Features » October 24, 2007

Has the Change Led to Wins?

Not yet, but organizers from the seven unions that split from the AFL-CIO have big plans.

By David Moberg

Raul Flores holds a picket sign near a construction entrance at O'Hare International Airport last year.

When a bloc of unions broke away from the AFL-CIO two years ago to form the Change to Win labor federation, their leaders appeared to have lit a fuse on a bomb—but nobody knew what kind. Would the already weak labor movement blow up amidst debilitating fragmentation and squabbles? Or would the explosion unleash a new organizing fervor?

Two years later, the fuse is still burning. But two things are clear. Despite lingering rivalry, the two federations and their affiliated unions are working together surprisingly well, most obviously on politics. Divisions—old and new, between and within the two federations—flourish, as they did before the split. But at the local level, they want to work together.

And despite Change to Win’s argument that it split from the AFL-CIO to organize on a vast new scale, the labor movement has continued to organize at the same rate, with the same unions showing the greatest success.

From 2004 to 2006, net membership increased slightly for the 10 million-member AFL-CIO unions and declined slightly for the six million-member Change to Win unions, which includes the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and UNITE HERE! (hotel, apparel and service sector workers), the only two affiliates to grow, as well as the Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Laborers, Carpenters, and United Farm Workers.

Some of the Change to Win unions like the Teamsters, Laborers, and UFCW, which had not been organizing effectively, say they have made ambitious alterations in how they operate. And last year within the AFL-CIO, six unions announced they were increasing their annual organizing budgets by a total of $150 million.

Those changes could pay off if the political and legal environments shift. A new pro-labor Democratic president and Congress would likely enact the Employee Free Choice Act, making it easier to form unions when a majority of workers sign union membership cards.

Ironically, when they split, Change to Win leaders criticized the AFL-CIO for spending too much on politics. Both sides now agree that unions must use political clout to help organizing efforts.

“I can’t argue with the numbers,” says Joe Hansen, president of UFCW. “If I didn’t think we’d significantly changed UFCW, I’d say that we’d made a mistake. But we have [changed], and a lot of that is due to Change to Win. We haven’t had immediate success and I can’t say how fast that will come.” But Hansen hopes UFCW, which currently has around 1.3 million members, will organize 2 million more workers in the next decade, starting with organizing drives at regional supermarket chains and in packinghouses.

Change to Win still sees explosive growth on labor’s horizon. At the federation’s second convention, held in Chicago in late September, SEIU President Andy Stern reminded delegates that the labor movement grew by 1 million members a year for five years after Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, tripling the share of the workforce in unions. “We’re at the beginning of another historic moment,” he told delegates. “We have changed our unions. If we pass the Employee Free Choice Act, these unions will grow by 1.5 million members a year, not just for five years but for 10 to 15 straight years.”

Yet, so far, recruitment results have not been dramatic.

“Did the split cause changes?” asks Cornell University labor studies Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner. “I think Change to Win has been good for the Teamsters, UFCW and Laborers’ International Union of North America. Has it been good for the labor movement as a whole? No. It hasn’t hurt the labor movement, but it hasn’t been good. Without a common vision, you’re not going to change. When the CIO formed, it stood for something. It was a movement. This isn’t a movement.”

But Change to Win does have a strategy, and it partly reflects their argument during the split that unions should concentrate on large-scale organizing of their core industries. “We said there are these 50 million workers…[in] jobs that are overwhelmingly low paid, and only six million of the 50 million are organized,” says Tom Woodruff, the SEIU vice-president who directs the Strategic Organizing Center, which helps unions develop better organizing strategies and coordinates a few of its own organizing efforts. “The obvious purpose to organize is to create a chance for the new American Dream, a middle-class life. Manufacturing and auto used to be the worst jobs, and workers organized and made them the best.”

To work, this strategy requires intense research and more organizers, but also greater use of political clout, pension fund power, global labor cooperation and public campaigns against corporate employers.

SEIU and UNITE HERE! have long used such strategic, comprehensive approaches, as have AFL-CIO unions like the Communications Workers.

