you have to department to the fact that the -- adapt to the revolution as you go, you're doing your job. gosh, how does this all fit together? i really would like people to take time out for a moment or two and to, actually, like the u.s. president who i think understands the internet probably better than most, to be able to explain it and say this is something not to be afraid of, but it's something that's going to help you do your job and make sure that we can, indeed, be competitive and communicate in the future. >> host: same question. >> guest: the difficulties of understanding the real scope that this change brings on the part of leadership. in that sense i fully agree with james. i think it's, there's an increasing gap between a young generation of entrepreneurs, consumers, citizens, students who are living in europe and who expect certain services, connectivity, expect to be able to make certain choices, and

their political leaders have difficulty grasping what's going on. and every day that europe is fragmented and doesn't get its act together and act as a global player, harmonizes the digital market, you know, china, brazil, the u.s. get ahead of us. and we owe it to the opportunity and the potential of europe to bring the whole european union in to the 21st century and connected. and this requires a lot of work, but it's very urgent that we get there. so that's my main concern. >> host: and very quickly, here in washington are your mobile devices working, and what's been your experience? >> guest: my mobile devices work. >> host: at a good speed? >> guest: it's just very expensive. >> host: is it expensive? is. >> guest: yeah, of course. >> guest: mine, too, i haven't had a problem. i must say coming from my place where i live where i don't get one at all, it's a real thing not to have to go down the road

for two miles to get a signal. >> host: james elles has been a member of the european parliament since 19384. -- 1984. he's co-founder of the european internet foundation. ms. schaake is from the netherlands, we appreciate you both coming over on to "the communicators." kim hart of "the politico", thank you as well. >> host: thank you. >> labor journalist steve early examines the current organizing strategies and structures of many labor unions in the united states. he also reports on the internal conflicts from 2008 to 2010 that according to the author hurt union reputations and angered supporters. this is about an hour and 20 minutes. [applause] >> i want to thank everybody for coming out here tonight, and i want to thank the busboys team,

and it is a great team which tonight includes christine taylor from booktv at c-span, want to thank her for doing the video work. [applause] it's going to make the proceedings a little more formal than when we were at the 14th location and kind of did an oprah number with the microphone floating around and mainly a question period. um, going to talk for about 15 minutes so they get some tape of something, and then we're going to have to do the questions union convention style. [laughter] you're going to have to line up at the mic, and you're not going to get a chance to speak unless you see the green light go on, and i have my finger on that control. but i hope that when we get to the question period, it'll be lively. i know it will be. this new labor series that busboys and poets has initiated, i believe with an event involving barbara aaronwright,

how many came to see her last week? one fan in the house. it's an important addition to the labor community. it's no coincidence that don allen, the busboys' manager, is so committed to putting on programming that's going to enable us to showcase labor-related books, films, cultural events, hopefully photography exhibits. don allen is the son of a patco striker who 30 years ago this summer was fired along with 12,000 of his co-workers. and growing up in that kind of family and having that kind of experience can be formative to say the least, so i want to thank both pam and don, again, for the opportunity to be here tonight. i did some quick calculations of who's in the room, and particularly with all my old, excuse me, friends from cwa and so many other unions remitted, i'd say we probably have about 1500 to 2000 years worth of

experience here in labor lawyering, labor organizing, labor education -- [laughter] labor-oriented academic work, labor community coalition building and just plain old labor trouble making. so i know that with this wealth of experience we're going to have a great discussion. among our very special guests who i want to introduce first is one of the courageous nurses at washington hospital center who went out on strike last friday. [applause] sister erniing -- ernic fennel. if you could stand up. [applause] hopefully, ken -- [inaudible] if he's not here, formerly of the afl and now of the national nurses' united. during the question period maybe she can talk a little bit more about the issues involved in

that strike. readers of the hard copy of "the washington post" will notice, i'm sure, that the washington hospital center is spending tens of thousands of dollars telling the folks of this community how much they care about patient care and the quality of the care that they provide, money that would be better spent agreeing to the union's reasonable proposals for nurse/patient staffing ratios and other improvements that they need in their contract as rns to better serve the people who use that hospital. we had another strike last week of similar significance, 1200 nurses out at kaiser permanent in los angeles last wednesday. they are members of the new national union of health care workers. there's some contribution envelopes for the nuhw on the table over there and an update on activity in recent months.

this is an important new addition to the labor movement in california and a subject of much of this new book, "civil wars." i want to thank a couple of other co-sponsors, labor notes which has been helping me out at every stop on this new book tour. i want to thank my host here in washington, d.c., sister linda foley. where is linda? [applause] always quick to put me up when other people would have me sleeping in west potomac park. [laughter] linda, as many of you know, is a former member of the cwa international executive board and past president of the newspaper guild. i also want to recognize and thank for their co-sponsorship and turnout here tonight ann hoffman, the national vice president of the national writers' union, the uaw. my current union affiliation. [applause] and i want to also thank my

publisher hay market and recognize a great fellow, dave zyron, who many of you if you are sports fans know is the most knowledgeable and incisive left commentator on the world of professional and amateur sports. got a great new movie out, whole series of books and, also, a haymarket author. this little civil wars book tour got started last week we events in hartford and my hometown of boston and amherst, massachusetts, and cleveland last weekend. last night we had an event in the city of mencken and the baltimore orioles and that great newspaper guild-written show at a place called red emma's. i have a souvenir to prove that i was there.

maybe busboys needs to invest in a hoodie like this. [laughter] how many people here, and i know inside the beltway book audiences tend to be a little more buttoned up, a little more straight-laced, a little more respectable. how many people here have been to red emma's? whoa! i misread my audience, i take it all back. good to see there's no longer a mccarthy era and people are willing to frequent the bookstore, a great bunch of people connected to ak press. borders may not soon be much of a place to buy books at. we had a great group of worker student activists at this event last night, and one of them was

an earnest young man from the sociology club at the state college. and knowing i was in mixed company and not everybody was necessarily up to speed on our bewildering array of acronyms that we throw around in the labor movement, i was spelling everything out. i didn't want to leave any non-insiders, young or old, completely baffled by the alphabet soup group that is we're all part of. and i started mentioning the international brotherhood of teamsters several times. i think i was talking about sandy pope's great campaign for the presidency of the ibt, and this young man got very puzzled. i could see it in his face. finally, he raised his hand, and he said what's a teamster? well, you know, being a guy with rapid fire answers, i said, well, they're truckers, and they work for ups, and they handle packages, and they work in warehouses, and, you know, i rattled off a long list, and

then i realized that's not what he was asking. [laughter] and i thought to myself, he has every right to be mystified, right? i mean, he was 20. but it just shows, you know, how last century it is that, you know, we have an occupation from the previous century prominently featured in the name of one of our largest american unions. and how last century it is to young people and how probably quite offputting to them that in 2011, um, that union is still projected as a brotherhood rather than a brotherhood and a sisterhood when it, in fact, represents 400,000 women workers, one of whom is sister sandy pope who will, hopefully, be its next international president. and as we know, a number of

unions with brotherhood in the name have grappled with this question of coming up with a more gender-neutral or gender-equal name. one of them even acknowledges the existence of the recent invention of electricity, right? the ibew. anyway, this was kind of a dope slap. it almost made me a convert to a more modern, 21st century thinking kind of guy. our friend andy stern who is now over at georgetown, he's a visiting professor, the sole labor representative as you may recall in the president's cat food commission and a valuable new member of the board of directors of ciga technologies, a drug company. i don't know if you know he gave an interview with ezra klein at "newsweek" this week in which he said, and i quote: they -- that's us, unions, all right? --

seem like a legacy institution and not an institution of the future. um, see how retirement kind of distances you from us? the us is now them, and andy is i don't know where. anyway, this kind of tracks the thinking of many people in corporate america in firms like general electric which brother chris townsend has the pleasure of dealing with, verizon which i dealt with for many years in this my cwa capacity who continually tried to consign us to the past rhetorically at least with their constant repetition and references to legacy contracts and legacy been fits -- benefits, the latter of which we are now told are no longer affordable anywhere in the country in either the private or the public sector. where some things seem to be headed and told, those

cheeseheads got into the act out there in cairo by the lake in wisconsin. [applause] brother bob yulen camp's alma mater, bob was just out there. a great young labor journalist just returned from madison, so hopefully, we're going to get some reports from the front a little bit later from bob and mike, anybody else been out there? david, chris, okay. we've got a whole bunch of out-of the state cheer cheerleaders for what i see on the internet is now called the cheddar revolution. [laughter] let me just say that the cheddar revolution has been a bit of a boon to book peddling on this particular tour. the folks at haymarket even though their a bit saddle with the a name from two centuries ago, 134-year-old labor reference, you know, came up with the subtitle, pam just read it, "birth of a new worker's movement or death throes of the

world." very savvy marketing because it enabled me if things weren't going well to, you know, answer questions at book events and interviews that would dwell rather gloomily on the subject of organizational death and dying. or if things look our way as they have in the last month, focus more happily on the prospects of a rebirth of the labor movement. so i want to just say a few words about, obviously, what's been so exciting, particularly for those who have had firsthand involvement in it about the upsurge in madison. talk a little bit about how some of that subject matter overlaps with the book which was finished up before this great development occurred and then open it up for questions because we've got a lot of folks here, i know, who want to contribute to the discussion. clearly, one of the most exciting things about the events in madison, and it kind of

relates to how do we with reach people like that young fella from poston state who was not sure a teamster is but who we need if we're going to be something other than a geriatric color, if we're going to tap into the youthful energy and idealism of young people. and, clearly, any account of this struggle has paid tribute to the leading role of high school students, college students and the teaching assistants who are the vanguard of the struggle, members of a union that brother bob founded nearly 40 years ago in madison as an outgrowth of '60s activism. the fact that they did not take a business-as-usual approach to lobbying, and we all know what that is. how many people have been on a union lobby day to some state capitol? all right. tends to be highly ritualistic,

it tends to involve being polite and having talking points prepared by the union staff and showing up on time for appointments with our betters in the political class and tipping our hat and hoping for the best. well, these folks had a lobby day, and they brought their sleeping bags, and they didn't leave at 5, and they occupied the state capitol just like it was an administration building in madison circa 1969. and they stayed for days and weeks. and that gal vannized, as we've seen, older workers in the teachers in afsme and seiu, on the faculty and most significantly, for the kind of unity we need to build the labor market. my friends who work at madison gas and electric, the building trade workers -- probably saw that picture in the globe today,

a pipe fitter, a plumber holding up a sign, still out there in madison yesterday supporting public workers. the public workers under attack by governor walker, one of the workers, as we know, going after public employees in the midwest. it would have been'd si for the cops and -- easy for the cops and firefighters to have opted out of this struggle. and, in fact, we've seen the very opposite. particularly the firefighters, but also the police expressing very strong support for the teachers, the state workers, the county and municipal workers who are all going to be affected by this attempt to strip public sector wisconsin workers of their bargaining rights. at the bottom tier of the public sector in wisconsin and other states, and this is something that i do write about quite a bit in the book, you know, we have the largest source of newly-organized union members who are also at risk in these

struggles in wisconsin, in ohio, in indiana and states like new jersey where our cwa friends, brother brook comes out of new jersey, is here tonight and cwa vice president, had a huge rally up in trenton confront with the that charming fellow, chris christie. i don't know if you saw his mug on the cover of the sunday times a week or two. the guy has a voracious appetite, clearly, for a number of things. contracted sections are among them. but in new jersey and all these other states cwa, afsme, the uft all following the lead of seiu have organized in total five, 600,000 home health workers, home daycare providers. in the last ten years, biggest source of new dwhriewn onmembership -- union membership and have gained a precarious foothold in the public sector for these workers who work in

nontraditional workplaces, predominantly female, nonwhite, often immigrant workers. many, as in the case of our joint bargaining unit child care providers in new jersey with afsme still trapped in the post-clinton world of work. there are women on temporary assistance for need families. so lost in this debate if you can call it that in some media outlets about the overpaid benefit-laden, privileged, protected, pampered public sector employee is the fact that there is a huge underclass only recently organized at the second tier of recently-unionized public sector employment who are losing their rights and their recently- acquired contract protections. kasich in ohio has destroyed two units, one afsme, one seiu, there's a big group of home health care aides at risk in wisconsin and so on in other

states. so within the public sector at all levels of the occupational structure workers are coming together, allying with students, with the community, with what remains a private sector union activism to fend off these attacks. one of the things that i think is most inspiring is seeing the bottom-up solidarity, seeing the rank and file initiative, seeing the cross-union networking, seeing the people voicing their opposition to these attacks on collective bargaining in through mass actions, you know, that we haven't seen since public employees first got organized in the '60s and '70s and industrial workers had their upsurge in the 1930s. the question, of course, is how do we institutionalize that, how

