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GUEST: Tom Wetzel, Board of Directors of the San Francisco Community Land Trust

From June 1st through 6th, dozens of activists and intellectuals from around the country and world gathered at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to discuss vision and strategy for a new and just society, while rejecting sectarian and vanguardist tendancies. Among those present was Tom Wetzel who presented a paper entitled, “Unionism and Workers’ Liberation.” Wetzel sits on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Community Land Trust. In his paper, he defines a union as a “mass organization through which workers force the employers to do things the employers would rather not do, or force the employers to avoid doing things they would like to do.” But he says, US unions often defy this definition in their own interests. According to Wetzel, “The failure of American unions to be an effective means of collective resistance to the corporate assault of the past quarter century, their top-down structures, their narrow vision, corruption and CEO-level salaries are features that hold back the development of a sense of collective power, self-confidence and capacity for struggle within the working class in the USA.” Wetzel draws heavily from Robert Fitch’s book, “Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America’s Promise.” I spoke with Tom Wetzel earlier this week where he began by explaining the decline of the US labor movement.

For more information, read Wetzel’s paper and find out more about Robert Fitch’s book at www.solidarityforsale.com.