Features » July 31, 2005 » Web Only

Gods and Mortals

The AFL-CIO’s split may impact smaller state and local federations the most

By David Moberg

Chicago—The decision by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Teamsters to leave the AFL-CIO-and the resultant loss of 2.6 million members and $18 million in dues-overshadowed the 50th anniversary convention of the AFL-in late July. Yet despite the potential impact of these large unions’ departure on national politics and the federation itself, one of the main repercussions of the split involves an oft-neglected, even little-known part of the labor movement: its state and local organizations.

These federations of labor and central labor councils (CLC), the rough equivalent of the AFL-CIO at state, municipal or regional levels, have often been sleepy bywaters of the labor movement. But starting even before John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO a decade ago, and accelerating under his regime, many of these CLCs and some of the state feds have grown much more active. They’ve become political powerhouses, important players in economic development, and centers for building real solidarity among local unions and their members across union lines.

Now, many of these groups will be hard-hit, not only losing much of their limited financing, but more importantly, disrupting their newly forged solidarity. “The immediate impact [of the split] will be felt by the state feds and the central labor councils,” said Pennsylvania AFL-CIO president Bill George. Raising his hands high above his head, he added, “The impact isn’t up here where the gods are fighting.”

The mere mortals of the labor movement were not only trying to figure out how to cope with the gods’ conflict, but were virtually reduced to reading chicken entrails to figure out what it all meant. The AFL-CIO constitution prohibits local-level memberships for unions that are not nationally affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The head of a small, 1,300-member CLC in North Worcester, Mass., Brian Sabourin said his local group would be virtually wiped out if the United Food and Commercial Workers-one member of the SEIU-led Change to Win Coalition-left the AFL-CIO.

Sabourin, a member of UFCW like six of the nine CLC board members, would have to quit his job as president. Many other state federation and CLC leaders are choosing to keep their local AFL-CIO posts and finding a new union to join, just as AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, former president of SEIU, recently joined the Office and Professional Employees to keep his job.

Sabourin was hoping against hope that the AFL-CIO would make it possible for him to keep his CLC job, “because that’s where all the action is,” and he didn’t approve of UFCW’s seemingly imminent decision to leave the AFL-CIO. Did he understand why it was happening? “No,” he said flatly. It was a common sentiment among CLC leaders. “It’s over my head,” said Connie Beissel, president of a small Minnesota CLC, of the split. “I do not understand it one bit.”

This is a reflection of the way the debate over the future of the labor movement has played out. “The worst thing about what’s happening is everything is from the top down, not the bottom up,” said Gene Davenport, a longshoreman and CLC board member from Stockton, Calif., who said that his CLC president, a member of SEIU, “was adamantly against what SEIU did.”

Murky gains

Also, even though Stern started the debate ostensibly about the direction of the labor movement and not its leadership, in the end the final division was over Change to Win unions’ demands for Sweeney to leave or, at the very least, make assurances that someone from their camp, not incumbent secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka, would be his successor. Although at one level the debate was about increased organizing, other than SEIU, several of the Change to Win unions have a spotty record in organizing and have not grown or have even lost members recently. At the same time, some remaining AFL-CIO unions have grown significantly (though many are neither organizing nor doing anything else very effectively).

And while Change to Win supporters sometimes posed the choice as one between politics and organizing, both sides argued that labor has to do both, and both agreed in principle that labor should be politically independent and bipartisan. But the details of debate on structural changes that the Change to Win unions saw as fundamental and that the AFL-CIO thought had been addressed through compromise proposals seemed beyond the grasp of even many union activists and leaders.

Solidarity is the watchword of the labor movement, and it was invoked repeatedly during the week, like a prayerful mantra to heal the rupture, as many union leaders from top to bottom of the labor movement attempted to minimize the break, retain ties, prevent open conflicts and keep alive the possibility of reuniting. “Our door should always be open,” Electrical Workers president Ed Hill told the convention. “My plea will always be for solidarity. There are no great principles dividing us.”

When SEIU and the Teamsters left, their presidents, Andy Stern and Jim Hoffa, offered to continue participation in the central labor councils and state federations. This may have been a genuine measure in part, but it was also a move that shifted the onus of breaking up those lower level bodies to Sweeney.

SEIU’s departure will be a big loss, especially on the west coast, because it was active in politically potent and innovative state and local organizations. But the pledge from the Teamsters rang hollow: Nationally, it has affiliated only about 11 percent of its membership to state federations, and its participation in CLCs is similarly low.

But for all of the expressions of concern about CLCs and state feds, the sorry fact is that only about half of the nation’s union membership have been dues-paying participants in these organizations. Only AFSCME, the Teachers, the Steelworkers, AFGE (federal employees), Communications Workers, and Painters are fully paid up.

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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

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 7 posts.

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