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Jim D. wrote:
capitalist governments almost always favor narrow craft-type
unions that don't rock the political boat. They may not get what they want, of
course, but that's what they favor.
================================= < All things being equal, it's true governments and employers would rather see a divided labour movement composed of multiple small and weak unions than a powerful united one, but their responses are not really conditioned by whether unions are structured on craft or industry lines. The critical distinctions are between militant and compliant
unions, and whether the period is one where the balance of class forces and
economic circumstances favours the strengthening or the rollback of union
rights. >
Comment The trade union movement is not the labor movement by a long
shot. The labor movement cannot but be economically and politically divided as a
feature of capitalism or more accurately value production. This division
remains true and in force, to a considerable degree, even after the bourgeois
property relations has been dismantled.
The block to labor unity is rooted in the economic inequality
of various layers of labor itself.
Trade Union unity is an entirely different question. I am not
sure if the concept "trade union unity" is even valid, unless we are speaking
aout unity about a specific issue of set of issues.
Union organizations, be they craft or industrial have and
remain out of the reach of the most poverty stricken sectors of labor or the
labor movement. Labor law reform in American - during the Roosevelt era, was not
meant to aid the most poverty stricken workers, be they craft or industrial.
I weigh in on the side that the reform movement in China,
expressing itself in this labor law legislation, is not a bad thing but opens
the door to unionizing some of the lowest paid workers in the world market.
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- Re: [PEN-L] China Drafts Law to Boost Unions and End Labor ... Waistline2
