|
Old Crisis and New Debate in the AFL-CIO |
|
|
|
|
Written by Richard Mellor & John Reimann
|
In his letter to AFL-CIO President, John Sweeney, announcing the withdrawal of this Union from the federation, Teamster General President James Hoffa said the following:
"We have reached this decision as a matter of principle. Our differences are not about words, but are deep and fundamental. They concern the future of the labor movement in this country."
Most union members and workers in general were not even aware there was any difference of opinion at the head of the nation's main union federation. A huge percentage of AFL-CIO members themselves, would not even know who John Sweeney or Andy Stern is. For most workers, the first they heard about a rift was by reading the front page of their local paper on the opening day of the AFL-CIO convention on June 25th. This follows normal procedure in class relations. Most workers generally learn about labor management relations or inter-union affairs from the bosses.
Socialists, anti-capitalists and activists in general have to oppose this bureaucratic rift. What are the principles involved? What "deep and fundamental" differences are there between the two camps led by Stern of the SEIU and Sweeney of the AFL-CIO?
Some issues that the "deep and fundamental difference" are NOT about:
- Abandoning the Team Concept, the view that workers and bosses have the same interests and the greatest obstacle to organizing a fight back.
-Whether or not to violate injunctions and anti-union laws instead of obeying them as the entire leadership of the AFL-CIO has done up to now.
-Breaking from the Democrats (the Team Concept in the political sphere) and building an independent labor/community based political alternative.
-The need to launch a public campaign for a $15 per hour minimum wage.
-For a shorter workweek, increased vacation, a national health system, free public education through university.
-Recognizing that U.S. foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy and that the Iraq occupation is not about defense but privatization by the bomb and U.S. workers expense in money and lives
-Announcing that true international working class solidarity, crucial to U.S. workers well-being, cannot be built by supporting U.S. capitalism's murderous assault on workers in Iraq and around the globe and that acts of terrorism can only be stopped by workers' solidarity worldwide.
-Severing AFL-CIO ties with the National Endowment for Democracy.
The "deep and fundamental differences" that Hoffa refers to in his letter are organizational ones. The AFL-CIO's source of revenue, the dues base, is shrinking and there is no end in sight. In the private sector, only 8% of workers are organized reflecting a 50% decline since 1983. Overall, 12% of U.S. workers are organized compared to 35% at the time of the AFL-CIO merger in 1955. The Coalition for Change, that the "rebels" have formed has argued for spending more money on building a larger dues base that will bring greater pressure to bear on big business polticians. The Sweeney, McEntee camp wants to spend more of that money now to get these "friends of labor elected". The goal is the same, get the bourgeois politicians to change the law in order to make organizing new members easier.
Neither side argues that workers will be drawn to organized labor through a broad campaign for issue like those above and that it is through relying on our own strength, our ability to halt production, that can win them. A campaign for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour alone backed up by direct action, strikes occupations, mass pickets, would draw millions of workers to the labor movement. But we can rest assured, a return to the methods of the thirties is not what this split is about.
Having said all this, and recognizing that there is not a real difference between these two leaderships, it must be said that the present split away from the AFL-CIO weakens organized labor and it is our duty to oppose it. If it were over some fundamental principles, and if splitting away were to free those who left to take a more militant and/or independent road, this would be different, but this is not the case.
We should also note that there are some objective differences in the Change to Win Coalition. On the one hand, there are the service unions, such as SEIU. A lot of their members are women, many are immigrants and/or people of color, and they tend to be semi-skilled and low paid. On the other hand, there is the silent partner of this Coalition, Doug McCarron, president of the Carpenters Union. “His” union is largely male, skilled and often higher paid. Also, the construction industry is fragmented into different sectors (general contractors, sheet metal, electrical, etc. contractors), and this is reflected in the fact that there is in general a different union for each craft – that is, craft unionism.
As a result, the supporters/mouth-pieces of McCarron, the local appointed full-timers, can make an open appeal to a macho and arrogant attitude and they will receive a response from at least a sector of their membership. On the other hand, the representatives of SEIU President Stern at times use what is known as a “left cover” – cover themselves with left rhetoric at times. In addition, McCarron’s interest in what seems to be industrial unionism (on the surface) amounts to the following: His strategy is to undercut the other trades (i.e., scab on them) and sell his “product” (the membership’s skills, and, yes, that’s what he calls them) for less than that of his rivals – the other building trade unions. Further, he is close to President Bush and other Republicans as his strategy is to eliminate any environmental protections that may impede construction. Stern and the SEIU leadership cannot play exactly this same role due to the obvious differences in their industry and the make-up of their membership.
Given that these differences are not over any principles, further splits and divisions cannot be ruled out.
We should also not be confused by the militant sounding rhetoric of some of these officials. For instance, Joe Hansen, President of the UFCW, another Coalition member, has a strong-sounding statement on the UFCW web site. It starts out, “The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), its local unions and its officers are committed to rebuilding worker power.” This sounds very militant.
However, one should consider what happened in the UFCW contracts here in the Bay Area and in Northern California. The Northern California local leadership refused to bargain together with the bay area; they refused to form a united front. In this, they were supported by the very same International that wrote the words below. Of course, they Bay Area local leadership had a very limited program and strategy - basically to limit the bleeding by a national boycott. They also refused to mobilize their membership to go directly to the membership in Northern California and urge them to organize to demand a united approach.
The result was contracts in both areas that were major setbacks. And the International could not have played a worse role. Therefore, we should not take these militant-sounding words very seriously.
Given the fact that the split was not over any basic union principles, and given the fact that this is really a marriage of convenience (for instance between the SEIU and the Carpenters), new divisions and further splits cannot be ruled out. A layer of local union staffers and representatives of central labor councils are reported to be very unhappy with this unprincipled split. However, since in general they owe their jobs to those who carried out the split, they will not be able to mobilize the membership, even if they wanted to. This means that a serious further weakening of organized labor is likely.
