After mulling it over for a few minutes, I realized something about the story on Labor Ready that Mike Gurstein posted. The AFL-CIO was quoted as critizing the company's exploitive practices and, as usual, offering a vague ideal -- full-time jobs at a living wage -- as the alternative. Perhaps this ideal of solidarity exempts the union movement from the distasteful prospect of _actually_ organizing contingent and precarious work, which would probably require that the unions set up a competing hiring hall and unemployment insurance system that operates on principles of solidarity and social justice. To do this might require rethinking many of the cherished platitudes and unspoken practices of industrial organization and business unionism. It's remarkable how much the union frame of mind insists on operating within a 1930s "New Deal" paradigm as if that were the only conceivable environment for advancing economic security and social development. I came across a book published in 1999 that proclaimed the death of labor unions and collective bargaining. In terms of that 1930s paradigm, the author is correct. There is an old joke about the chemist, the engineer and the economist who are stranded on a desert island with a crate of canned food. After the chemist and the engineer present their ideas for opening the cans, the economist expounds, "Assume we have a can opener . . . " If there had been a unionist on the island, he or she might have offered the following preface to a suggestion, "Assume we have a social democratic government, a progressive consensus of public opinion and a powerful and dynamic labour movement . . ." Temps Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant
