The Future of Labor and the Democrats Are Intertwined

by Chris Bowers, Mon Jan 10, 2005 at 09:31:59 AM EST

One of the reasons for declining Democratic partisan self-identification has been the decline in the labor movement in this country:Some point to disturbing trends in union membership: The percentage of workers represented by unions has dropped from 15.5 percent in 1994 to 12.9 percent in 2003. In 1955, when the AFL and CIO merged, 33.2 percent of U.S. workers were in unions. Unions members were one of the few demographics where Democrats gained in partisan self-identification from 2000 to 2004. In fact, apart from a statistically insignificant gain among urban voters, Democrats only gained among African-American women, voters under thirty, and union members. However, even though union members are self-identifying as Democrats more and more, these gains are more than offset by the dramatic declines in the percentage of union membership among he workforce as a whole. If union membership continues to decline at its current rate of around 15-17% per decade, even long-term, significant gains among Latinos will not be enough to offset our resulting electoral weakness.

Thus, after the race for the chair of the DNC, a second important in-house political campaign should draw much of our attention: the Presidency of the AFL-CIO.

Now the establishment candidate, Sweeney is facing his first serious challenge as he seeks a fourth term -- and it is from his own base, the labor left. The AFL's 60 member unions will meet in July to choose the next president, but the struggle for votes has already begun.

Although he has not announced his candidacy, John Wilhelm, president of the hospitality division of Unite Here (the recently merged needle trades and hotel workers unions), is widely viewed among union leaders as a likely challenger. Wilhelm declined to comment.

The stakes in the fight for the presidency of the labor federation are much higher than control over the AFL-CIO bureaucracy on 16th Street NW, just north of the White House.

Organized labor is in the midst of a debate over the structure of existing unions, strategies to deal with global employers and the threats posed by such large corporations as Wal-Mart. The combination of a contest for power and growing pressure for major restructuring has split labor into two camps.

Among the unions that appear likely to support Sweeney are the Steelworkers, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Communications Workers of America.

But even some Sweeney loyalists have gone public with their criticism. Harold A. Schaitberger, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, recently wrote in a memo to the AFL that "for the last three election cycles at the national/federal level, the only measure that is truly relevant is that labor has come up short." Schaitberger said the AFL "must also end its practice of relegating itself to being subservient to one political party or our political and legislative influence will continue to decline."

In an interview, Sweeney said that he has enough votes to win: "I am confident I have very significant support from the affiliates."

Among those unions likely to back Wilhelm or another insurgent are Unite Here, the Service Employees International Union, the Laborers' International Union, the Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Critics contend that because organized labor's survival is in such danger, Sweeney's cautious, consensus-building strategies have become a liability when tough leadership is needed.

You can read the proposals from "both sides" of the divide the AFL-CIO's website here and at Unite To Win here. Nathan Newman is, as usual the best source for more in-depth discussion of this topic.

Tags: Labor (all tags)

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Very interesting...

To quote Tim Roemer from this weekend (and countless other "anaylsts" - what is the significance of the voting trend analysis which reflects the Republicans winning 97 of 100 fastest growing counties in the United States?

If taken at face value, this is indeed both a startling and significant characteristic.

Has anyone run these numbers so that we can see just how significant Republican majorities were in these counties? If most of them are "purple" i.e. only decided by a few percentage points, that would significantly lessen the importance of such an analysis.

by kitsae 2005-01-10 11:29AM | 0 recs

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The type of people who are Republicans...

...are the type of people who like to move to the distant suburbs, away from the big city.

The distant suburbs are these counties.

We have the chicken and the egg reversed. These counties are Republican because Republicans are moving there, not because these counties have something that makes people become Republican.

by Geotpf 2005-01-11 11:07AM | 0 recs

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Re: The type of people who are Republicans...

So you mean to say that Republicans are moving to 97 of 100 fastest growing counties?

That just doesn't make sense. There has to be another (other) unaccounted intangible factor(s) here.

by kitsae 2005-01-11 12:27PM | 0 recs

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Re: The type of people who are Republicans...