do the activist networks that are hopefully being created by these organizations in the midwest and elsewhere survive? when and if some of those unions do lose bargaining rights, and that's, i think, a challenging topic for conversation tonight. let me just say i think we would have been in a stronger position to fend off these attacks if we had not had the string of costly disasters and device and interunion conflicts described in civil wars. that story, it's a sad one, begins with the conflicts between seiu and afsme in a number of states in 2005. it moves on to the raging battles between the california nurlses who are now the anchor for national nurses united and seiu and health care facilities in a number of states including california and nevada and ohio. um, the development of a reform

movement challenging the leadership of seiu which i personally felt was a very long overdue and healthy development in 2008 led by our good friend sal roselli, the president of united health care workers west, the third largest seiu affiliate, 150,000-member local, very dynamic, the kind of organization that any union -- certainly cwa -- would have loved to have had as part of its union. when uhw with the help of a number of people in this room began to network, began to build a broader teamsters for democratic union style reform caucus within seiu, challenged the leadership at the san juan convention in puerto rico in 2008, they essentially set the stage for a leadership crackdown. the imposition, quite literally, of martial law two years ago in

california. andy stern and the other seiu leaders removed 100 elected leaders of uhw, basically occupied the local, removed hundreds of stewards in the second largest trusteeship in u.s. labor history. at the same time, even though they were both part of the dynamic new labor federation known as change to win, sei u-turned its guns on the hotel workers' side of that fellow founding union of change to win, unleashing another whole front of civil warfare. while all this was going on on the mainland here, of course, you had the seiu attack on the puerto rican teachers, 40,000 teachers in a militant, independent union went out on an island-wide strike under the draconian public sector laws in effect in puerto rico, the union was decertified when it took a

strike vote. the then-governor of puerto rico refused to bargain any further, the strike had a lot of support in puerto rico. it was over the critical issue of privatization of the schools. seiu which represents school superintendents and principals and other school employees was well positioned to provide solidarity to the fmpr. instead of doing that, dennis rivera and other leaders tried to cut a deal with this then-indicted governor to replace the fnpr. the whole sei u-conn vex in 2008 in puerto rico was designed to build that campaign. the fnpr was excluded from the ballot when there was a vote on this question in the fall of 2008, and the puerto rican teach terse resoundingly rejected seiu's raid, and thousands of them still pay dues voluntarily to the fnpr which continues to

struggle on, not having yet restored its bargaining rights. so this whole series of interunion conflicts which i estimate resulted in the expenditure of about $140 million when you add up the costs of all those involved, came at a very inopportune moment. it came at a moment that we were told in the fall of 2008 was going to be pregnant with political opportunity. the first two years of the obama administration when we were going to achieve our two highest priorities; real health care and strengthening of the national labor relations act. in civil wars i argue, i think with considerable evidence, that both of those critical campaigns were very much undermined by this internal dysfunction and the civil wars described in the group, some of which have been settled happifully in the case of the continuing successful collaboration now between cna

and nnu and seiu within health care corporation of america. last few months in kansas, in florida, in texas the two unions working together rather than fighting each other have organized close to 10,000 rns and other hospital workers. yet in california the struggle goes on between nuhw and seiu, continues to be very costly. and in puerto rico the 12 leaders of the fnpr including rafael hernandez, the militant socialist president of the union, were all just fired from their jobs. their teaching licenses revoked in direct retaliation for there having been strike leaders in the 2008 and continuing to wage a very militant struggle against school privatization in puerto rico ever since. hopefully, we'll be seeing a big fnpr delegation in a few weeks

at the forum in york, and there'll be a continuing opportunity for trade unionists here to provide the kind of solidarity that group needs and deserves. so let me close by saying that i think the lessons of the debacle of the implosion of the progressive, what was described to us what many of us thought was the progressive wing of labor 2008, 2009, 2010, is almost like a tutorial in what not to do if you want to win against hostile employers at best, a democratic administration that's only casually interested in advancing the cause of labor. and certainly, if we in the private sector had not been so distracted, particularly in health care and food service and hotels and the public school system in puerto rico where these battles unfolded during that period and we had built the kind of grassroots movement that we've seen develop in the

midwest in the public sector in response to these recent attacks, we would have been much closer in 2008 and 2009 to real health care reform. efka would not have been sidelined and marginalized and pushed aside so easily. perhaps we wouldn't have had the wipeout of supposed friends of labor by the republicans last fall. as part of a working class backlash against the failure of the obama administration to achievement and so much -- to achieve so much that we hoped it would when so many people in this room and throughout the labor movement campaigned to elect president obama in the fall of 2008. so why don't we stop there, throw it open. want to thank everybody for coming. and i, again, apologize for the formality of having to approach the mic, but i know many people in this room are used to doing that and have done so effectively over the years in the much more daunting circumstances. [laughter]

[applause] ernice, would you like to lead off by telling us a little bit more about what happened on friday? [applause] >> good evening, everyone. i'm one of the nurses at washington hospital center who was, went on strike on friday, and we've been locked out for about five days. we're going to be allowed to go back to work tomorrow, thanks to the attorneys at the hospital. that was their gift to us, to allow us to come back to work tomorrow. on friday we all went on strike. well, the nurses that decided to went on strike went on strike about 7 a.m. in the morning, and we proceeded to picket around the hospital. they called in the d.c. police, it was very hostile. the police at the hospital were very hostile and pushing us and making sure that we couldn't get close to the hospital to picket. but we had a lot of support from the community, we had a rally

about noontime, and we had support from a lot of different unions in the city, and it was very encouraging to us to see that people truly support us as nurses and support our goal and our drive and to really make sure that the biggest hospital in this city provides safe patient care. and although the hospital is trying to put out into the community that it's just about money, it's not about money. it is -- to us, it is a part of our contract, but at the end of the day we truly need more nurses at the hospital to insure that we're providing great care. and although we're going back to work tomorrow and we do not have a contract settled, we're still going to continue to fight and rally as much support as we can to insure that washington hospital center finishes this contract and actually implements the things that we need in order to, um, have safe patient care at the hospital. [applause] >> is arthur fox still here, or did he have to leave? arthur? >> [inaudible] calls their local representative, etc., and voice

their support of national nurses united, that'd be greatly appreciated. eleven of the councilmen in the district along with the mayor send the letter to ken salmon who has his office in columbia, maryland. .. >> i just wanted to be sure, to recognize brother arthur. a lot of these both parties i've been having have been taking on the form of the cast party

