“The point of this book is not to show that American unions are corrupt. That’s obvious to anyone who reads the daily paper. The real argument is about how they’ve become corrupt, what difference it has made, and why America can’t let it stand. […] and why the movement that’s been organized in [working people’s] name has come to so little after so many years and such great sacrifices”.
“Essentially, the American labor movement consists of 20,000 semi-autonomous local unions. Like feudal vassals, local leaders get their exclusive jurisdiction from a higher level organization and pass on a share of their dues. The ordinary members are like the serfs who pay compulsory dues and come with the territory. The union bosses control jobs—staff jobs or hiring hall jobs—the coin of the political realm. Those who get the jobs—the clients—give back their unconditional loyalty. The politics of loyalty produces, systematically, poles of corruption and apathy. The privileged minority who turn the union into their personal business. And the vast majority who ignore the union as none of their business.”
“Fitch proposes a quid pro quo as the best hope for reform: Employers must give up resistance to worker representation; unions in turn must give up their twin National Labor Relations Act-sanctioned privileges of exclusive representation and (in non-Right to Work states) mandatory dues payments as a condition of continued employment. […]For someone who still maintains ties to organized labor, that’s an unexpectedly welcome assessment.” (Peter Flaherty is President of nlpc.org and served as Chairman of the lobbying group Citizens for Reagan)
“Anti-Union Stuff on Amazon:“Solidarity for Sale, by: Robert Fitch”
“I was looking forward to a serious study of union corruption and its effects… His factual inaccuracies seem too sloppy to take the rest of the book seriously.”
“Fitch is basically saying – some unions are corrupt AND some unions don’t do the things I think they should THUS the reasons unions don’t do what I think they should is because they are corrupt. His logic, if you can call it that, is that simple and skewed. Really, this book is such a disappointment.”
“Dishonestly, Fitch promises to do much more than tell us stories about corrupt locals. He claims he can show that corruption is the defining force in the American labor movement, shaping labor history, constraining the behavior of national labor unions, and leading to the declining membership in the U.S. labor movement. But he never delivers.
“One expects a coherent attempt to show that corruption is endemic to the entire labor movement and has resulted in its destruction. Instead, this book reads like a collection of short articles about some of the worst abuses in labor, without developing a coherent theory until the final chapter, which is short and without factual support.”
“Fitch’s book is more likely to be ignored as irrelevant.”