Today, all seven Change to Win unions have annual growth plans in their key industries and, as a group, they review each union’s progress more rigorously than they did when they were a part of the AFL-CIO. “All of the unions have better staff, research departments, much more sophistication in developed campaigns designed to win,” says Woodruff.

The seven union presidents and three other Change to Win officials are part of a leadership group, chaired by Anna Burger of SEIU, that meets monthly. Change to Win itself is small—only about 35 employees—and three-fourths of its $16 million budget goes to the Strategic Organizing Center. In addition, some of the affiliated unions loan staff for long-term work with Change to Win. Rather than operating as a traditional, centralized organization, Change to Win sees itself as a coalition that puts decision-making in the hands of affiliate leaders and leaves much work, like policy research and lobbying, to individual unions.

When Change to Win split off, local unions and leaders of citywide and state labor federations made it clear they wanted to continue to cooperate. The two federations agreed that Change to Win’s local unions could obtain “solidarity charters” with the AFL-CIO local structures.And unions from both federations agreed to work together on elections, referenda and other political work. The AFL-CIO, however, rejected a Change to Win proposal to create an overarching body to coordinate this cooperation.

Change to Win unions may have agreed on overall strategy, but differences between member unions still exist.

On immigration reform, SEIU, UNITE HERE! and the United Farm Workers supported the Kennedy-McCain bill, while other Change to Win unions—like the AFL-CIO—opposed it because of its guest worker provisions. UNITE HERE! President Bruce Raynor says his group supported the bill because it included key reforms, not because the group supported the guest worker plan. Many of the unions are now energetically working together on immigrant workers’ rights.

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• Reader Comments

  Solidarity, a French word eagerly accepted into the English language during the explosively revolutionary years before and after 1848, remains the defining concept of working-class hope. Those of us instilled with the visions of 19th-century European and American labor leaders as we waded into the thickets of 1960s New Left angst, can attest to the debilitating effects of schism and splintering. Organized labor’s fractious displays and divorces serve mostly to give notice to management and employers that the labor movement has wilted, lost the vigor with which it once withstood private-sector thugs and national guard assaults on its encampments of purpose along the boulevards of exploitation. An hourly, non-unionized worker and social-security retirement recipient, I find myself wondering how long it will be before American workers will stand together to resist their misuse, abuse and dehuminization in a nation as wasteful of capital as it is impoverished by ill will. A former business manager, foreman and supervisor, I would remind hourly workers that it is the purpose of management to convince its charges that it shares their concerns while it dishonors their dignit y, delighting in its cleverness and empowerment.  Progress begins with solidarity. Without it, opposition prospers. Labor must be housed under one roof; and must be especially discreet regarding its domestic squabbles. Any union’s success is every union’s success. Any division of union resources discredits uncompromising solidarity, the primary means by which workers, from pyramid builders onward, have held sway against their overlords. Get it together, literally.

  Posted by Bud Wizer on Oct 24, 2007 at 5:35 PM

  Let Solidarity be our watchword.  As a long time member of SEIU, I am not happy with the split from the AFL/CIO.  “United we stand, Divide we fall,” seems a most sensible philosopy to me. 
  Stern talking to WalMart turned my stomach. 
  Our previous local was absorbed into a giant new SEIU “local.”  I’ve yet to hear one word from the “New local.”

  Posted by frank67 on Oct 31, 2007 at 4:11 PM

  “Working together” on the local level in politics might have created some victories for individual Democratic Candidates; however, even if the U.S. House and Senate was filled completely with such worthless candidates working people wouldn’t win anything.

  Here in Minnesota, a State Senate Legislative Committee, comprised by a majority of Democrats, all elected with the full support of both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win couldn’t even muster enough votes to get a piece of legislation out of committee that would have helped save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant along with two-thousand jobs.

  The Republicans took one of the Democrats out for drinks and never stayed for the vote they were so confident these Democrats would do their dirty work for them.