because civil wars has a large cast of characters, and one of them is rather arthur. i wanted to recognize him particularly the free live. we worked together at a teamster reform group in the late '70s called the professional drivers council that he was one of the founders of the. he is one of the foremost lawyers in the country. been representing reformers for decades. and did some great work on the half of the embattled minutes of unitedhealthcare workers west, around key issues involving the abuse of international union, and other violations of the acts. so arthur, i'm -- [applause] >> all right. we have somebody approaching the mic. david. brother david. >> my name is david. i'm here from seattle actually. flew in from the postal workers

conference, also postal workers, and today i got all dressed up with some of my fellow postal workers we visited a house of a repute afterwards we went to the senate. [laughter] so my question, sort of the current. i guess the big deal about the changes in the labor movement around the emergence of john sweeney, that election back many years ago, and andy stern becoming a big leader, with this whole realization that labor had organized. real simple basic idea. organize, organize, organize. seiu was admired from afar like being, they did organize lots of workers. but then somehow summer things that wrong. and i guess how it can what was wrong with the model, is that maybe and i know some unions tend to be really heavily staffed. the staff of these people, mighty bright college kids who really progressive and eager and

they are well-intentioned but they don't have a base. maybe you haven't ever done the job. maybe there don't trust the workers to organize themselves. they organize and move on. i remember a debate over that kind of model of organization. if you're a staff person you have no political power. you can say this is wrong, or if you do here fire. hugo kim job somewhere else. i'm just kind of wondering what peoples thoughts are as to what it seiu go wrong. what to the promise of the, was it a false promise to start with? is it a bad model? just throwing out there for your thoughts. >> excellent questions. david is on the policy committee of labor notes, longtime rank-and-file activist. unexpected visitor here inside the beltway. i've never seen you look so speedy. e.g. bring your sleeping bag for

this venture? but very good question. and ones that are addressed from my own perspective in the book. others, people involved in markets to organize campaigns, leverage campaigns, design and neutralize and organizing, a lot of different industries have had to grapple individually and organizationally with some of these question. one of the trade-offs, between growth and contract standards, you know, what are the quid pro quos that we should agree to in return for giving an employer like at&t wireless are aca or kaiser on tenet or hotel chains who give us a free after election agreement, or car check or some form of neutrality, what are they looking for in return, what kind of contract are the workers going to have, are they going to have any opportunity getting contract foothold to, over time, improve their contract conditions.

would they be locked into a prefab deal that strips them of any voice in workplace but does generate dues revenue for the union that partner with the employed and made organizing rights do. so a lot of contradictions in the strategy which i argue in the book bubbled up and propelled a lot of these union conflicts that i just mentioned. brother david. >> steve, first of all things for writing this book. it's much-needed discussion. i was in medicine for five days. life-changing experience if there ever was one. if for no other reason to see a contingent of 30, 10 year old with a big banner that said it is god in the potty. [laughter] something i will never forget. -- put scotty in the potty. the people of madison, the workers of wisconsin have been absolutely heroic over the last several weeks. how do you assess and rate the

actions of the union leadership to this point? and the second question i have is, i was talking with brother chris townsend about if you look at the republican governors association website versus the democratic governors association website, and the rga website is support scott walker, defend scott walker. this is all about scott walker, our hero. you go to the dga website and there's no mention of wisconsin and it's a shock in contrast. my question is, it's part of the problem that the labor movement in this hundreds millions of dollars in a political party that sees them as best as an annoyance, and at worst a something to be held in actual contempt. >> people begin to think discretion are orchestrated. [laughter] this is a service that you've are assaulted? solidarity among all those. i did go to these events, and

some softball question. let's hear from brother mike. i'm sorry, alec. [inaudible] >> what's that? just a massive romantic if you want respond to this question of what's the leadership of to come you were just out there. perhaps you could report on it as you've been reporting for other outlets. >> so first off i want to six d. this is a tough book. a la senate nude get bashes, left wing union busters. >> i have heard that accusation. >> the incredible thing is there's this article that our good friend over the new times with the other day where he said we would use this incredible tide of omission from wisconsin to organize a dozen different top layer priority for all the sudden the wisconsin tide will help us organize wal-mart. he wrote this incredible

article. the one thing steve you do well in your book is you take labor at all the different levels, the international president to rank-and-file the local level. and you really see the labor movement is not jerry mcafee making a statement, or some new ad coming out which typically people like stephen green has to. but it's getting 12 people to come to a meeting. all the sports coming together. why do you think so many reporters like steven greenhouse are so lazy and so awful in reporting about what the real dynamics of organizing or. this is especially coming out of madison because the story has been this is something organized by the afl and by the aft and afscme. while they have played a big role, membership got way out ahead of the membership. we are seeing some of the anti-concession movement. so questions that might tie into that. >> real quick. i'm sorry, let these guys jump the queue.

i'm not greenhouse 10. i liked his book. a lot of his reporting stinks in my view because he is too talking to talking heads and academia, but not been involved in organizing for 35 years that they ever were. never handled a grievance, never negotiated a contract, never done trade union work but they are experts. part of what is operating with is the constraints of mainstream journalism. part of it is his own tendency to frame things very badly. his own kind of elitist, biased because of problems with his editors. yes to please them. he was terrible on talk to the nation the other day. this was not a written article but i don't know if you heard them. he, in a discussion, of pensions, this terrible problem of the over pension public worker announced that many public workers, he was referring to wisconsin, retire with more than $100,000 a year.

many, many. iran from my radio to the dictionary and look at the word many. e-mailed him and asking for statistical corroboration of this claim. silence. the greenhouse interconnected in an article. respected academic, labor studies guy. who have done a little research which barely greenhouse didn't do which showed the median pension for wisconsin public works is about 24,000 a year. and only 2% retired with more than $100,000 a year, primary people in management jobs. not even in union bargaining unions, a few overtime hogs, maybe a little pension spiking. again i forwarded this relevant information to brother greenhouse. we are dissing a fellow newspaper person here. again no response.

i complained about him to the public editor this coverage of the qaeda campaign last fall was terrible. is coverage of past telecom conflicts has been really shoddy. bill, one of his predecessors, put a more positive spin on what the times could do on the labor beat would allow, cover strikes, talk to the workers, he understood that the labor movement was a little bigger than andy, john and bruce. or john sweeney or whoever else, you know, greenhouse picks up the phone and talk to. he doesn't talk to enough workers. occasionally come through. he did an article about the jimmy john's campaign. and issuing a quarter of with industrial workers of the workers were done with fast food workers. before him back to some of the other questions david raised, alex. [inaudible] and you won't be on tv if you don't approach the mic.