In the past, a rebellion in the ranks and a regeneration of the unions took place around serious anti-capitalist forces within the unions. In the 1930s, for instance, both the Socialist and the Communist Parties had significant numbers of union members, and these members had a lot of influence within the unions; they were able to organize major actions of workers. This, then, forced a layer of the official leadership also to move.
Today, mainly due to the betrayals of both these parties, there is no such force within the unions. On the other hand, there are various union activists, and also a much larger number of union members who would be active if they saw a way to change their unions. It is up to the activists, together with serious anti-capitalists, to build a fight around such principles as described above. Sometimes it may not be possible to really get a layer of members active within the union. At these times, it makes sense to take on individual issues, including outside the unions – issues such as landlord abuse, etc. In this way a serious fighting force can be built. At some point, this force can also be turned in the direction of transforming and/or rebuilding our unions.
--
1) The Crisis Within, AFL-CIO Leadership's Employer Friendly Policies Prevent Organized Labor From Going on Offensive
By Richard Mellor
2) What Happened To Our Unions? An LMV pamphlet, spring 2005, By John Reimann
3) Andy Stern and SEIU Offer the Same Worn-Out Policies: Getting Democrats Elected and Keeping the Employers’ Profits Safe, Makes SEIU Just the Same Old Story By Richard Mellor July 13, 2004
4) AFL-CIO Leadership Give the Employers Another Victory
By Richard Mellor, March 2004
5) Organize From Below! A Message to Young People Who Are Considering Taking a Job as a Union Staffer, By Richard Mellor and John Reimann, spring 2004
We are putting these articles on our website's front page in response to increased debate that is taking place among union activists around the country.
The first article was written in the winter of 1999-2000. It offers an alternative explanation of why organized labor is in the situation it is . The point of the article was to counter the employers' and union leader's arguments that the working class, especially the organized sector, is weak, backward, or unwilling to defend our wages, rights and benefits.
Since 1999, there have been further examples of sacrifice and heroism on the part of rank and file workers that came to nought due to the role played by the labor leadership from AFL-CIO Sweeney on down. Like Sweeney during the Kirkland years, Andy Stern of SEIU is talking about changing the direction of the labor movement. But things haven't changed. Stern supports the Team Concept as do all top labor officials, and he did precious little during the Southern California grocery strike of 2005 that ended in defeat after workers spent five months on picket lines. Stern has made no rallying call to defend the city employees of San Francisco, SEIU members, who have suffered one setback after another at the hands of Mayors that the AFL-CIO supports.
So nothing has changed except we have lost further ground. Some of the figures in the article below have changed. Health care consumes a greater part of U.S. GDP and the uninsured have grown to 45 million. As the article points out, the heads of organized labor see the Unions as employment agencies with themselves as the CEO's. So-called reformers like SEIU's Andy Stern wants to streamline the organization like any other business person, this means increasing revenue which for the labor officials means expanding the dues base.
.
the crisis within
AFL-CIO Leadership's Employer Friendly Policies Prevent Organized Labor From Going on Offensive
By Richard Mellor
" It is time to reduce the standard workweek, both to provide more job opportunities for an expanding workforce and to resume the historic downward trend in working hours."
(From the AFL-CIO platform proposals presented to the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1984)
Despite this appeal to the political parties of big business by the AFL-CIO in 1984 the attacks on working people and the poor have intensified. Real compensation for the median worker was 3% lower in 1997 that it was in 1989, and while real median family income improved somewhat this was due to increased exploitation, not an increase in wages as by 1997 the median family worked about six weeks longer per year than their 1989 counterpart. (1)
In one of the longest economic expansions in history during which profits reached a 40 year high, workers living standards have continued to decline or remain flat. Most Americans, are still worse off than we were 25 years ago. True, the present expansion has lifted some of those from the bottom rungs of the economic ladder but the poverty rate overall in the U.S. was still 12.7% in 1998, around 35 million people. Among African Americans the figure was 26%, (2) and the income gap between rich and poor in this country is at its widest since the great depression with the average U.S. top executive making 419 times the average worker in 1998, up from 42 to 1 in 1980.
A situation now exists where the combined wealth of the top 1% of U.S. families is about the same as that of the entire bottom 95%. (3)
Not only do workers in the U.S work longer and harder than our counterparts in the other industrial democracies, we get less wealth returned to us in terms of social benefits. Transportation, housing, health care, is all the more difficult to come by in the U.S. for working people and the poor. The U.S. spends 35% to 40% more of its GDP on health care than other industrialized countries (4) yet there are over 40 million people without health insurance (as if an insurance company should determine one's access to medical care).
There is no doubt that if the leaders and policy makers of the AFL-CIO were the heads of corporations they would have been fired for failing to produce adequate returns. Even the behemoths of Organized Labor recognized this and were forced to have the first contested election for the Presidency of the Federation this century when in October 1995 John Sweeney ousted former President, Lane Kirkland. Sweeney, then President of SEIU, Richard Trumka of the UMWA and Linda Chavez-Thompson of AFSCME were swept to power on a program of reform claiming that Labor could not continue to fight, "...only defensive battles." and promising to make the AFL-CIO the , "....fulcrum of a vibrant movement, not simply a Federation of constituent organizations." The reformers made it clear, "...we cannot wait for change in the political climate to provide us with the opportunities to grow. We must first organize despite the law if we are ever to organize with the law." (5) Fighting talk from the progressives. John Sweeney even talked of blocking bridges to win labor's demands but quickly went from blocking bridges to building them. Building them not between the leadership of the Federation and its members but between the leadership of the Federation and the employers.
Despite a new leadership atop the AFL-CIO, the only thing that has changed for the average union member and activist on the job is that Union dues and the employers' attacks have increased. The average member feels that the Union's presence on the job, its ability to protect them from the employer, is almost non-existent, more often than not, the Union representative will be the most ardent supporter of cooperation with the boss. After all, we're, all on the same team. Even where militant stewards or an aggressive local exist, it is impossible for such a small subjective force to fight the organized employer isolated from the rest of the labor movement and communities in which we work. The burn out rate among stewards and leaders on the cutting edge of the struggle to protect workers on the job is extremely high due to the fact that the potential power of an aggressive, organized and militant labor movement is absent.