  On the Iron Range a new cancer cluster has been detected among iron ore miners in the taconite industry. What did the Democrats, all endorsed, supported, and financed by the AFL-CIO and Change to Win propose? Single-payer, universal health care which was endorsed by 72% of the delegates to the last state convention of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer Labor Party? No; these Democrats called for another “study”... just what working people and their families need when they are facing foreclosures on their homes to pay for mounting medical bills.

  Over two-million American workers are employed in some 400 smoke-filled casinos strung out across the United States… all receiving poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws; subjected to the most Draconian working conditions at the hands of mobsters who “manage” these so-called “Indian owned” casinos under special “Compacts.” Not one of these Democrats elected by the AFL-CIO or Change to Win have uttered a peep of protest.

  In fact, Michigan’s labor endorsed, labor supported, and labor financed Governor, Jennifer Granholm, recently negotiated another one of these dispicable “Compacts” with the Gun Lake Band outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan which will employ another 1,800 workers in another smoke-filled casino at poverty wages and without any rights under state or federal labor laws. And, the Michigan Legislature, fully endorsed by the AFL-CIO and Change to Win is considering approving this “Compact.” Worse yet, the Michigan AFL-CIO and Change to Win have remained silent… so, their candidates take their lead.

  These so-called labor “leaders” who can’t develop winning struggles at the negotiating table can’t develop winning strategies at the polls… at least not to the benefit of working people.

  The war in Iraq is a related matter… organized labor could take the lead from some of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union locals and shut this country right down until the war is brought to an end… but, here again, who has voted to cointinue funding this dirty war for oil and regional domination in Iraq? You got it… labor endorsed candidates which both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win worked together on to put in office. And labor backed Hillary Clinton has given Bush the go ahead to start another war with Iran.

  What we need is a labor movement which understands “class.”

  Alan L. Maki
  Director of Organizing,
  Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

  Posted by alanmaki on Oct 31, 2007 at 10:59 PM

  What the US labor movement needs is an analysis of the distorting effect of US imperialism on every aspect of working people’s lives in that country.  Whether it’s Change to Win or the AFL-CIO, the great silence in the US labor movement is the silence concerning the US’ role across the world, including interference in other countries’ labour movements, something which has occurred everywhere, including in my own, English speaking country.

  The Democrats are simply incapable of mounting any serious political challenge to the policies of the Republicans, because in reality, the argument amongst US elites is not that there is something deeply flawed about the idea of one country giving itself permission for unending aggression against any country in the world it doesn’t like. No, the real problem is that the Democrats think the Republicans are incompetent imperialists, while they would do a better job of ‘selling’ the imperialist idea to the rest of the world. 

  I understand the importance of supporting local candidates who can give assistance to unions and their role, but sometime soon, the US labor movement just has to consider why they have failed so badly, compared to labour movements in most other OECD countries, on issues such as health care, proper pensions schemes (superannuation) falling shares of output enjoyed by the working class, and the failure of the US education system (which is still at its best, one of the best in the world) to deliver anything like rough equality of opportunity, or social mobility if you prefer.

  It’s no good trying harder to do something which delivers the same dismal results. Unless of course, you think the outcomes are OK. That’s the problem with the US labour movement in my view. It is inextricably tied to the very assumptions and processes that have permitted the US to ignore with impunity pressing domestic issues, and throw its weight around the world as if it owned it, and the US labour movement is too weak both in a practical politcal sense, and ideologically, to challenge any of the sorry mess. That’s a pity, because there are very many really fine people in the US labour movemnt, doing it very hard under very tough conditions, but the leadership seems unable to resist the blandishments of power that a powerful, wealthy and ruthless ruling class is able to hold out every time.

  Posted by Jane Doe on Nov 1, 2007 at 1:30 AM

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Also by David Moberg

• Solidarity Reunited?
  Unions rally around shrunken UNITE HERE as it takes on its former ally.Posted on July 4, 2009
• Can a Union Divided Stand?
  UNITE HERE dissolves in conflict ... with a little help from SEIU.Posted on July 1, 2009
• Battling Over Employee Free Choice
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• Flower Power
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• The Meltdown Goes Global
  It is time to rethink capitalism. Posted on April 15, 2009