Lois Weiner on the Survival of Unions and Why Chicago TU is Different
What we see in Chicago has been more like the kind of organizing done by the CIO, fusing a progressive social program to union demands. CORE, the insurgent caucus that leads the CTU and was re-elected last month in a landslide (with over 60% of the members voting) has shifted the political terrain of education politics by embedding union demands in a vision for public education. ... Lois WeinerHe
Fiorillo: Better Randi than no union at all
The fundamental nature of the lack of democracy internally is a bigger threat to the life of the union than the external - in the long run.I hope you've been following the over 200 comments on Diane Ravitch's blog from people all over the nation, many of whom have learned a lot from us here in NYC on how the AFT and UFT operates. Diane began with a post about her relationship with Randi Weingarten My Friend, Randi Weingarten which opened up a firestorm of criticism of Randi and in some cases unfairly to Diane for posting this. But Diane doesn't censor comments and I'm sure our union officials are not happy over the overwhelming thumbs down on Randi -- we don't even see the usual Unity hacks showing up to defend her.
But as we've been discussing in MORE, the failure of the union on so many levels creates a dangerous internal anti-union - rather than anti-union leadership which leads people to call for ending dues check-off, mandatory dues and other right wing wet dreams. I understand the frustration, especially in the UFT where even if we organized a CORE like caucus with wide outreach, we still would be far from being able to win more than a few meaningless positions. The fundamental