Posted on 09/19/2009 11:48:06 AM PDT by jazusamo
The AFL-CIO's new president on card check, health reform and the challenges facing the union movement.
Pittsburgh
The new boss looks the part. There's the Walesa-esque moustache and burly former linebacker's physique. The Polish-Italian roots in the southwestern Pennsylvania mining town of Nemacolin where he went down the coal shaft at 19, following his grandfather and father, before rising up union ranks. There's the reputation for toughness, a short fuse and gruff sense of humor.
To supporters, Richard Trumka boasts the right résumé to head up America's largest labor federation; to doubters, inside the movement and out, the AFL-CIO went with an old-school, bullying leader. So it came as something of a surprise to hear Mr. Trumka declare earlier this week, on the eve of his unopposed election to president at the group's convention here, that "We're looking to change the face of labor. . . . We're going to try to change the way we do business."
Mr. Trumka, who is 60, faces stark realities. The "House of Labor," as the AFL-CIO is otherwise known, wants to reverse a decades-long drop in membership, now down to 12.4% of the American work force. That's a third the level in the 1950s. Another challenge for Mr. Trumka: How to heal a split within the movement that pushed six million members into a rival federation four years ago. Then there's the issue of how to fix the AFL-CIO's finances, now millions of dollars in the red as a result of falling dues and overspending.
The AFL-CIO diehards, in the words of a Trumka adviser, hope the first new president since 1995 can "make the labor movement truly a movement again." His predecessor, John Sweeney, came in with even greater expectations. But for all his success in making unions a powerful voice...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
They want Anarcho-syndicalism
That’s about the size of it!
I believe that’s exactly what big labor wants.
I've had people on FR tell me there is no such thing as a Marxist-Anarchist.
Trumka + Corruption = 512,000 hits (in 0.37 sec.)
Amazing, and true!
A solid member of the Baraqqi coalition.
They are soooo desparate to get card check.
Because they realize most of the jobs that are unionized and non-government are going down the tubes.
The irony is that Stalin had them liquidated en masse during the Spanish Civil war, Stalin saw them as such a great threat that his GRU agents spent most of the civil war hunting down anarchists rather than fight against Franco’s forces.
Abraham Guillem an anarcho-marxist veteran of the spanish civil war was the theorist who was a major influence on the Tupamaros and Montoneros and practically invented urban guerilla war. It turned into a failure when the Argentine dirty war turned their own tactics against them.
Correction on abraham Guillen with an “n”.
This is no ordinary uinion thug.
This is a particularly dangerous American terrorist.
I hadn’t heard about the t-shirt but I’ve read about that strike and terrorist is probably a more accurate description than thug.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.