>> you never told us what he teamster was. [laughter] >> it's a guy that cracks the whip. on a team of forces. -- of horses. >> today is international women's day, and that provoked my question. the vibrancy in organizing seems to me, and part of the wars your talk about have taken place in health care industry, which many people regard health care as a drain on the economy. i regard, say health care is the economy. it's the growing and sustained industry. you may disagree with it. funding what everything about it but nevertheless it is. and my guess is that a lot of, there are two reasons why this is happening. was because it is a growth industry unlike some of the other ones, the other is the prominence and the activism of

women within that. to what extent, i look at you book. i did not chance read all of it while i was eating my sandwich but i did look at the index. it doesn't make you specifically women by word, nor raise. to what extent do those things play a role in the civil war that you describe? >> certainly the workforce was involved in home-based childcare, home health care aide organizing. is predominately female, health care providers. nursing home workers, i can often female. hospital workers in california, some of the leaders of the breakaway union was created in response to this terrible shift i was in post two years ago are

women. i think, you know, there are profiles in courage, female "profiles in courage" throughout the book. helped build up the california nurses association, build relationships with enough state nurses organizations and the nurses organizations here in d.c. create in him you. roseanne is very outspoken in recent weeks about about what strategy labor movement should adopt, the city the relentless demands for concessions and the public sector. we have a bit of a difference of opinion between those who are just going to, you know, breathe a sigh of relief if we retain bargaining rights but it went to give away the score to do that, right? as long as with of these

checkoff's. and there's some serious problems with a strategy of angeles concession bargaining. it did not end up in a good place in the private sector when that was seen as a survival strategy back in the 1980s in industry, and meatpacking and so on down the line. so it's good to see again a woman, and the union leader challenge the conventional wisdom that was expressed by brother in an op-ed piece in "the wall street journal" the other day that what we need to offer is shared sacrifice. i notice he's not offering to share the sacrifice that's been impose on other members of afscme dickies not offering to have a two-year pay freeze as president of the afl or start paying more for his pension or contribute more for his health care. so i think he should be more cautious about proposing that as a labor strategy.

i think the framing, the messaging is kind of deeply flawed. bob come your the health care expert, one of many in the. do you want to speak to the question of health care, why it became this battleground? you are shaking your head. a rare outburst of shyness on the part of brother bob. >> i have a question specifically about your book. i haven't read it yet but i would like to. and it has to do with if you focus only on unions that were part of the afl-cio. i raise this because the american federation of government employees is involved in huge campaign right now to represent transportation safety officers in the tsa. and the national treasury employees union has come in very late to buy for that, those workers. and i want to know if you research spoke to that at all,

specifically because afge is one of the unions that really has been growing in the face of lots of unions dying. >> maybe afge brothers who would like to speak to the. this is a very important representation election if we add to the other level of public sectors, in the union of their choice, personal preference would be afge seems have more support in logan in boston, you know, tsa folks that i've talked to, some limited traveling i've done. the obama administration did make some changes in the national mediation board, election rules that have supposedly made easier for us to win elections to the airline industry, and the tsa long overdue representation election was going to be coming this year. it is unfortunate when suddenly

there's an opportunity for major growth. this is many years coming. when was this great, 2002, 2003. that suddenly there is entry union competition. on the other hand, i must say that some of the situations having a choice, you know, it's not always a waste of resources. if you really believe an employee free choice, it should be a right and it is a right under law i could be exercised not just once, you know, when you make your first choice of union and you're stuck with it, whether it proves to be responsive and effective or not. it's something that people should have the opportunity to exercise more frequently over time, as a tool for making sure that the union they are paying dues to properly represents them. i know that's a radical idea, and a lot of people think that

jurisdiction should be strictly followed, and once you're in a union that afl rules are tilted his we come you should not be allowed to go to an independent union. there's not many independent union options. the treasury employees, the united electrical workers, independent union option, the new national union of health care workers, the nea is two independent. one group i work with in canada back in the late 1980s came into this he did a as part of a merger of the international typographical union, a province wide union in québec, civil wars was printed in one of their shops which is now part of the canadian communications energy and paperworkers. and in québec during that period i was really struck i how much more on the ball the unions were because you're two or three

competing federations, contracts were shorter duration, you didn't have to wait three or five years to leave our petition for a vote to leave if you are unhappy with your incumbent union representative. and workers got their phone calls returned. the business agents came out and worked with the stewards in bargaining, because they knew that if they were not responded to the rank-and-file members, the dues payers, a member of the uso will go to another federation. there was a lot of hopping around. that was an important tool of rank-and-file power. which i think we lack in many union contacts today. so different perspective on what's often denigrated and demonize as raging when, in fact, one person's raid is another workers liberation movement. imac. >> i just want to put in a plug for something somebody brought up international women's day.

i wanted to put in a plug for a small foundation that i'm involved in called the burger march foundation. one of the things we do is we provide funds to hire women organizers for a period of time. so if you're interested in doing to check out our website at www.berger march.org. i just want to make that plug for the foundation but also want to comment that a lot of the labor wars, serving out what happened in california are what happen in puerto rico, but a lot of the labor wars are like right here inside the beltway. and i like many people in this room i am sure worked in 2008 on the grounds come in the election campaign where everybody came together, you know, to elect barack obama. it didn't seem like there were those divisions. and so maybe you could just comment about how much of this is kind of flowing from an inside the beltway jockeying for

what really is viewed as sometimes as a shrinking pie. in terms of members, you know, who gets what members. and i think it really is at the heart of this is that these unions are struggling and they are looking for, they're struggling with money, struggling with membership and they are looking for easy gets and they are looking for how can we maintain the level of service and power that we have. as i think a lot of this social might inside the beltway out. maybe you can just comment on that aspect of the civil wars in labor. >> one of the things i do talk about in the book, and the chapter about the fatal entanglement of have to and obamnicare as a culprit and awareness was used that term. billy time i refer to it, the entitlement of efco and ppaca didn't have the same ring. i do talk a lot about the work that linda and brother larry

cohen and former congressman bonior did with the national labor coordinated committee which was an attempt to create a united front in the first year of the obama administration, nine or 10 of the largest unions both changed afl and independent nea, that effort floundered over time, feeling overshadowed by this projected umbrella structure that would have involved the pooling of resources certainly for political action purposes. the idea seems to be in revived a new reform. inside the beltway responds to the public sector crisis, and seems to be a version of the national labor coordination committee strategy of at least pooling some money for coordinated political work around the threat to bargaining

