David Leonhard's June 27 column, supporting the AFL-CIO's drive to avoid employee secret ballot elections in union certification campaigns in order to prop up the livelihood of working people fails to deal with the specifics of today's unions. If we take today's AFL-CIO, unions do not unite people, they divide them, along lines of craft, industry, race, sex, skill, and narrow self-interest. There goes solidarity forever. The leaders of the unions reject the reason most people join unions, that workers and bosses have mostly contradiction in common, so what workers really win when they join the union is another layer of enemies, quislings often paid ten times the average employee. Avoiding the secret ballot is in line with AFL-CIO habits. They deny that right to members routinely. US workers don't need these bogus unions. They need new organizations that can unite workers across the class, across boundaries of race, language, and job, willing to take direct action and fight, as the AFL-CIO forgot how to do.

Dr Rich Gibson

Professor Emeritus

San Diego State University