On Sun, 8 Jun 1997, Doug Henwood wrote: > Bob Fitch told me that after he gave a talk on the dire economic situation > in NYC, a staffer from one of UNITE's predecessors, ACTWU, came up to him > and said he loved the talk except for one thing - Fitch's complaint about > low wages (in sweatshops, lower than Hong Kong's, and in the BLS stats, a > bit above Singapore's). The unionist was worried that raising wages would > kill jobs. A lot of people have this complaint about UNITE. I have two friends who were former ILGWU staffers who left because the union was unwilling to fight for higher wages out of fear of runaway shops. It bears mention that the fear is real: If there's one industry where the globalization story fits well, it's garments. Of course, people pack up and move off to New Jersey a lot more often than they pack up and move off to Honduras. So raising the local wage might not have the dire effect people predict (leaving aside the political point that localities need to draw a line in the sand against races to the bottom). Nevertheless, on the shop level, there's a real fear of runaways. I think the answer is generally to chase them, which UNITE doesn't seem to be doing. But it's a complicated issue. > >As a positive alternative experience I had, ACT UP has a national > >and sometimes international network of local chapters that is vey loose > >and disorganized but has pulled off some great national and international > >actions (most notably at the international AIDS conerences) because of > >the organization of the local chapters. I think this kind of experience > >is possible to duplicate for many other movements. > > Is it really? Or was ACT-UP's success dependent on the specificity of AIDS > and the imminence of death? I think ACT UP's success was dependent on a lot of things. I'm trying to write a pamphlet on it and it's difficult to sort out. I won't go into details here. I guess my main point re. this stuff would just be that I don't think ACT UP would have been better off with a national office than it has been with just a network (though it should bear mention that the New York workspace sort of served as a national office for a while). Cheers, Tavis