rights. you know, my own experience, i'm a hard-core leftist and i think real unity between workers in different unions has got to be built from the bottom up. i was involved, had the privilege to be involved over 25 years in creating a very strong tie between ibew telephone workers in new england, cwa members within what was originally new york and new england telephone. it is now this monster verizon. and in the course of many years of contract campaigns in strikes and joint bargaining, we were able to accomplish things that would never have been, could never have been dictated from the top. morty getting together with head of the ibew or vice versa. these things have to be organic. they have to be based on relationships at the local level but ignore the difference

between brand x. and brand wide which basically is about how wide the difference is among a number of our unions in terms how they actually function. records themselves, local elected stewards can develop cross union relationships, joint campaigns that really feels more like a workers' movement, like what we've seen in madison, right? people in madison are all marching in line with the respected union college. it looks like they're all washed together, right, and in a way a labor movement should and the people are not thinking first on a member of cwa or on turn one or seiu. it's about us. it's about we. it's about all of us. and what we can accomplish by fighting together. so i think the response of, around the country to the terrible afl changed the rift at the top 2005, a lot of people were worried about what would happen. people at the local level seem

to have more sense. valued long-term relationships and solitary charter mechanism was developed, and it was action in most places relatively little the expected or feared disruption of labor unity. regardless of what the people did here. good or worse, working together or not. lets you send some other folks. any other topics that we seem to be missing? brother here. >> i'm from the newspaper guild. one of the two labor journalists here in the audience today. it struck me and it struck me for many years that there's one thing that the labor movement relax. we are spread all over the lot. we get involved in every single cause known to man and we don't have a unifying theme. and as much as i hate to quote him, richard trumka on pbs the other night, actually

articulated one. he said you shouldn't have to choose between your rights and your job. now, turn that around and make a positive. we are working for our rights. you treat that, first of all, do you agree? in second you treat it in the book? >> yeah, in the book several places try to provide some examples of how we need to frame out issues and project our fights to avoid being so easily targeted as this shrinking island of relative privilege. when we had a big telephone strike in 1989, 60,000 members of the two unions out for four months. even back then the fact that there was no premium contributions by the workers of either union which is what management wanted as a concession in 1989, and have yet to get to this day, we knew how that would look to workers were

paying through the nose, out of their paychecks every week or job base medical coverage plus much larger deductibles and copayments. so we frame that fight as a fight for health care for all, not health cuts. we built alliances, decision for national health program with jesse jackson did anybody else was out there fighting for national health insurance and we use the strike through education around the issue of national health insurance because we knew there was going to be little sympathy for workers having in their personal home health care garage what was demonized despicably last year by bachus, by harry reid and then president obama as a cadillac. you remember the debate about the cadillac benefits that needed to be taxed, to restrain the contribution they made to medical cost inflation and to raise millions of dollars,

hundreds of lives of dollars, billions of dollars to subsidize private health insurance coverage for the under and uninsured which is the core of this misbegotten ppaca. we knew then that what we had through years of struggle, was not a cadillac, it was a chevy. everybody should have it. but if we don't, universalize our demands, pensions for paid time off, should be by statute, not by private negotiation, if we don't find a way to beef up social security, increasingly there is going to be this pity of the private sector against the public sector and different sectors of the public and the private sector against each other. is not a new phenomenon. i was on a talk radio show during a strike in 1981 in

boston. and got a call from an auto worker in framingham, gm plant there which is no more, and he was outraged. he said those people, said at a screen all day, wanted a four-day work week and one some humongous wage increase and he wanted early retirement. this guy was ranting and raving, don't they know what it's like, the line speed and how difficult it is to be an out of worker, we don't have the, blah, blah, blah. thank you very much, brother, said the host. there you go. uaw comes out against the strike. this was one, auto builder because we need is somebody else's struggle in that way, you're going to be next. and he was next. his brothers and sisters in that plant were next throughout the auto industry. and we constantly have to minimize this tendency of people i run or two down on the economic ladder rather than shooting those who are trying to

hold on to the spot a little bit higher up, kind of rooting for them to slide down as well which benefits no one as we know. >> steve, i want to broaden it a little bit, and god knows we have several awards are labor movement here but can we talk about the international labor movement and defend his work columbus. was let's talk a international women's day because i don't want to neglect the fact that 10,000 women call center workers at t-mobile with help from cwa and her counterpart unions in germany tried using international women's day as a basis for solidarity, aimed at winning some kind of organizing rights agreements at what is at 100% nonunion wireless company t-mobile whose parent company is deutsche telekom, heavily used in the trendy and germany. this is an example of cross-border, not exactly bargain to organize but

certainly a lavish campaign where we are looking stronger partner abroad, german telephone workers union to put pressure on the parent company to stop the kind of interference in violation of workers rights that's made it very hard for t-mobile workers to organize in call centers and retail stores. the other program i think she's referring to is one that is called union to union which some reasons have pursued for 10 or 12 years now in my old cwa district, one in the northeast. we develop in 2002 a partnership with a colombian public sector union in the 19, at the voluntary contributions of 60 and 70 locals every year and since then have raced 10 to 12,000 us which we transmit to the solitary center. with that whole series of exchanges between colombian trade unionists in this group and activists are. going to colombia. larry cohen, the president of

the union, confronted the previous president of columbia a year or two ago around a continuing violation of workers rights in colombia. and again i think the lesson of that model program is its bottom up, it's worker to worker. its rank-and-file. we are not rely on national endowment money to finance this partnership. i will say that the solitary center has been very helpful throughout the 10 years that we and kerry was one of the staffers who helped get it off the ground. >> ten cents per member per year. that's really bottom up. >> not a lot of money but it's not a mandatory assessment. a local have to care enough about this program, has to of had some members who have met, courageous colombian trade union. joint work of fighting free trade agreement, fighting his dread plan colombia like a wars

in iraq and afghanistan drained billions of dollars, tax dollars out of this country that could go much more profitably to filling some of these real and imagined budget deficits we are so much about in wisconsin, ohio, indiana and so on down the line. >> thanks. >> we have brother mark here who is alone with bob and others, brooke and jean, a leader of u.s. labor against the war. wraps we could hand out that great newbie u.s. labor against the war, flare. want to highly recommend the chart on the back of this flyer or you know, we need to reframe the debate about what we need to do to protect public jobs and the services. right now the limits of the labor proposal seems to be well you know, tax the rich, tax reform very much needed. we don't have a strong enough push for single payer which would achieve enormous savings

