A few weeks ago, Liz Thompson and I wrote a short piece for the anarchist magazine Melbourne Black, entitled ‘Trade Unions: In the National Interest’. The article was published in the fifth issue, which has just been released, available as a hardcopy and on-line.
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Hey look I’m commenting on your blog! I’m sorry if you thought it might be someone more exciting….
Here is the WSWS latest on the WSN on Swift
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/swif-f10.shtml
I felt like it should go here
Comment by liz — February 12, 2011 @ 4:25 am
And why not?
I have seen no substantial responses to the content of the WSWS piece about the Swift dispute, to their discussion of the conditions which were lost and the new hierarchies and divisions created within the workforce (from this point on everyone hired being on significantly worse conditions, and such).
As to the Workers Solidarity Network (WSN), the National Union of Workers (NUW) had told them to stay away from the picket for weeks, and they had obeyed, leaving the workers pretty isolated for about five weeks. But after this situation changed, certain WSN people felt it necessary both to lie to these ‘workers in struggle’ about why the WSN had not been around, and to instruct other WSN members to do the same. Protecting the NUW from the opinions of the workers, protecting the workers from the truth about the actions of the NUW, protecting their relationship with union officials or just covering for them in principle…
Obviously there are people in the WSN who have a problem with these kinds of actions, but the proposal to have a meeting to talk about the dispute - about what actually happened, and the role of NUW and of the WSN - was apparently argued against and voted down at the last meeting.
And I don’t think there was any kind of substantial discussion, and certainly not any resolution made, about eg. the practice of lying to workers about the actions of trade unions.
Instead we just get petty crap about who it was that tried to kick the WSWS people off the picket line.
Comment by theoryoftheoffensive — February 14, 2011 @ 10:19 am