Running up to their election, John Sweeney, Linda Chavez Thompson and Richard Trumka talked of a crisis facing American workers. I would agree that we are facing a crisis, we are facing increased competition, globalization of work and all the sickening by-products of the market. But we are facing a more difficult crisis, a crisis within our movement, a crisis of leadership. During a period of almost unprecedented wealth creation, the leaders of the labor movement have been unable to make significant gains, instead, the slow, downward spiral of U.S. workers' living standards continues despite the election of a more "progressive" leadership. How is this possible given the tremendous potential power of organized labor in this country? The answer most officials and strategists of the labor movement will give to this question varies. The membership "need educating". We need to get more "labor friendly" politicians elected to office. We need a "level playing field". What on earth does that mean? Level playing field. Working people and our organizations never have, and never will have, a level playing field as long as the present economic system and the political superstructure that supports it, remains. We are also told by the strategists of labor that we are weak, and that we are weak because we need to teach workers the importance of solidarity. Workers need to learn to stick together.
But if we are to find the solution to the dilemma, to the crisis in which we find ourselves, activists in the labor movement must reject these false arguments of the labor leadership. We must reject the ludicrous idea that organized labor is weak, that we only represent 14% of the population etc. etc. By 1932 the AFL was losing some 7000 members a week at one point. The organization had declined from 4 million in the early twenties to around 2.9 million by 1933. The industrial workers were not organized in the main, but that did not stop the building of industrial unions and a surge of millions of workers in to the trade union movement in just few years . And the fact that we represent such a low percentage of the workforce is not good but it doesn't mean we are weak. We control the major sectors of the economy: in fact, the U.S. economy cannot function without the cooperation of the leaders of the trade Union movement. During the French general strike of 1968 ten million workers struck, occupied factories and workplaces, threatened the very system itself, yet only 10% or so of the French workers were organized. This did not stop the anger in working class society as a whole from exploding on the scene and linking with the organized working class.
The blame for the success of the employers attacks on workers' living standards over the past 25 years lies squarely on the shoulders of the leadership of the movement itself at the highest levels. Most workers in one way or another accept this. But the cause of this failure is not clear to them. Labor leaders are up, or should I say down, there with corporate chieftains when it comes to opinion polls. Many activists, and certainly the average union member more often than not blames corruption for the fact that the labor leaders appear to be more on the bosses side than theirs. The implication is that the heads of the movement are at worst connected to organized crime or are, at best, just in bed with the boss or taking money from them. Many workers argue that it is the comfortable lifestyle, the obscene salaries that prevent the heads of the labor movement from leading a successful fight against the boss but while there is no doubt that corruption exists, and ties to the mob, and more threatening, the CIA, may exist at the highest levels of the labor movement, these are secondary factors in explaining the miserable record of the labor leadership to produce the goods over the last 25 years
The leadership of the working class in this country have completely accepted the ideology of the employers. Heads of the labor movement sit on the Presidents competitive council. Economic and political strategists of the labor movement attend universities where they soak up the employers’ views of society like a sponge. They, like the strategists of big business, bow before the market and offer no resistance, and certainly no alternative to it. They cling to the employers’ political parties forcing their candidates on an ever reluctant union electorate until, in the most democratic country in the world, workers remove themselves from the process, or in more extreme cases, look for help elsewhere, from right wing militia's to conservative religious groupings from Falwell to Farrakhan. It is no wonder that workers fall prey to the ideology of big business given the disgraceful silence of the labor leadership on most social issues of any significance. From East Timor to Clinton's so called Welfare reform Act, the labor leadership, terrified of offending the Democratic Party, leave a vacuum in society that screams out to be filled.
But the labor leadership cannot fill this vacuum. They are "on board" with the employers. They are wedded to the "Team Concept" and the disastrous view that workers have to compete with each other in order to help their individual employers make profit. This is why they are forced to impose concessionary contracts on a membership reluctant to accept them and why they are forced to resort to undemocratic means to accomplish this. The AFL-CIO's failure to attack the WTO which will gut environmental regulation and worker protection in the U.S. and around the world is due to the fact that it would offend Al Gore, big business politician and a free trader who is the Federation's endorsed candidate for President in 2000.
The leadership of the AFL-CIO, through their complete capitulation to the ideology of the employers and worship of the market have shifted further and further to the right of their own members. The average member's response to the employer-friendly policies of the trade union leadership is to completely withdraw or sink further in to disillusionment and apathy. The most extreme cases become strongly anti-union or are drawn to anti union legislation like prop 226 in California. Despite this, the union leadership continue down their destructive path.
The UAW recently agreed to a contract with GM that allows the automaker to eliminate as much as 24% of the workforce over the term of the agreement and this is touted as a victory by the top UAW leadership. G.M. negotiators were, "giddy over their four year agreement with the United Auto Workers." says Business Week. (6) It's no wonder the employers are "giddy", they are being handed our livelihoods and the livelihoods of our children on a platter.
This writers Union, AFSCME, is currently organizing staff at the Federal Aviation Authority according to a report in Business Week .(7) The FAA is attempting to implement a merit pay system, limit pay rises and make salaries more, "competitive with industry and move the agency away from a civil service system that rewards longevity." The civil-service system protects workers, it helps create a more humane workplace and it does reward longevity. Is not seniority one of the cornerstones of Unionism?
Labor's response to these plans should be, "Join the Union to fight against the idea that workers should compete with each other for who can work cheapest, to fight to maintain and expand a civil service system that protects workers and gives more power to the employee and less to the boss." But no, in response to the FAA's desire to gut the civil service system Labor says, "that's fine as long as it's involved in the process ", according to the article. In other words, it's O.K. to do what you're doing, we just want to be a part of it. According to the Business Week article, Carl Goldman, Executive Director of AFSCME Council 26 says that the FAA head Jane Garvey, leading the offensive, can: "...look at this as blowing up in her face or as an opportunity to involve her employees." In other words, a conflict can be avoided where one should actually occur. It can be avoided by the Union helping the employers accomplish their goals, rather than organizing the power of labor to prevent them from accomplishing them.. The end result of this strategy is a hatred of the Union by the rank and file. The Union is eventually seen as being part of the problem and not part of the cure. More and more workers become disillusioned and withdraw from the Union completely as it becomes more and more like an employment agency for the employers. It is clear that this is the direction the leaders of the labor movement are headed.