and take the pressure off the bargaining that we have to do in both the private and public sector about job these benefits now, but as that flyer points out if you really want to deal with this problem, of the fiscal crisis, the public sector, you have to recapture the kind of money that has been squandered on these two wars in direct spending close to a trillion dollars over the last eight to nine years. and i think it's sad that those of us in our generational cohorts, include myself in this group, who came out of the anti-movement of the '60s and who ended up as the president of cwa and unite and here, and prominent positions in other unions, and certainly brother trumka have not taken that kind of continued strong stand and the need to cut the pentagon budget and we order our national priorities and shift this attacks than in the kind of directions that would save jobs,

through public service and make life better for people in this country. they need to do that. i think of popular sentiment. it's a mystery what they're afraid of. did a piece that we school. a lot of people liked about our labor movement needing another when the. the guy who represented a union with lots of folks doing military work bravely advocated economic conversion. campaign for nuclear disarmament, and continually argued with his own members about the need to end our dependence on the production of armaments. brother bob. [inaudible] >> you didn't get up. >> at the risk i see larry hanley back you. larry is the new president of acu. at the risk of embarrassing him -- [applause] he started a program inside the acu to discuss the military

budget, and you can't solve mass transit problems if we have all this military stuff and it takes a lot of guts, but you can do it. members respond to it. i want to raise something different to what you asked me about. i was in madison, and one of the ways we, it's a teachable moment, a learnable moment, right? and i asked myself this question, and others asked me to question, and friends of mine who were not in the labor movement and don't know shit about the labor movement asking this question. so how do you get to this situation? how did it get so weak? it happen on our watch, hello. how did we get here. and i think we have a lot, i think we have some good answers to that, mostly globalization as

practice, productivity and technology productivity and the destruction of labor movements. but there's another one that i was on some talk shows, radio talk shows and meetings and stuff in wisconsin, and it seems to me that we also have to not just talk about the facts of what's happening, but treat them as symptoms, and what's the cause of the symptoms. you know, if you're a nurse, unicom you try to figure out what action is going on, right? and one of the things i think we have not done well in the labor movement is trying to figure that out. and look, if we don't talk about what's really, what's really behind all this, i don't think we can correct this and move in a different direction. so look, everyone in this room

knows all these terms and all these phrases, right? neoliberal, neoconservative, washington consensus, corporate agenda, whatever you want to call it, it's a real. and if we don't talk about that as a set of ideas that has really resulted in this mess we are in, not just for the trade union movement but for all of us, all americans, i think we miss it. i just, in simple terms, i was on these talk shows and i would say okay, so what's really going on here? let me tell a story, and then let's think about what's going on in wisconsin. the free market solves all problems. therefore anything that gets in the way of the free market is bad. right?

therefore, we have to, government gets in the way so we have to cut taxes. we have to eliminate government. we have to, therefore, deregulate. if there's anything left, anything could went to privatize it. and there's something else that gets in a way called unions, so we have to eliminate them. that's it, isn't it? it's a set, it's the whole thing that fits together. so then you say, so hello, what's happening in wisconsin? you know, it's not just the elimination of unions. they are privatizing stuff. they're privatizing the utilities. and around the country, et cetera. so it's like, i feel like, steve, first of all i want to thank you for the book which i haven't read, and actually i won't ask you to give it to be free. i'll buy it. and for you, thank you for --

>> better move quick. we may not have enough. >> oh, second edition. but for this conversation, because i think, i think we have to get beyond just described are talking about what's going on but really try to understand and explain what's really behind all this. and institutional labor movement really does not talking these terms. and i don't see how we solve any of this unless we pulled altogether and all together and step back and say, there's really something big here and it all fits together and explains it all, and we better explain to people walking around the capital in madison that this is what it's about and everywhere else, or we can't rebuild, you know, the voice of working people. >> i think that's a really, i think you're quite on target.

you know, we are all enthusiastic about what we hope, you know, could have developed in summer 2009 when the right wing populism of the tea party seem to be in the ascendancy and everyone was saying when his our site going to rally and mobilize, and there was a bit of that belatedly with the one nation march, but not to this kind of degree. i would agree that has to be bolstered, longer-term, by the kind of education that makes the most of this a teachable moment. and i'm going to be headed down soon on this book tour to hang out with the united association of labor educators, and the leadership of the group, and i know labor educators also are frustrated by the fact that with this shrinking constituency, continuing pressure to focus on the nuts and bolts of day-to-day

union work and contract administration, that kind of big picture popular economics training that bill fletcher tried to introduce when he was the education director briefly in the afl-cio under sweeney, seems to be less and less time for it. but if we don't get back to more traditional forms, more fundamental forms of labor education, medical education about the system, people may continue to be confused, as you say, about the root cause of what the onslaught that they are facing every day, and in barton fights like the one in madison. >> is not like labor education so much a part of what is governing this country now your and by the way, popular education and we start out from this, we see has anyone ever been in a bar. or at a book party next to one.

>> right. >> there's this thing called our school, right? some of them have three legs, right? bargaining, politics, and organizing, right? but some of them have four legs, and is called the floor of ideas. we have not engaged in debt. we are not explained what's really going on, and i just, i just, this discussion is wonderful. step back and explain, we have to do this work also. >> i would agree. let me just second bob's applause for brother larry handley, people don't know the great work that he did, a leader of the bus drivers in staten island. a wonderful case study in building connections between labor and dignity, between public sector workers and the people they serve on some conservative turf in the big

apple, and larry, along with election a brother john sanderson, local 100 in new york, hopefully will change the face of those two transportation unions. john has been, along with his take back our union team, rebuilding that key local from the rubble of the 2005 strike, which is members paid a terrible price. their contract is up in january, and they are running already a very active contract campaign with a lot of attention on how to enlist the straphangers, the users of the bus and subway system as allies. i want to get back quickly though to a question that david raised that i think we need to address, you know, political action. it's an endless puzzle and problematic one for union strike fund forms of independent action

that will put more pressure on the democrats from the left. you know, certainly we have to realize the limits of the kind of model by partisanship that we've seen. sending his pursue what they have decided under industry with the worst example of this that's the way you will teach democrats a lesson is by shoving more money in the direction of the republicans. it was a disgrace in 2004, 2005, seiu gave the republicans governors association over half a million dollars, helped elect the current governor of indiana whose attacks on workers rights and public sector, not the private sector become a marvel for what more recently elected you be governors try to get away with in ohio and in wisconsin. as recent as the most recent election cycle, they gave another $200,000 to the republican governors association. haley barbour, proprietor. i don't know what any of you

