Mel Pritchard, San Francisco, Portside, September 17, 2004

I do not think there is some easy answer to the dilemmas of administration of a large national union. I come at this with the experiences of fighting a truly conservative bureaucracy in the Teamsters as a member of TDU at UPS. Though they [are] certainly for democracy, the did not care about race,gender or the public sector or had a clue how to deal with those dilemmas other than a naive trust in anti-bureaucratic forces in the IBT. I spent time in an AFT local while an adjunct lecturer at CUNY. There I fought with fellow progressives to democratize the union, but not all of my fellow members were democratic minded or realize you need to run a union day-to-day not just put out ideal politics. ... Re: Democracy