Baltimore Love Thing Part 2

I took a job in Baltimore a few years ago. Before that, I'd lived way across the hill in Montgomery Village, MD. To say that it was a different place... heh.

First of all, my MD hometown is probably one of the most affluent counties in the United States. I have a mother who enjoyed the benefits of a unionized federal government job (now still in the same organization but in management...) and we moved together to MD when I was about 12. My familiarity with Baltimore then only came from visiting the airport. So to be introduced to it during a snowstorm was intimidating.

Second of all, towns that are destroyed by economic blight hit me square in the gut. I hate seeing kids and adults both visiting playgrounds that are covered in trash and/or spent construction materials. I loathe corner stores run by people who live miles and miles away. I really can't stand, most of all, communities that are underfunded and schools that are overwhelmed (and vice versa.) Baltimore has it all, mixed together in this pissy-flavored gumbo.

The job, though, showed me the other parts too.

I love the marketplaces that smell like crabcakes all day. I like cops that sit on the corner and talk to kids about their parents. I like sweet tea and lemonade with whitefish subs. I like the slang that takes weird pieces and parts of traderspeak slammed together with corner jive fried in fish oil and serves it to you sprinkled with Old Bay. I fell in real love with summer mornings at Lexington Market drinking fresh lemonade.

Shit is so dope... but so gutter. How do you rectify the two? I spent most of my days there, when not frustrated by the American Labor Movement, trying to love her even though she hated herself.

MurderMall, North Ave., even downtown Baltimore with all its glitz and one-way streets... you can love the game and hate it, but you can't do that with your girlfriend.

I lasted three months in that job.

Whoa.

Something about today... I'm just all full of words and shit.

Well, here we go.

New Math Pt. 2

How can someone work like this?

I keep going into our office, thinking that if I walk into it that someone will say something or do something that will change my mind or change the world. I walk in, avoid the coffee, sit down at my desk, and read through the news. Our union, for some reason, keeps making the news. SEIU this, SEIU that... I say that with some level of astonishment because I can't figure out why people are surprised at the events that have unfolded.

The New Unity Partnership, which birthed Change to Win, was designed to build partnerships with management from the beginning. The unions within it, all early adopters of the strict model of funding organizing first and the rest second, were already superstars of the organization they broke away from (AFLCIO) but were not treated that way. AFLCIO prez John Sweeney took a real disliking to the attitudes expressed by many of the CTW's leaders because of the assertions made about the political ties to Dems and the shunning of real organizing plans. The upstarts, after all, were really right (the data shows it even to this day,) but they touched on something that rang true to the negative: are you really talking about organizing? Or are we really talking about negotiating with the threat of organizing looming on the horizon? When asked this question in the beginning, CTW leaders would often mention (particularly SEIU prez Andy Stern) the amount of money spent on politics in the AFLCIO (even though we turned right around and threw every cent into supporting Barack Obama in 2008, we haven't exactly changed our mission statement.) Haven't heard much of that lately...

These partnerships did happen though, although they often occurred outside of discussions with members, sometimes even organizing entire units with no one knowing outside of top management in both the union and the company:

On May 10, Kris Maher reported that the SEIU and UNITE/HERE (Change to Win allies) had entered into secret agreements with two global employers of service workers, Sodexho and the Compass Group. "The old ways aren't working," Stern told Maher, "and we're trying to find different relationships with employers that guarantee workers a voice." And so, unions are formed behind the backs of workers and with the permission and cooperation of the employers. Not just the terms of the agreements, but their very existence is not to be disclosed, not even to the lucky new union members. Of the several hundred thousand workers employed in North America, the union will be permitted to organize a limited number at designated sites; the companies will cooperate by providing lists of the employees and permitting union access to their work sites. The unions agree to be barred from attempting to organize the others; and they will not post derogatory remarks about the companies anywhere in the world.

Why then wouldn't you expect a union that was forced to adopt pro-corporate tactics and policies to suddenly, seemingly without warning, turn into a corporation?

I already know my answer: Because regardless of your changing tactics, you are still union. Telling the truth is a labor value.