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Mat Cusick's avatar

Interesting article and very important discussion. I look forward to reading the book. However, I must take issue with the claim that ALU “had neither the capacity nor organizing vision to onboard” workers reaching out after the election victory. As one of he leaders of that particular project at that time, I must correct you that there was a vision and there was capacity, but that Chris Smalls deliberately dismantled it and prevented the capacity from being deployed and the vision from being fulfilled. This fact has mostly been covered up, but it was reported at the time (albeit superficially): https://time.com/6197364/amazon-union-pauses-nyc-campaign/#

Over the past 3 years, a lot of poor analysis has been drawn from a misunderstanding of what happened immediately after the JFK8 election victory—namely, a systematic internal dismantling of organizing capacity by Chris Smalls and a few loyalists to centralize and maintain his grip on power (which required legal intervention and the organizing of a democratic caucus to extricate the union from). Any narrative of that campaign that doesn’t include this essential truth will only mislead people about what the actual shortcomings of the independent union were and why it failed. (The poor conclusions of Erik Loomis about ALU and the viability of independent unions, for instance: https://newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2023/04/28/independent-unions-the-allure-of-a-failing-strategy/)

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gary l's avatar

Nice article, defending and clarifying a nice book. I'll pass on some technical points on the service economy I dashed off in response to a friend who asked me about it, as I've been emphasizing the degree to which the "deindustrialization and service economy" story is overstated by many who wish to dismiss labor. (see eg the section on deindustrialization here on this https://cosmonautmag.com/2024/03/who-are-the-workers-and-why-does-it-matter/)

"I found the arguments compelling in context, but i think starbucks and similar corporations are not at the heart of america's political economy. empirically, 3.3% of america's gdp is accommodation and food services, and its a similar fraction of the workforce, though somewhat larger.

the service sector is a large part of the u.s. economy, but when you break that out, that's largely professional, technical and scientific, and then janitorial and maintenance. some of it is also finance and real estate, which isn't industry at all but rents.

the error blanc makes, to be fair, is the error that everyone on all sides of the debate mainly makes, which is that people don't interrogate what "services" means, and the category just turns out to not be composed the way people imagine it is.

on the other hand, is starbucks in particular a "fortress at the heart of america's political economy"? well, in a sense yes, despite the relatively demure position of food and accommodation services as whole. it is around the 100th largest u.s. company by market capitalization, a tad ahead of intel and nike, and just behind welltower, which people haven't heard of, but invests in real estate for healthcare and senior homes, and behind southern company, which is a gas and electric utility rollup. it also is the 15th largest u.s. company by employees globally. so there are different ways to measure importance, and slaughter is overdismissive of it for that reason as well. so blanc is on the more right side of the argument than slaughter, but with arguably sloppy reasons why."

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