me: >> Now, the fetishized perspective is undermined by such things as >> workers being united in large workplaces and their forming of >> organizations to fight to attain collective goals.
Tom: > That is, if the organizations they form continue to fight for > collective goals rather than themselves adopting the individualistic > rhetoric and rationale of the mainstream. See Marc Linder's discussion > of the abandonment by union officials of the collectivist argument for > shorter work time, which he referred to as a "sea change". In the US, the union officers abandoned _much more_ than that. Outside the craft sector, for example, they abandoned such things as trying to control the work process in favor of wages-and-benefits bargaining. Of course, they were pushed to do all this; it wasn't simply a bad decision (betrayal!) made by "misleaders." Their capitulation was made more likely by the bureaucratization and ossification of their organizations and by the temporarily-shared prosperity of the "Golden Age" (1950s & 1960s). In addition, most of the crop of labor leaders who rose to the top after World War II in the US had proved their mettle by fighting the communists and other leftists in the unions, in many cases kicking them out. These leftists had wider goals than simple wage-and-benefits negotiation. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