Also I looked some of these counties up and many are big-city counties like Pheonix, Las Vegas, Miami, etc...

by kitsae 2005-01-11 12:28PM | 0 recs

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Two thoughts

Necessity is the mother of action: What does Maslow's heirarchy of needs predict a nation with a per-capita income of ~40,000 a year will put as its priority? Money? Survival? I think not. Most social liberals that I know don't want to "dirty" themselves with politics. They have perverse amounts of freedom and they intend to use it. On many issues, the right wins merely by default because the left has no coherent philosophy, post-communism. One can see a glimmer of a nucleus of such a philosophy in the synthesis of Eastern philosophy into Western thought, but spiritual paths don't lend themselves well to electoral politics.
National politics can no longer be progressive:

This is the age of the internet, and technology generally. Barring some Apocalypse (and yes, the right wants one for a reason) the world will grow ever closer until loyalty to one's nations is a bit like loyalty to one's state; not dead, but certainly not something to die for. My mother, bless her soul, lost one job to outsourcing and the next job she found has her working closely with Indians via phone and internet. I'm sure you won't be shocked to hear that she knows more about their lives (tsunami and all) than she knows about her neighbors. It is also no coincidence that states and counties with a lower index of globalization vote Red, and the states and counties for whom globalization is a not unhappy way of life vote Blue. Given that in a open world 5% of the population will tend to have 5% of the wealth power and influence. And given that Boomers had the childhood imprint of an America with 50% of the worlds wealth, power, and influence written on their souls, people are getting anxious and angry about the downward trendline.

What does the future hold? For America, either we accept the reality of the world and decline, or we war against it and decline quicker.

by Paul Goodman 2005-01-10 12:06PM | 0 recs

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Schwarzeneggerr and labor

Schwarzenegger is going after labor big time in California.

The thrust of most of his policy positions are direct attacks on public sector unions. You can seem more in this Contra Costa Times article.

It's scary how willing he is to cozy about with businesses and use the special interest language against all non-corporate institutions.

His strategy also includes the strong possibility of calling for a special election for these issues which further depletes labor which is gearing up for fights on so many fronts.

It also can represent a great organizing opportunity for the DFA and other activist groups to build more of a base in California if folks are willing to work hand in hand with labor.

by heymister 2005-01-10 05:06PM | 0 recs

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Mathlusian Logic

Although I would be remiss to merely say "don't worry" because Thomas Malthus has already predicted the end to this dilemma. Undoubtedly, unions make the sort of worker explotative made famous by Oliver Twist much more difficult. Just as the Roman emperors found out in the 4th century, your position of power is only as strong as the trust the army has in you.

But the thing is, Republican policies are actually undermining the growth of the labor market. Yes, people continue to come here and take risks and suffer privations that native born Americans scoff at. You want me to come early, work late...how about a raise? I have to prepay for my franchise fee...how about you cut me a deal for being the first one?

But face that facts: the less that workers make the less likely they are to have children. (Foreign borns are the exception). This contracts the labor market at first, which appears to have no impact for employers because again people bid each other down for the same job. But after a while, the tax base shrinks, and there are less schools, hopsitals, roads...but more people effectively fighting for crumbs. Again and again, employers see little difference. However, at some point, immigration ceases to be able to fill the labor gap. So then employers start raising wages, but because the growth in labor market from higher wages is effectively 25 years away at that point.

Even anti-Semite Henry Ford knew if we didn't pay his workers enough to qualify for his own vehicle financing mass production would be a failure. And also, there is a resale market for cars. While you would never see your auto appreciate over time, it is not something like food or electricity or even rent which generates no equity.

The real wage declines not because we make more products or we make them more efficiently. It declines because we spend more money on things that do not generate equity. The more things we all own that quickly depreciate, the more liquidity we lose. And for every woman that goes into bankruptcy to have kids...there's another that decides not to.

And the clock strikes every closer to midnight for the Reganites like Bush and his associates.

by risenmessiah 2005-01-10 05:44PM | 0 recs

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You have a false statement

"the less that workers make the less likely they are to have children"

That is 100% false. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Rich people (throughout the planet and the country) have fewer kids than poor people, no matter what race, creed, color, or whatever.

by Geotpf 2005-01-11 11:10AM | 0 recs

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Unions equal High Pay

Everyone thinks Manufacturing is the Holy Grail of High Paying Jobs. One look at our history and China tells us this is not true. In the United States, manufacturing jobs were low paying until the rise of the Union. I believe this will be true in China too. Why are Manufacturing Jobs moving to China? Low labor cost. Why are the labor costs low? Because in China, real unions are illegal.

I believe the Democrats should work for two major changes that will give unions more power in the USA.

Pass laws that make easy for Unions to form. Today the deck is stack against the formation of unions in a nonunion work place.

Pass a law that makes it illegal to hire replacement workers for the first three months of a strike.