A recent interview in the Los Angeles Times with Amy Dean, the head of the South Bay Labor Council AFL-CIO which serves Silicon Valley, confirms this view completely. (8) This Sister is considered by many to be the left wing of the labor movement. In fact the interviewer describes Sister Dean as a "fireball" a "young Turk". But if one didn't know it, this interview could have been with the CEO of one of the Silicon Valley Internet firms.
Sister Dean makes all the employer's arguments. We have to compete in the global marketplace. For this we need flexibility. This is what the employers argue. Sister Dean agrees. She says in the interview, "We compete on the basis of how quickly we can take a concept and get it to market. That means we have to shed any functions within our organization that are not directly contributing to that goal." That statement tells it all. Sister Dean talks of the changing workplace, the employers need for flexibility. She uses the trendy terms of the modern techno entrepreuners, like "knowledge based work". She says that "knowledge is the basis for wealth", this is the ideology of the employers, nowhere does she argue that labor is.
In this interview, one of the "Young Turks" of the AFL-CIO makes it clear that her organization is no threat to the employers accomplishing their goals, maximizing profits at workers' expense. Nowhere is it clearer than in this interview with an up and coming leader in the AFL-CIO hierarchy that the trade union movement is viewed by those in power as nothing but a employment agency. No mention of a shorter workweek. No talk of national health care or, increased transportation, affordable housing or free education. These are concepts that have to be "shed". They are concepts that increase the well being of people, not concepts that have to be taken to market. Sister Dean's solution to the effects of the changing workplace is labor law reform, rewriting the National Labor Relations Act.
And in this endeavor she will turn to the Democratic Party and in the coming period to Al Gore. Vice President Gore said at the recent AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles:
"As employers and unions, as neighbors and friends, we can help each other by creating family-friendly workplaces and creating strong communities where neighbors can rely on one another in times of need." (9)
In an interview in Business Week in 1995 Gore, speaking to his real friends said:
"In one year we downsized by 100,000 employees. We have locked in place plans to eliminate another 200,000 workers. That's a bold start." (10)
Gore came through on that promise, some 300,000 federal jobs have been eliminated. Working people and our families have experienced the helping hand of Mr. Gore as have welfare recipients. This champion of labor and his political party have introduced a budget that will cut domestic spending by 6.4% over the next ten years and will cut spending by 12.5% relative to 1997 levels by 2009 according to economist Robert Kuttner writing in Business Week.(11) The AFL-CIO is expected to spend some $40 million on next years election, much of it electing Democrats, a party that differs from the Republicans only by the level of cuts. It is no wonder that workers have removed themselves from the electoral process. The failure of the labor leadership to use the resources at their command to provide an independent political alternative to politics as usual, encourages workers to draw the incorrect conclusion that all politics is bad. They see the politicians of big business as merely corrupt as opposed to simply representing the interests of their class.
The Team Concept on the job and the Team Concept in politics leads the labor leadership to these disastrous policies that may well drive the membership of organized labor even lower. Working people built Unions in order to improve our material well-being, more leisure, better health care, education, housing. We built Unions to protect us from competition, from the excesses of the market. Why pay dues when the organization that one pays them to fails to accomplish these goals? Despite the fact that recent polls show that three quarters of American adults want the government to do more to help working families, that 90% of Americans also think companies should do more to alleviate the stress and pressure that long hours at work places on family life, (12) the policy makers of the AFL-CIO still refuse to go on the offensive, to tap in to the tremendous anger that exists in society.
The obstacle of the labor leadership, will at some time be overcome, there is no doubt in this writers' mind about that. It is a difficult task, changing the present policies of the AFL-CIO, but change them we must if we are to survive. However, due to the role of the AFL-CIO leadership, it is quite likely the ranks of organized labor will continue to decline and that a movement for change, a movement that challenges the excesses of the market, and eventually the rule of the market itself, will, in the initial stages, develop outside the official structures of organized labor.
"No country not experiencing a revolution or military defeat with a subsequent occupation has probably ever had as rapid or as widespread increase in inequality as has occurred in the United States in the past two decades."
Lester C. Thurow : "The Future of capitalism" 1996
(1) Why The Wage Gap Keeps Getting Bigger : Laura D'Andrea Tyson
Business Week 12-14-98, P.22
(2) Poverty in America: Business Week, 10-18-99 P.156
(3) Holly Sklar, Jobs Income and Work: Ruinous Trends, Urgent Alternatives 1995, P9
(4) Business Week: 11-1-99 Economic Trends, P 32
(5) A New Voice For American Workers: A Summary of Proposals From The Unions supporting John Sweeney, Richard Trumka and Linda Chavez Thompson June 28, 1995,
(6) G.M. And The UAW Shake On It: Business Week, 10-11-00, P50
(7) Business Week: Up Front, A Union Takes Off at The FAA, 10-11-99, P10
(8) Steve Proffitt: Labor Plugs In To The Lives of Knowledge Workers
L.A. Times, 10-11-99
(9) SF Chronicle
(10) Getting Smaller With Al: Business Week, 1-23-95
(11) Robert Kuttner: Use The Surplus To Train Tomorrow's Workforce: Business Week, 10-11-99, P25
(12) Flexibility: The Answer To Burnout, Business Week editorial, 9-20-99, P162
Richard Mellor is a Vice President of AFSCME Local 444 in Oakland CA
He is also a Local 444 delegate to California's AFSCME District Council 57 and the Central Labor Council of Alameda (CA) County.
