duck with a target painted on his back.
What does labor get out of this alliance? Not much, I’d guess. Stern
is not approach WMT from anything like a position of strength (see
sitting duck reference, above). WMT has lots of power, a huge PR
budget, and very skilled flacks. In his interview with The American
Prospect Online that I posted here yesterday, Stern admitted that he
had no idea what WMT wanted as a health insurance program - he may be
lying about that because you can imagine that it’s some version of
the Massachusetts plan. (He praised ArnieCare in the interview, which
is a crock.) His claim that we can all just get together and solve
the problem pragmatically is Perot-like in its idiocy.
This NYer piece, with that quote about co-opting NGOs, pretty much
closes the debate on what’s going on with this weird alliance. Stern
may think he’s a partner - or, more grandly, he may think he’s using
WMT - but he’s become a PR tool for one of the cleverest corporations
in business history.
Doug