Features > July 31, 2005 > Web Only

Gods and Mortals (cont’d)

In response to the deals and partnerships the disaffiliated unions wanted to arrange to stay in central labor councils, Sweeney told the convention, “This presents a direct challenge to the principles of unity and solidarity upon which our movement is built, and upon which it depends. They can’t have it both ways. We are one, integrated democratic labor movement, at the national, state and local level. We must reject the ‘free rider’ approach of the disaffiliated unions, who want to pick and choose the places where they affiliate and dictate the terms.”

But that’s precisely what unions have been doing all along with regard to the state and local organizations. At the same time, the Change to Win unions, which derided the voluntary nature of the AFL-CIO, were exploiting that voluntary nature by leaving, rather than staying in and fighting over the direction. Neither side has a monopoly on either good ideas or glaring contradictions.

State-level reshuffling

In the end, many CLCs in particular are going to do everything they can to abide by the letter of the AFL-CIO constitution but also by the spirit of solidarity, either through informal relationships, creation of new coalitions, or working through other public policy, political or campaign organizations.

“The form that it will take will be different in different places,” said John Goldstein, leader of the Milwaukee County Labor Council, which has long worked closely with unions, like the United Electrical Workers, outside of the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO is not likely to expend much energy making sure that the disaffiliated unions don’t participate, but some active unions-like AFSCME, CWA and the Teachers-may be the enforcers.

At one point, the AFL-CIO was considering giving the Executive Council “extraordinary powers” to suspend the constitution, “to address extraordinary circumstances arising from either disaffiliations from the AFL-CIO or from actions by affiliated or unaffiliated unions that impair the ability of the AFL-CIO to fulfill its objects and principles.” Although it was unclear what was intended, both Sweeney and Trumka implied that such powers might involve altering the constitution to permit disaffiliated unions to participate in local labor organizations. The proposal was ultimately dropped, partly because it sounded too much like George Bush’s Patriot Act or martial law, McEntee said.

But the Executive Council is still likely to consider a proposal that would allow locals of any unions that leave the AFL-CIO to participate in state and local labor bodies if they also directly affiliate with the AFL-CIO nationally by joining as a local. Once quite common, this option has usually been exercised only by locals that aren’t part of any national union.

In the end, part of a four-cent hike in the dues that unions pay the AFL-CIO will be funneled into a fund that will help hard-pressed federations and CLCs, and there will also be a renewed campaign to encourage all unions to fully pay into those organizations, a move that would solve most of their immediate financial crises.

Shoulder-to-shoulder

As Jeff Crosby, a CWA local president and president of a Massachusetts central labor council, argued, “Solidarity is a human relationship. We have to work together. It isn’t just a financial issue. I believe we can maintain a relation with our SEIU local that may have done more than any other in the CLC. I love those people. I’ll do whatever to maintain that relationship.” Still, he fears an outbreak of intra-union conflicts, like raiding each other for members, could rupture even those long-established ties.

So far, the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win unions remain more on a common path than the split would indicate. The convention adopted changes in AFL-CIO structure-creating the possibility of industry committees to guide organizing, providing rebates for organizing, establishing a new Executive Committee to guide the federation-that reflected Change to Win sentiments, even if they did not satisfy their demands. The AFL-CIO committed itself to a campaign to fight Wal-Mart, even though SEIU and the UFCW were the main unions potentially organizing those workers. Union leaders from both sides of the split signed a letter threatening to cut off funds to Democrats in the House who voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

The federation also took what was a bold step on foreign policy, given its long history of identifying with whatever administration is in power on military and foreign policy issues. It passed a resolution strongly critical of the Bush administration for lying about Iraq, for its conduct of the war, for its failure to properly take care of both soldiers and veterans, and for its failure to protect rights of workers and unions in occupied Iraq. Most significantly, it called for the United States to withdraw from Iraq “rapidly,” which was taken by its proponents as the functional equivalent of “immediately.”

It will take many months, at least, to sort out the repercussions of the split, which could either stimulate both camps to work harder on both organizing and politics or degenerate into debilitating conflict. The central labor councils and state federations, long neglected during the years of unity, may now suffer most in times of division. But their leaders are going to try not only to survive, but to meet new benchmarks for performance that the federation set and, as Jesse Jackson urged the convention, to keep their “eyes on the real prize.”

As Cleveland Federation of Labor executive secretary John Ryan said, “We’re not going to let our internal strife stop our struggle for social justice.”

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• Reader Comments

  Being very much in favor of enforceable fair labor standards and wages, I am deeply concerned about the globalized labor pool and the resulting fall of the value and respect for labor in America.  I don’t see how American workers can compete in the manufacturing labor market on the basis of cost.  At best, American workers can compete at the level of quality and efficiency.