He works as a Heavy Equipment Operator for a water district based in Oakland CA
What Happened To Our Unions? An LMV pamphlet, spring 2005, By John Reimann
Andy Stern and SEIU Offer the Same Worn-Out Policies:
Getting Democrats Elected and Keeping the Employers’ Profits Safe, Makes SEIU Just the Same Old Story
By Richard Mellor
Retired Member, AFSCME Local 444 Oakland CA
July 13, 2004
The Service Employee’s International Union (SEIU) held its convention in San Francisco in mid June where Andy Stern, the Union’s president, unveiled what he described as “a radical new way to think about organized labor” (1) This is promising. After all, Union membership is at an all-time low with just 12.9% of the workforce in Unions, and were it not for the public sector, this statistic would be even more dismal.
About time I thought to myself when I read the news. We have lost strike after strike due to the disastrous policies of union leaders like Stern with the southern California grocery workers the latest victims despite their heroic resistance to the employer’s attacks. With mouth-watering anticipation I delved more in to Brother Stern’s new radicalism and prepared myself for the congratulations that I would offer him on his change of direction.
Alas, my hopes were dashed once more. The new radical way to think about Organized Labor is nothing more than another way of increasing the dues base of the Union more efficiently. What Brother Stern has instituted, no doubt with advice from his allies in the Democratic Party and liberal academia, is an Internet connection. There is nothing wrong with utilizing the Internet to unite workers and working class communities. But what is the goal of this project?
SEIU, which initially endorsed Howard Dean for President, “is drawing on his campaign’s extensive Internet network of supporters to build the new group”, reports the Associated Press. More importantly, the project gets the nod from the “experts”. “Organized Labor, needs to reach in the bag and look for as many different ways to reach workers and speak to their needs as possible”, says Bob Bruno, an associate professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois. Well, there you have it. Those disloyal union members who say the Union isn’t doing enough for them need to pay more attention to the experts.
The average Union member will not be fooled though. In the last analysis it is objective reality that rules. SEIU’s website proudly boasts that John Kerry, the billionaire politician who advocates sending 40,000 more working class youth to Iraq, has joined PurpleOcean.org. Senator Kerry and the Democratic Party welcome this project, as it is another way to harness the power of the labor movement for their legislative agenda. It will also make fund-raising easier and collective e mailing to members of congress more efficient. The new organization, that is called an affiliate, will not be used to mobilize workers and our communities to shut the employers down through strikes and other direct action. It will not be a vehicle for making strikes more effective, or for fighting cuts in health, education, housing or other public services.
At the same time Brother Stern was boasting about his Union’s new radicalism, San Francisco City workers who have taken cuts over the past couple of years, settled contracts containing further cuts. There was no serious attempt whatsoever on the part of the Union leadership to mobilize the power of labor to stop these cuts. During the week of the convention the San Francisco Chronicle reported that city workers had agreed to put 7.5% of their paychecks (a hefty cut in disposable income) toward their retirement which was previously fully paid by the employer. (2) The largest Union in the group whose leadership meekly accepted these concessions was SEIU. I wasn’t at the SEIU convention but I would bet my bottom dollar that Andy Stern said nothing from the podium about this attack on workers, if he did, he most likely praised management and the Local’s involved for working things out.
Gavin Newsome, millionaire Mayor of San Francisco and so-called friend of labor (friend of labor’s leaders) is very pleased that attacks on the working people of his city are received so calmly. Despite the support he received from Unions in his successful bid for the S.F. Mayor’s slot, he quickly gave a public reminder to the heads of Organized Labor about the realities of life. “I never made one commitment to any public employee Union with regard to consideration of contracts or negotiations as relates to my refusal to consider layoffs or rollbacks or whatever.” (3) Newsome warned early on that he would attack city workers and the best the Union leaders come up with is to get Newsom’s pal Kerry elected, and with a revolutionary new method; the Internet.
A couple of months before the SEIU convention there were reports in the San Francisco area papers describing the ongoing struggle between the state employee unions and the Schwarzenegger administration. The California State Employees Association (CSEA) that represents some 90,000 state workers is an SEIU affiliate and California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was looking to close part of the states’ $15 billion budget gap by not honoring pay raises to state workers. This is despite the fact that the contracts had already been signed. What did Stern have to say about this? What was the Democrat’s alternative?
One person had something to say about it. “We have confidence that the Democrats will stand by us”, said Jim Hard, a CSEA (SEIU) official. (4) It is hard (no pun intended) not to laugh at Brother Hard’s statement. I had a good chuckle to myself when I read it. Brother Hard, as the quote above reveals, is confident the Democrats will “stand by us”. The members who pay the dues however do not share Brother Hard’s faith in the Democratic Party, shared by the entire AFL-CIO leadership. No serious thinking worker, Union or non-Union, thinks for one minute that the Democrats will “stand by us”. They haven’t stood by us so far. Why should they start now? But when Brother Hard or any Union official talks about “us” with regards to the Labor Movement, they are not talking about “us” the members but “us” the leaders. The AFL-CIO hierarchy is hoping that the Democrats will salvage what little credibility the leaders of the Labor Movement have among their members by softening the blow, by implementing some form of damage control; after all, the CSEA donated $988,000 in the 2003-4 election cycle to political candidates, all of them Democrats. The AFL-CIO spent $10 million of working people’s money in a failed effort to keep former California Democratic Governor Gray Davis in power; surely there will be a reward. It is no wonder the U.S. workers have abandoned electoral politics in droves.
No, Purpleocean.org is just another desperate effort on the part of a section of the AFL-CIO leadership to help the employers stay competitive. SEIU is part of the New Unity Partnership, various Unions that include the International Brotherhood of Carpenters whose President, Doug McCarron, (Cash McCarron to those that really know him) claims that workers are not the creators of wealth but employers are, Unions are not necessary but employers are. Doug McCarron is a good friend of millionaire businessman, Richard Blum, Dianne Feinstein’s husband. They both sat on the board of Tudor Saliba, one of the largest construction firms in California.
A new radical idea would be abandoning the Team Concept that SEIU and all AFL-CIO Unions support with such disastrous consequences for working people. It would mean abandoning the Democratic Party and building a working class alternative that would fight for workers’ interests not the employers. It would mean mobilizing the power of workers and our communities and using that power to shut down struck employers through occupations, mass picketing and violation of anti-union laws and injunctions; this is how the Unions were built in the first place. In other words, it would mean challenging capitalism itself, rejecting what the employers and their politicians say is realistic. It would mean rejecting market forces and building an alternative society based on solidarity, cooperation and the collective ownership, production and distribution of society’s wealth by the people who produce it; the working class.
Andy Stern is no different from the entire leadership of Organized Labor in this country. He sees the Unions as employment agencies and himself as the CEO of one of the largest, His job is to supply labor at the cheapest and most competitive price. This view and the policies that flow from it has resulted in defeat after defeat for working people and will continue to undermine our living standards while driving some of the most loyal members from unionism. We may well see further decline in union membership in the short term due to these policies. But alongside this we are seeing an emerging resistance to these policies in many Unions including SEIU and the UFCW. Alongside this we are also seeing new formations outside of these traditional structures that will inevitably draw the ranks of Organized Labor in to the struggle and assist the process of transforming the Trade Union movement. There is plenty of room for optimism as U.S. working class finds its feet in the struggles ahead and the best traditions of U.S. labor emerge once more.
(1)Major Union Takes Organizing Drive to Web (AP 6-23-04)
(2) Cost Cutting Pacts Okd With Workers (SF Chronicle 6-23-04)
(3) Newsome Warning on SF Budget (SF Chronicle 12-13-03)
(4) Cuts to Democratic Allies Key to Balanced Budget
AFL-CIO Leadership Give the Employers Another Victory
By Richard Mellor, March 2004
Member, AFSCME Local 444, Oakland CAI wrote an article at the end of the last century that was quite popular among some Union activists. It was titled The Crisis Within. I explained that the reason for the continued setbacks and defeats for organized labor was the failure of our leaders, the heads of the AFL-CIO, to go on the offensive. I commented that if the policy makers of the AFL-CIO were the heads of major corporations they would have been fired long ago for failing to produce adequate returns.
Some Union activists were fooled for a moment when there was a revolt within the AFL-CIO bureaucracy in 1995 and John Sweeney, formerly President of SEIU, ousted Lane Kirkland in what was the first contested election for the Presidency of the Federation in the 20th century. Sweeney and his supporters, Richard Trumka of the UMW and Linda Chavez-Thompson of AFSCME who joined Sweeney in the leadership, were elected on a program that claimed Labor could not continue to fight, "...only defensive battles" and that "...we cannot wait for change in the political climate to provide us with the opportunities to grow. We must first organize despite the law if we are ever to organize with the law. (1)
Richard Trumka said on October 26th 1995, "While we are always willing to negotiate as equals, the era of union busting, contract trashing and strike breaking is at an end.
Today, we say that when you pick a fight with any of us, you pick a fight with all of us! And that when you push us, we will push back." In the light of the recent grocery strike defeat one would think Trumka would feel a little embarrassed but like the bourgeois politicians they look up to, they reject accountability.
Here we are in 2004 and nothing has changed. 60,000 grocery workers, members of the UFCW, have just accepted a concessionary contract after five months on strike. On October 11th 2003, workers struck Vons and Pavilion's stores owned by Safeway. In solidarity with Safeway, Albertson's and Ralph's, the other chains in negotiations, locked out their employees. The employers know how important unity in action is you see. The strike dragged on and the employers refused to back down despite the Union leadership offering millions in concessions. The strike was isolated to southern California because contracts were still in place in the north so the union leadership refused to strike these stores; it would not be fair play to violate a contract. Were the higher officials in the labor movement to work under the contracts they force on their members they would see that the employers violate them all the time.
Instead, they organized a boycott against Safeway and sent pickets to northern California to leaflet stores urging consumers not to shop there. Shoppers were told to go to Albertsons, the chain that locked out their members in solidarity with Safeway. The CEO of Safeway was demonized and blamed for the strike much like Lorenzo was during the Eastern Airlines strike. Rather than a struggle between labor and capital the struggle is simply the product of a "greedy" CEO.
So despite the promises of the Sweeney slate in the 1995 election, the heads of Organized Labor continue to confront the employers with tactics that have repeatedly failed, with disastrous consequences for their members. The problem is that the heads of Organized Labor actually do see themselves as CEO's. Their job as heads of the Unions is to supply labor at the best price to the employers. They have the same worldview as the employer which means they defend the market and profits in the last analysis. In all aspects of political and economic life they have no independent view separate and distinct from those of the strategists of capital and the bankers and traders of Wall Street.
This subordination of working-class interests to those of the employers permeates the entire Labor Movement. Art Pulaski, Secretary Treasurer of the 2 million member California State Labor Federation enthusiastically backed Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's $15 billion bond measure to ease the state's financial crisis. "We want to work with the governor to get the state out of financial crisis", says Pulaski. He adds, "It's really the best option for the short-term crisis."(2) I have a question for brother Pulaski: What is his strategy for the long-term? How can it benefit working people for our leaders to "work with" big business politicians? If they were doing their job, they would be working against them. But for the heads of Organized Labor that can only mean chaos. For them it is the employers that are the creators of all wealth and not Labor, as is the case. The rights of the employers must be guaranteed in the last analysis.
In order to justify their position and their continued failure to produce the goods, the union leadership blames the rank and file. Terrified of the potential power of their own members they appeal to the liberal wing of the capitalist class and their progressive friends. Stewart Acuff, director of organizing at the AFL-CIO, wrote a commentary recently appealing to the progressive community. (3) He is somewhat concerned at the present state of affairs within Organized Labor and the increased aggressiveness of the employers. Like all labor officials he has great esteem for liberal academics and quotes statistics from Cornell University's Kate Bronfenbrenner documenting employer resistance to union organizing drives. The facts are, "astounding and frightening" writes Acuff, "·and the effects on our society of depriving workers of a fundamental human right are devastating." Brother Acuff then goes on to give some examples of this devastation.
