Cal Winslow's "Labor's Civil War in California"

link to amazon page

First reactions: I like a short book! Reasonable summary of events.

Underlying the narrative, however, are pervasive errors in analysis indicative of a "rank-and-file fundamentalism" which is as profoundly misguided as it is initially sympathetic.

After laying out Stephen Lerner's critique of Sal Rosseli's leadership of UHW (Lerner is cited as SEIU's main ideological critic of UHW) (p 29), basically that UHW was involved in "Just Us" unionism benefitting its members while ignoring the unorganized, Winslow writes:

Strong words. We'd all like to change the world. But I hope we can be forgiving for taking Lerner with a grain ot salt. It seems plain here that he was simply raising the stakes (rhetorically) as high as possible, thus making reconciliation even theoretically impossible.

Winslow then spends the rest of the book frenetically raising the rhetorical stakes of the conflict to the level of apocalyptic war over the "soul of the labor movement," culminating in the predictable challenge to the reader: "Which Side Are You On?"

I guess he feels like SEIU started it, but it hardly recommends his thinking that he is apparently unaware of the irony.

more to follow...