  Having worked in more than one union shop, I know that that will require a drastic change in union shop culture - with few exceptions, being only as productive as needed to keep your job under your union contract.  In order to compete, American manufacturing workers will have to show that they can make up the difference in wages with efficiency, productivity and quality.

  Posted by Lefty on Aug 1, 2005 at 2:00 PM

  The break up is good in one way. Clearly the “solidarity” had resulted in union bureaucrats deciding everything had to be their way or no way.

  This one way only strategy wasn’t working.It can’t not in a nation as diverse culturally as ours. Ideas that fit well in the N.E. CA. are sure failures in Texas or the South, yet because of this “one size fits all” strategy of the AFL/CIO unions are blind to this.

  Now the sides will be free to try competing methods to grow union membership and increase union influence. With a bit of competition good ideas will be recognized and bad ideas discarded. This was not possible under the old 1 big union organization.

  The reasons why people join unions, how people view unions based on location and culture, the forces opposed to unions, the forces that support unions vary dramatically from each locale.

  The very idea of having a “one size fits all” national strategy is oxymoronic as a result. For unions to grow and regain their influence they need a multi-pronged strategy that addresses local perspectives and truths.

  Personally I am amazed that Unions still try decades old union organizing tactics that worked in very liberal areas of the industrial N and NE in the very conservative, religious South. Did any Union boss ever think to try and win over the local area pastors, preachers and priests first, perhaps have several indtroductory get togethers to dispell the myths and introduce them to what a union is truly about? Did any Union ever get involved in the local culture and become “local” before dictating strategy from on high.

  What I’ve seen is local people get interested, but then their efforts are taken over by the national union, and then being forced to adopt a cookie cutter stratagy to unionize, completely ignoring local area concerns and beliefs.

  Yes I know there are many local people involved in organizing, but unfortunately they take instructions from the up and ups. The locals are basically told the “right way” to organize, even though this way hasn’t worked in a couple of decades.

  Heaven forbid any Union bigwig with his 5 figure salary consult and get a feel for the lay of the land before making an effort to organize.

  Unions seem to have decided long ago, that everywhere was laid out the same as the NE, N and CA as a result their strategies continue to fail in the parts of the country that are very different culturally and economically like the South, Texas and the West. 

  Maybe now the smaller unions will be able to be more nimble and reactive to the local conditions that hinder union growth, local conditions that vary dramatically.

  I certainly hope so.

  Posted by johnnyincentx on Aug 2, 2005 at 9:34 AM

  From www.votenader.org
  Nader on Jobs:
  Creation of More Jobs by Investing in America’s Future — Invest in Americans
  Since January 2001, 2.7 million jobs have been lost and more than 75% of those jobs have been high wage, high productivity manufacturing jobs. Overall 5.6% of Americans are unemployed while 10.5% of African Americans are unemployed. Unemployment among Latinos is nearly 30 per cent higher than January 20, 2001. By requiring equitable trade, investing in urgently needed local labor-intensive public works (infrastructure improvements), creating a new renewable energy efficiency policy; by fully funding education and redirecting large bureaucratic and fraudulent health expenditures toward preventive health care we can reverse this trend and create millions of new jobs.

  On Fair Trade:
  Fair Trade that Protects the Environment, Labor Rights and Consumer Needs
  NAFTA and the WTO makes commercial trade supreme over environmental, labor, and consumer standards and need to be replaced with open agreements that pull-up rather than pull down these standards. These forms of secret autocratic governance and their detailed rules are corporate-managed trade that puts short-term corporate profits as the priority. While global trade is a fact of life, trade policies must be open, democratic and not strip-mine environmental, social and labor standards. These latter standards should have their own international pull up treaties

  Posted by NaderRaider on Aug 2, 2005 at 1:47 PM

  Become a Naider Raider dont allow these Democratic sellouts let www.inthesetimes.com become even more of a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, the Democratic party does not stand for progressive values(although some of their politicians do). Post any news, comments, or info on Nader that you can and lets force www.inthesetimes.com to recognize him as they did not mention his name once in the entire 2004 election

  Why has the progressive media become a mouthpiece for the corporate Democrats?

  Posted by NaderRaider on Aug 2, 2005 at 1:52 PM

  This isn’t the first time that labor has split.  It won’t be the last.  The split is absolutely necessary in order to keep up with the effects of globalization.  It seems inevitable that the labor movement will always have to endure growing pains from within compounded with the pains of being exploited in such an aggressively capitalistic economy.  Hopefully labor will grow stronger as a result of the split and begin to hold politicans more accountable for their votes in Congress, rather than simply giving away their money and losing their numbers, while hoping for salvation from a politician.  They need to focus on growing their numbers rather than hoping for a savior in the Democratic party to rescue the movement.  That’s what Andy Stern is saying and I think that he is leading the movement in the right direction.

  Posted by espoir on Aug 4, 2005 at 3:49 PM

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