Features > October 24, 2007

Has the Change Led to Wins? (cont’d)

And in February, after SEIU’s Stern met with Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott to promote a health care coalition, UFCW’s Hansen was so upset that he wrote Stern that such developing conflicts were “a threat to the existence of Change to Win.” Wal-Mart has been the UFCW’s chief nemesis. Hansen said that Stern’s meeting “severely damages the campaign” the union was waging against Wal-Mart.The dispute contributed to the cancellation of a Change to Win project to cooperate on policy issues, such as trade and health care, according to one insider.

The disputes have hurt, says Hansen, but, he adds, “right now, Change to Win is stronger than a year or two ago.” However, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, who left the AFL-CIO long before the 2005 break-up, may not remain a meaningful part of Change to Win. Neither President Doug McCarron nor any detectable carpenter delegation attended the convention, and rumors persist that the union will soon leave the new group.

Change to Win’s future hinges on its ability to undertake broad organizing campaigns.So far, the group has promoted campaigns that originated before Change to Win existed, but that kind of delay is not surprising since such campaigns typically require several years to succeed.

For example, the Teamsters, taking advantage of global union groundwork by SEIU, have organized several thousand school bus drivers. UNITE HERE!, implementing a strategy developed over many years but also aided by other unions,in the past two years has organized 6,686 hotel workers and has won employer neutrality for organizing drives at new hotels in six big cities.

Change to Win organizers, working with Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), have helped the Teamsters’ campaign organize 60,000 truck drivers at the nation’s ports.Classified as independent contractors who can not legally form a union, even though they usually work for only one firm, the workers earn meager wages and pollute the environment as they inefficiently idle long hours with their ill-maintained trucks. Organizers have broadened the campaign to include community residents and environmentalists in pushing for reform of port operations. In Los Angeles-Long Beach, they are close to persuading the port commissions to change employment arrangements so they can unionize, as they have long been ready to do.

This fall, Change to Win is launching two new campaigns. UNITE HERE! and UFCW will begin organizing the nation’s 440,000 drug store workers, only 8 percent of whom are unionized. The drug store campaign started with a shareholder initiative organized by Change to Win that forced the CVS pharmacy chain to pay $3 billion more than it initially offered to buy Caremark, a mail-order pharmaceutical firm, and forced one public director to resign.”CVS is a large anti-union employer and one of the least unionized of drugs companies,” Raynor says. “The message is clear: Unions have the ability to influence things near and dear to these giant corporations. It makes labor a factor in their decisions.”

Having greatly expanded their research and organizing staff and drawn on Change to Win resources, the Laborers are also starting a drive to organize more than 50,000 residential construction workers in the Phoenix, Las Vegas and the “Inland Empire” region near Los Angeles. “We could not have tackled this without the presence of Change to Win,” says Laborers President Terry O’Sullivan.The union has also boosted organizing funds and reorganized internally. “We’re not where we want to be or need to be,” O’Sullivan says, “but we’re moving in the right direction.”

Change to Win has so far mainly affected how the national union leaders and staff organize their work, not the wok of local unions and their leaders, many of whom remain skeptical.

“I’m not a big fan of splitting the labor movement,” one official of a Change to Win affiliate said. “I’m not quite sure what’s been offered beyond the rhetoric.” And a close observer of UFCW’s long-running campaign at the Smithfield pork processing plant in North Carolina argues that state AFL-CIO organizations have mobilized more useful support for those workers than Change to Win or its affiliates.

Lower-level leaders and members have also criticized the increasingly centralized decision-making of Change to Win and those member unions undergoing transformation. After Change to Win leaders told the convention that the Leadership Council had a month earlier revised the constitution to eliminate the required rotation of leaders and then re-elected the entire Leadership Council, one delegate grumbled that the organization was beginning to act like the All China Federation of Trade Unions.

The debate about whether the Change to Win unions could have accomplished many of its goals while staying in the AFL-CIO is now moot. The split has occurred and the two camps will not reunite soon. The important thing for labor is that unions develop more ambitious, comprehensive organizing campaigns with vigorous worker participation at all stages. Also, whatever their federation, unions need to cooperate as much as possible on both organizing and political action.

In the future, after President John Sweeney retires at the AFL-CIO, the labor movement may come together again, but if organizing finally does surge, the reunified labor movement may look much different. “Some day I really believe there will be one labor federation again,” says Hansen, “but it won’t be what the AFL-CIO is now or what Change to Win is now.”

Labor supporters hope it will be much bigger and much stronger.

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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 12:35 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 11:11 AM

  “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 5:59 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 Oct 31, 2007 at 8:30 PM

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