By empowering unions, the service work force, the white-collar force, and blue-collar would have real power to raise their income and to obtain better benefits. I do not believe any one type of job is the Holy Grail to High Paying Jobs. The Union is the only counter balance that the employee has to the greed and the power of Corporations.

by SRconbio 2005-01-10 06:32PM | 0 recs

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Re: Unions equal High Pay

When Democrats had control of both houses of Congress and the White House, they could not pass labor law reform.

Southern Democrats during the Carter administration stymied the last real attempt to amend Taft-Hartley.
Under Clinton, with a Democratic Congress, instead of labor law reform, we got NAFTA.

The NAFTA fiasco was the biggest reason for the decline of the Democrats.

NAFTA passes in '93 with . An angrgy labor movement sits out the '94 elections that propel Gingrich and the Republicans to power.

We've never recovered from the move of the Democratic party to cozy up to their corporate contributors.

by raddude 2005-01-12 12:00AM | 0 recs

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Glad to see this thread but the framing is wrong

The changes proposed within the AFL-CIO is not about a fight over who is President. Yes that was the case in the fight to succeed Lane Kirkland years ago.

But, this current fight is being led by SEIU (for which I have worked for). SEIU President Andy Stern has proposed radical structural changes in the way the AFL-CIO operates.
Basically, the Labor movemenet is a loose confederation of unions for which there is no accountability to enforce common goals.

As an example, since John Sweeney was first elected, he has proposed that unions devote 15% of their budgets to organizing new members. While some unions have adopted this standard most unions have devoted little to no resources for organizing. As President of a loose confederation, Sweeney has no power to bring these unions in line. All he can do is to use his bully pulpit to encourage them to do the right thing.
The same applies to politics and applies to bargaining. No accountability to common standards.

What SEIU and Stern is proposing is that there would be real penalties such as taking over these unions and ousting the leadership if agreed upon policies are not met.
This is the crux of the battle. On the one side you have SEIU, UNITE-HERE, Laborers, and the Carpenters (who left the AFL last yr). The other side who do not want these radical changes and perceive them to be threats to their autonomy are the Machinists, CWA and AFSCME.
The Teamsters have been in the middle, sometimes leaning towards SEIU but other times clearly defending the status quo.

If fact the Machinists have threatened to pull out of the AFL-CIO if Stern's reforms are adopted. To be fair, their opposition is based on union democracy issues. They say that taking over a union is inherently undemocratic. After all, their leadership is elected by the rank and file members of that particular union. If the members of that union have decided they don't want to organize new members or participate in elections then it is their democratic right to not do so.
Stern's answer has been that union members don't want to belong to a weak organization, democratic or not. Rather, they want their unions to be able to raise the standard of living for their members and eventually for all workers in society.

So that is the heart of where this fight lies.

The results are not going to be whether John Sweeney win or if John Wilhelm will make a successful challenge or not (That's the lazy mainstream media story on this fight).

No, the real battle is over the structure of the future labor movement. SEIU has indicated that if reforms are not adopted to their satisfaction, that they would leave and form a competing federation(akin to the original CIO), with probably UNITE-HERE and the Carpenters being a part of that as well.

by raddude 2005-01-10 09:13PM | 0 recs

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Re: Glad to see this thread but the framing is wro

You're right - this is not a horse race like the DNC Chair. These are fundamental ways in which the labor movement is going to be structured in the future.

Personally, until Labor makes a comeback, it's going to be harder for the Democrats to make in roads politically. I wish that Working America, which the AFL-CIO used for non union members to join the AFL-CIO would be used nationally. Polling has shown that these people who signed up for Working America voted like union members did (they received the same type of information as union members).

by unionmark 2005-01-11 06:16AM | 0 recs

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Re: Glad to see this thread but the framing is wro

I think the AFL-CIO will expand Working America in the 2006 election cycle.
Of course this will depend on whether or not there will be a AFL-CIO or if there is a competing labor body as well.
If there is a split, I still expect the second labor body to work with what's left of the AFL-CIO on politics.
Politics has been one area where the individual affialite union have been able to work together.
While there may be nasty fights around organizing and collective bargaining, I expect harmony around the political arena.
The Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress plus control of the White House ensure that Labor will work together regardless of any other fights.

by raddude 2005-01-11 11:51PM | 0 recs

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Re: Glad to see this thread but the framing is wro

But I would like to see these people be REAL union members, and not just lists of people for politics.

They used Working America as a political tactic, not as a way of building the movement.

I would say that they should have voice and vote at Central Labor Council meetings, and should have some sort of benefit (access to training, or health care, or something like that.)

by unionmark 2005-01-12 05:32AM | 0 recs