would expect to get by placing those kinds of bets. this weeks issue of the nation has an article about the very active and strong and healthy successful single-payer campaign in vermont, describe the role of unions in supporting it. the critical role played by the vermont workers association and the critical role played by independent political action in forcing the democrats to do what they haven't done before in that state or anywhere else. survey not under howard dean. the new governor is doing what he is doing. on the single-payer front going beyond obamnicare at the state level to the extent that's possible as fast as is possible and as personal, thanks to ppaca. because the strong democratic majority in both the houses of the legislature and the governor himself have to do with a viable political formation from the

left, progressive party in vermont has been was at the house, now elected a state senator an independent socialist u.s. senator bernie sanders who's been a very important part of this political equation. progressives are also strong in the state's largest city. and flesh of a formation like that that is in comparing for single pair in vermont since the 1970s this is not some new ideas the democrats just came up with in this session of the legislature. their tendency is going to be adrift of the center and for the right, you end up with a up with a kind of mishmash that came out of congress last year where we could have got more and better and something that would have put us on the road hopefully a more inclusive and cost effective and less wasteful social insurance system. so keep an eye on vermont. the real lesson of is that if we build viable political alternatives, we can make these people more accountable. any final thoughts? yes, over here.

>> one more question. if i can ask you to take one more question, and before we break up tonight, folks, i would like to announce that busboys and poets to start a new labor series. we would like cash back. [applause] we would like to draw more people into this american labor movement. this has felt like kind of an internal discussion in many ways. we want to draw some new folks in, and so we're doing that discussion the first week of each month. look on our website, busboys and poets.com, you can see information that are about this series. so we'll take final questions. >> hopefully on a before this could be one of the venues where the great connections can be made between the sacrifice of reverend martin luther king and the garbage worker strike and the struggles today. hopefully they'll be an adventure as well.

yes. >> my name is thomas become one of the founders of the u.s. uncut movement. you may read about is somewhere around. we are inspired -- [applause] >> direct action. >> inspired by the protest in wisconsin come in d.c. area in the past '90s, three bank of america branches have been shut down by direct action. i'll keep this really brief. my question is, i haven't read your book, i just picked it up, you speak about labor civil wars and are just like to ask what the role of our enemies are in creating those civil wars and exacerbating that? >> very good question. no, i think clearly the greatest obstacles unions face, the growth, the revival, the external forces, the power of the corporate class, the campaign that has been waged in the private sector that is now moving to the public sector, the aiding and abetting this by some

of our reported friends in the democratic party, you know, it's a very complicated dance. and i think we've seen it play out in very distressing ways at kaiser, in california. this was the company that has long been lauded as a model for labor-management partnering, respect for workers rights, american rights at work gave it the -- eleanor roosevelt human rights awarded several years ago, but you look at kaiser's track record of until -- unfair practices, it's abominable. at kaiser partnership with what i think has often been like a company union in the last two are you there. they have included massive violation of the rights of workers, 2300 of them devoted to changing his from seiu to in my uw last year.

the slow-moving and dysfunctional as always, issued a major unfair labor practices complaint. file for 10 j. injunction that kaiser just settled, paying workers $2 million at kaiser in southern california, money that was owed to them under the terms their own contract which kaiser refused to keep in effect by the new bargaining representative, the expression of employee free choice, was renegotiated contract terms. so when an employer like this that has been awarded and touted and praised for good behavior, and this behaves, we need to find ways to hold it accountable. there are 24 or 25 and the unions in the kaiser partnership, most much smaller. there are other unions outside of it, including the california nurses nnu. but even these partnership unions can go back, and we've

seen some examples of that at xerox recently which now operates call centers and is very aggressive in its unionbusting directed at cwa and other unions. so i don't think we can rest on our laurels. if you think these relationships that have been built based on partnership principles are worth pursuing, everybody ought to be calling employers like kaiser out around this kind of well documented pattern of unfair labor practices activity. that started it ties you into thousand five at a bus to call centers work or campaign conducted by cwa, and on partnership union, because the employer only wanted to do with partnership unions. the partnership unions didn't stick up for the call center workers, employed choose. we saw a failure to get a first contract, and effective beginning of the kind of

behavior, misbehavior by kaiser that has become really pronounced over the last 12 months, 18 months in california. so, i want to thank everybody for coming. if you can't get a book tonight, go to www.civil wars in labor.org, a haymarket related website and thank you again, pamela, for hosting. >> we will bring a table up front. [applause] >> thank you, steve. we'll bring a table up front so steve can sign some books here. so if you give us a minute to get that set up, i'm sure he wouldn't mind signing for us here tonight. >> this event was hosted by busboys and poets in washington, d.c.. for more information visit busboysandpoets.com. >> this is a tale of nailbiting dramas. drummond one begins on september 231955 at denver,

colorado, on the golf course. dwight eisenhower had not enjoyed a vacation so much in years. believe it or not the president of the united states had himself cooked a huge breakfast that morning for his fishing buddies. but golf was the presence priority for the day. after everything in his office, eisenhower heads for the cherry hills country club, his secretary remembered that she had never seen him look or act better. eisenhower's golf game was interrupted four times that day for phone calls from the secretary of state, john foster dulles. this is before cell phones so irritated, probably profaned eisenhower had to return to the clubhouse for each call, only one of which actually got through. that called was important. dulles confirmed to eisenhower that the soviet union had made an arms deal with egypt. ike knew this bold move would

open a new chapter in the cold war and ike and dulles agreed the president should send a message to the soviet premier. but the president wanted to think about it overnight. he told dulles you would call him the following morning. that phone call was never made. ike went back to golf, his game deteriorated to as the day wore on the president experienced growing discomfort. he declined is usually evening drink, had little appetite for dinner and retired early. and in the middle of the night, ike appeared by his wife's bedside, i've got a paint across the lower part of my chest, he said. since he complained earlier about indigestion, mamie gave her husband milk of magnesia. at 2:54 a.m. mamie called the residents physician who rushed to the white house. snyder initially put out the word that this was a digestive

upset, when he knew it was a massive heart attack. he waited until midafternoon that day before transporting the president to the army hospital, and even then had ike walked to his car instead of calling an ambulance. if you want more detail on the mismanagement of this situation you've got to read the book. don't have time tonight. eisenhower was in the hospital six weeks. in those days the gold standard for treatment of heart attack patients was total bed rest. ike's doctors would not permit him to read a newspaper, watch a movie, listen to a football game on the radio, let alone do much serious presidential business. he did not take a step across his room for a month, in this incredibly active man felt like a caged animal. so at the very moment, the soviet union at