AFL-CIO Breakup Imminent
by Chris Bowers, Sun Jul 24, 2005 at 02:30:58 PM EDT
This is huge--at least as big as Rove or Roberts. Looks like it is pretty much a sure thing now:
Four unions representing about 30 percent of the AFL-CIO's U.S. membership will boycott the labor federation's annual convention, a first step toward one of the biggest splits in the organized labor movement in 70 years, union officials familiar with the matter said.The Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO's fastest growing union with 1.3 million members, along with the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and Unite Here will announce later today that they won't attend this week's AFL- CIO meeting in Chicago, the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said.
SEIU President Andrew Stern, 54, and the three other dissident labor chiefs aren't expected to announce they are pulling out of the AFL-CIO, though that may come as early as tomorrow, the officials said.
More than four unions are going to split, including the Carpenters, the Laborers, and the Farm WorkersThe United Farm Workers of America (UFW) announced today that it was joining the Change to Win Coalition, the new workers organization devoted to transforming the American labor movement."To realize our goal of organizing significant numbers of low-to moderate-wage Latino and immigrant workers in the face of fierce employer resistance during the next decade, we must move aggressively to apply new resources and make changes in our own organization," said UFW President Arturo Rodriguez. "We are convinced the Change to Win Coalition mirrors our commitment of finding new ways to refocus on organizing and vigorously pursue anti-worker employers."
This is not, as Parker suggests, a harbinger of the Democratic Party. Unlike our electoral system, the workplace is not a two-party system structurally enforced by a winner-take all system. There is nothing uncommon, nor has there ever been anything uncommon, about unions competing over the same turf. For example, in almost half of the campaigns I worked on for the American Federation of Teachers, our major competition was actually the National Education Association, rather than management. However, when unions compete against each other, it is not necessarily bad for workers, as the competition can sometimes spur a greater amount of new organizing within each union. The UAW and the CIO found this out in the 1930's. I have never seen a prospective bargaining unit where two unions were competing that ended up not having a union.That is not to say that there will be no consequences in this split for Democrats and progressives:
The A.F.L.-C.I.O., with 13 million union members, has long provided the Democrats with their most effective get-out-the-vote operation. In the 2004 election, households with union members accounted for 24 percent of all votes, and among voters from those households, Mr. Kerry had a 5.8 million majority.In last year's campaign, unions mailed out more than 30 million pieces of literature and ran 257 phone banks with 2,322 lines in 16 states. Although unions splintered in the primaries behind Mr. Kerry, Mr. Dean and John Edwards, they ultimately rallied behind Mr. Kerry and worked hard for him. Union members voted two-to-one for Mr. Kerry in the general election.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, an umbrella group comprising 56 unions, coordinated campaign efforts nationwide, and many political leaders said a schism would inevitably undermine such coordination.
While labor is definitely a potent political force on behalf of Democrats, I would argue that even their political activities actually work best for progressives and for workers when they are coordinated with other groups, including civil rights and environmental organizations. Further, GOTV efforts tend to work better when they are conducted by people in your neighborhood anyway, which is an issue entirely separate from this split.Overall, I can't agree with DhinMI's tone in his article today where he seems to be very down on the prospect of a split. Yes, union members are just about the only segment of the white and white male populations that vote Democrat, and yes unions are the progressive voice in the workplace, which is undeniably one of the most important ideological conversion mechanisms in the country. However, there are other segments of the white and white male populations that do in fact vote Democrat, including seculars, the GLBT community, and the Jewish community. Further, unlike the labor movement, which is shrinking in size, the secular population is exploding. In fact, while the rise of seculars is one of the demographic trends that gives progressives electoral hope for the future, the current decline in the labor movement should give us extreme cause for concern. Unless the labor movement rises, which it clearly has not under the guidance of the AFL-CIO over the past few decades, the future of progressivism, especially in the workplace, is bleak. So while these unions may be splitting, and while this may cause more competition between unions, the value of maintaining the current structure is not in clear to me. What the leaders of this separatist charge, Andy Stern and SEIU, is doing seems to be working, as they are actually rapidly increasing in size at a time when overall unions are in decline. I, for one, am more willing to support a plan that seems to be working rather than one that seems to be failing.
For more on this, see TPM Cafe's new House of Labor blog, DH inMI's interview with Andy Stern, my interview with Andy Stern, and Trapper John's primer on the AFL-CIO.
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