Brother Acuff is incensed at the treatment workers receive trying to organize unions, after all, members are the source of their income. "The moral catastrophe of firing an immigrant laundry worker because she tried to form a union to get health care for her kids must become a public crisis", he writes. Drawing the necessary conclusion he continues, "Today, that sort of abuse is business as usual, and we must find ways to disrupt it." This is all well and good, but the AFL-CIO is doing precious little to prevent employers from eliminating health benefits and passing increased medical costs on to their workers. The recent grocery strike over just this issue didn't see much disruption by the AFL-CIO outside of southern California and the workers immediately involved, a strategy that lead to defeat. I would like to read what Brother Acuff has written about the AFL-CIO's strategy for the grocery strike or for all the defeated struggles over the past period. I am not hopeful, I am convinced he has gone along with the program in every instance.
Instead of a policy of disruption, brother Acuff, writing primarily on organizing drives, informs us that, "We spent last summer sitting the Democratic presidential candidates down with small groups of workers so they could hear the horror stories themselves. Not only have the candidates pledged to support labor law reform, but where appropriate, they have agreed to intervene with abusive employers." I know it's hard not to laugh at the statement above but this man is one of our top officials. We just have to sit these big business politicians down with some working folk, that'll do it.
This is the strategy of the AFL-CIO as mapped out by Brother Acuff and his colleagues. Look to any force in society but don't unleash the power of the working class, and obey the law at all times. In the article quoted here he appeals desperately to the progressive community for help. But he has some plans for within the AFL-CIO too. He writes, "Internally, we have to teach Union members that there is an all-out, coordinated assault on their collective bargaining rights and the rights of other workers to organize."
Brother Acuff is going to "teach" workers. Perhaps the esteemed Cornell scholar will assist him. It is hard for me to contain my anger at such arrogance. Does this well-paid, high placed Union official who rubs shoulders with big business politicians and members of academia have a clue about what the people who pay his salary are thinking? I think not. As if workers need educating about the employers' all-out assault. I can assure brother Acuff that the grocery workers have felt first hand the employers resolve. The Detroit Teamsters who fought the press bosses, UAW members, machinists, and millions of workers who are abused every day on the job are well aware of the "coordinated assault" of the employers on our standard of living. We are also aware of the impotence of the trade union leadership in the face of this assault.
The aftermath of the grocery strike will mean more demoralization and further hostility and division on the job as newer hires find themselves doing the same job for less money. They will blame the Union for this. Naturally, they were an easy target as they couldn't vote on the contract and the Union officials, whose inept handling of the strike led to this situation, don't have to face them every day on the job. Isolating themselves from the members is rule number one for our officials.
The defeat of the grocery workers has set us back. But the employers will not stop here, as any worker knows. Understanding that we have to fight the boss in some way or another is not difficult for working people to understand, accepting that we have to fight our own leaders is much more complicated and harder to do, after all, they're supposed to be on our side. But this is a battle that cannot be avoided in the long run. A first and important step in the struggle against the employers and the failed policies of our leaders is to reject what they tell us is 'realistic' what is realistic for the employers and the trade union leadership is accepting that as workers we have to compete in the labor market in order to offer the employer the best deal; the deal that will assist them in gaining market share over their rivals.
In this scenario we compete with each other for who can work fastest and cheapest and with the least impediments to profit talking. The result is a never-ending race to the bottom for working people.
We must demand not what the employers and the labor leaders tell us is realistic but what we need to live a decent life and provide a healthy and productive environment for our families, our communities and ourselves. In order to reverse the decline in living standards we must return to the methods that built the unions in the first place; mass picketing, workplace occupations, drawing all sections of the working class in to the struggle against the employers and the rejection of blind obedience to the employers' laws.
It is important for activists in the movement to assist in struggles of working people wherever they occur in Unions or out. Where we are in Unions and the opportunity arises to lead, participate or assist in struggles outside the official union structures we should do this also. There are thousands of trade union activists, socialists and other anti-capitalists in this country separated most frequently by the scourge of sectarianism, this weakens our ability to assist the working class in the struggle against the capitalist's offensive; driving back this offensive is the first step along the road to freeing ourselves from the dictatorship that big business holds over society.
Richard Mellor, member AFSCME Local 444 Oakland CA
(1) A New Voice For American Workers: A Summary of Proposals From The Unions supporting John Sweeney, Richard Trumka and Linda Chavez Thompson June 28, 1995
(2) Labor, tech Groups Back Bond Measure, San Francisco Chronicle, 2-6-04
(3) Standing Up For Worker's Rights, 2-11-04 www.commondreams.org
March 2004
Organize From Below!
A Message to Young People Who Are Considering Taking a Job as a Union Staffer
by Richard Mellor and John Reimann
Each time I receive a call from one of the local unions in my area that are having a rally or informational picket these days, the caller is invariably a young high school or college graduate. I was on an HERE picket line some time ago, where we were picketing a brick wall so as not to block the entrance to the business therefore impeding the customers. I approached one of the organizers, a young woman in her late teens or early twenties, to ask why we were picketing the wall. She couldn't really answer that so she approached the older, more seasoned staffer who informed her that it would be against the law to impede the customers' right of way; she then passed this valuable information on to me, the uninformed union-member.
If my memory serves me correctly I think this young person had come through the Union Summer training program. I think she said she was from the Third World Institute, an NGO funded among others by the Ford Foundation.
Having been to thousands of ineffectual picket lines over the years I knew what the answer would be, but part of my motivation was to see what this young person would say. It irked me that many of the organizers and picket captains or monitors at these events were young students. Where were the rank and file members? Where were the young shop stewards?
Many of these young people enter the Union movement through the AFL-CIO's Union Summer program that was launched in 1996 after the election of John Sweeney as President. The Sweeney slate, that included Richard Trumka of the UMWA and Linda Chavez-Thompson of AFSCME, made many promises, most since broken, but there has been an increase in organizing drives among some Unions.
There is no doubt that many young people who are drawn to the AFL-CIO's organizing programs or who want to work for Unions as organizers, enter this field for the right reasons. Union members should welcome young people from the high schools and universities to the movement. Young people invigorate any movement. They bring audacity, courage and boldness. And we should remember that historically, young people have played the leading roles in labor's struggle against capital.
