January 31, 2005
A union I can get excited about
Normally I really dislike and oppose labor unions. I despise the AFL-CIO. But the New York Times Magazine has a fascinating article about one Andy Stern, the boss of the Service Employees International Union, and his efforts to bring Big Labor out of the 1950s and into the twenty-first century.
Here's a man interested more in getting things done than in protecting his own interests. He wants to work with employers, not against them, and recognizes that businessmen are really just trying to keep their company in the black, not deliberately seeking to harm their employees. It's this latter mentality entrenched in most labor supporters that I find so repugnant, and it's refreshing to see a union boss - particularly an influential boss of a powerful and growing union - take such genuinely progressive stances. He's said that he'll pull his 1.8 million works out of the AFL-CIO if certain reforms aren not enacted, and I think he might just do it.
It's a good read.
