The time has come to evaluate the results of that practice. Our solidarity with the striking, now locked-out workers, remains unshaken, along with our profound admiration for the struggles they have waged and the suffering they have endured. Any criticisms of some of the decisions that have been made is intended solely to help win this struggle and to prepare for the coming ones. The structural weakness of the AFL-CIO was never so obvious as during this strike. In theory, leadership is provided by the Metro Council of six striking locals.
Responsibility is divided and subdivided until nobody is accountable.
Consensus is achieved by restraining the policies of the whole group to its weakest and most timid element. In practice it allows the top guns to avoid taking public responsibility for losing strikes, but offers no barrier to their privately clamping down on locals whose militancy threatens to rock the boat. The Metro Council had a history of concessions to the DNA and were prepared to make more in 1995. They were shocked, not least by the fact that their prestige had diminished to the point where scabs could be used in Detroit. Even after the newspapers broke off negotiations to publish with scabs, the union officials acted as if a show of force would bring the DNA back to its senses and the bargaining table.