But for what purposes are these young people being drawn in to the Labor Movement? A young organizer for SEIU describes his experiences:
"The Union I work for has many locals, but the number is shrinking as a result of the international's policy of pushing locals to consolidate their memberships along industrial lines. They want to have big locals that represent single industries in entire regions and so that they can concentrate their resources on increasing "market share."
I t would be great to see a broad opposition develop within this union -- while I have learned a good deal about the nuts and bolts of organizing in a working class context, I also have learned the ways in which the union's organizing policy can really miseducate workers. I'm on a team of 4 organizers organizing a large employer. My Union, as you may know, has a neutrality agreement with this employer. All the flyers and leaflets we put out have to be run by a censor of the employer. Right now I am collecting quotes and pictures from workers in the departments I'm responsible for to be put on a "Vote Yes!" flyer that will be mailed out. Naturally some workers want to put things like "This company just cares about the bottom line, while we care about a good work environment and caring for patients. A union will help us take back some power from management." I have to tell these workers, who I've won the partial confidence of and have been working with for more than a month now, that they can't write that because it violates the Agreement between the union and management!
The "Agreement" (it's always spelled in caps) also takes away the workers' right to strike, picket, sick out, or in general mobilize, for years. The current contract negotiations, which will occur between tens of thousands of workers and management, are blanketed by a no-strike agreement and will leave the workers' fate up to the hands of an arbitrator. The company violates the Agreement all the time -- sometimes even firing workers trying to organize, sponsoring vote-no committees, etc, but we can't violate the agreement, ever, at the orders of the organizing directors. These are all reasons that I've decided to leave, I feel dishonest organizing people under this wretched agreement... I'm glad that the Union is expanding -- organizing is definitely the orientation of the organization -- but the organizing occurs in a very bureaucratic way which often utilizes the workers more as extras than as the central actors of the process. I'm glad that workers are getting a union, but I don't want to be complicit in selling them out or misleading them."
The policy that this organizer is describing is the following: Seek to put pressure on the employer to grant union recognition (more dues) while at the same time offering him the carrot of not really organizing the workers to fight in their own interests. Make sure that nothing is done to help workers see the inherent enormous power they have when organized and fighting on their own behalf as an independent force in society. By no means pose demands that will inspire workers, demands that if won would transform workers lives, but would also be too costly to the employer.
This policy, imposed from above, has been a disastrous failure for workers as proven by any objective measure.
This approach has been totally unable to help workers maintain their standard of living. Corporate profits, which come out of workers' pockets, are surging. In fact, the share of national income that is composed of corporate profits is at its highest level since 1977, while the share that goes to wages is at its lowest level in 37 years (Business Week, 4/12/04).
At the same time, this approach has meant a decisive decline in union membership. In 2003 only 12.9% of wage and salary workers were union members compared to 20.1% in 1983. Only 15.8 million workers belonged to Unions in 2003. In the public sector 37.2% of workers were in Unions compared to 8.2% of workers in the private sector, a decline of almost 50% over the last 20 years.
This approach has meant a worse life and lower morale and confidence for millions of workers. A grocery clerk told a customer she knows, "I hate my life." Shocked, the customer asked her why. The clerk described how management jerks her around. When asked what the union is doing about this, the clerk frowned and said, "the union ain't worth a dime." A young carpenter apprentice told an older journeyman that he is living in the past because he (the older carpenter) opposes giving up wages and conditions every contract; he wants to see carpenters move ahead, not backward. A city worker says of his union leaders, "they're sleeping with the enemy." A teamster, on taking an anti-war leaflet, after agreeing with the leaflet and getting into a discussion about the unions says, "The unions are all corrupt." (He meant the leadership.) They're all corrupt and don't you tell me they're not, because if you say they're not I'll take this leaflet of yours and throw it in the garbage."
Tens of millions of workers have vastly increased stress in their lives, have much worse working conditions, a lower standard of living, lower hopes for their children -- and have a feeling that they are powerless to do anything about it. This is the result of these disastrous policies of the union hierarchy - the policies that the young staff organizers are hired to carry out.
Let's face it. If the heads of the AFL-CIO were CEO's of a major corporation they would have been fired for not producing returns. Workers built unions to improve our material well-being and to protect us from the employers' attacks. The AFL-CIO leadership has failed on all fronts. Strike after strike has been defeated despite tremendous heroism and sacrifice on the part of the rank and file union member. The recent grocery strike in southern California was the most recent in a long line of defeats for Organized Labor. Wages and benefits are being eroded as well as workers' rights on the job. In most cases, the Union has no workplace presence except when the issue of elections or the collection of dues arises.
There are some differences and divisions within the union hierarchy. Some feel the pressure of the members more than others. Some of them, and some of the unions they control, come from different traditions than others. There are also the personal and political rivalries. However, on this general policy of granting concessions to the employers, of opposing any mass, open mobilization of the members to fight the bosses - on this they are all absolutely committed.
One thing must be said of this leadership: They did not get to where they are by being stupid. They will not hire and continue to employ a staffer who is seriously trying to change these policies - changes that can only be brought about by a movement from below.
We urge young activists to get involved in the unions - but with a "rank and file" perspective. Get a union job and fight to make your union what it should and can be. Or get a non-union job and start to organize among your co-workers, help to build the union on the ground floor, become rooted in the rank and file as any serious struggle against the employers will inevitably bring you in to conflict with the Union leadership whose policies demand cooperation. It is only the power of an organized membership that can challenge the failed policies of the Union leadership.
For anyone who is still at school but wants to help strengthen the union movement, there are numerous groups who have members in Unions or who are helping rank and file movements to develop. You can help build a union at your school. Remember, workers need young people and want you in the Labor Movement but not brought in from above attached to these failed policies.
Richard Mellor is a member of AFSCME Local 444 in Oakland CA
John Reimann is a carpenter expelled from the Union for leading a 1999 wildcat strike.
Both are Labor's Militant Voice supporters
|
|
Unions