My Union President Went to Vegas… and All I Got Was This Strange Debate

April 2005

These have been odd debates going on in the AFL-CIO.

To begin with, many of the debaters are reformers, or claim to be, even though some of them are top union officials—people with significant power in the largest U.S. unions. The terms we use to describe unions get an extra stretching when James Hoffa of the Teamsters is described by some in the press as a “dissident.”

It is also strange because both sides agree on so much: they express their fear that labor’s decline could turn into collapse, complain bitterly of the anti-labor bias of the government and the administration, bemoan the difficulties of organizing and bargaining in a changing economy.

Both sides (finally) acknowledge that the causes of labor’s distress lie not only in external factors–aggressive employers, hostile government agencies—but also in the union leadership’s own failures and lack of strategy. Lastly, both believe labor’s top priorities should be new organizing and political action.

It’s not that there are no real differences, but they don’t correspond well to the supposed principles at stake.

FROM REVOLUTION TO DUES CUTS

To take a concrete example, SEIU’s Andy Stern and others united around Hoffa’s proposal to give international unions a rebate on their per capita dues paid to the AFL-CIO. Had they prevailed, the AFL-CIO would have seen its budget slashed dramatically.

That’s something new, but it’s a far cry from the radical restructuring of the AFL-CIO, the labor councils, the international unions, and even the global labor movement that Stern and the erstwhile New Unity Partnership had been promoting, threatening to leave the AFL-CIO if their grand restructuring plans were not adopted.

The clearest conflict expressed in Las Vegas, the one that, we are told, led to raised voices and nasty language, was an old-style jurisdictional beef between leaders of SEIU and AFSCME, who both want to pick up a large unit of child care workers in Illinois.

Where does that leave rank-and-file union members and workers? Even in its odd, fun-house-mirror way, the AFL-CIO debate raises a good question: what kind of movement do we want?

CRITICAL QUESTIONS

I think many Labor Notes readers have their own rough ideas of what a new workers’ movement means, what would have to change in order to have a movement that is really new, that is really a movement. My own list of benchmarks has six main items.

Does it make workers stronger? Not, “does it give union officers more authority to make decisions in the name of workers?” but, does it help workers develop the capacity to act together to win their demands? Does it help them take job actions and win?

In the discussions about restructuring the AFL-CIO, stronger unions have often been equated with giving union officers more institutional power (making workers stronger in that the leaders will exercise this power on behalf of workers). It has also been equated with moving from the general union model to a new version of industrial unionism. Little has been said, however, about the need to help workers organize themselves to be strong on the job and in society.

Does it help workers support each other? Does it improve solidarity? Will it make it easier to build support for the next strike or campaign? What will happen when the next UFCW Local P-9 goes on strike? Or the next PATCO? In a new union movement worthy of the name, unions will rush to support locals that take big risks to defend established gains or reach for something new.

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Does it help workers build a movement that is inclusive and egalitarian, that fights for the rights of all workers, across divisions of race, gender, sexual identity, immigration status? Concerns have been raised by workers of color, women, and lesbian/gay/transgendered unionists that the drive to restructure might end up erasing the gains of the AFL-CIO’s constituency groups and creating a leadership even less representative of the diverse working population of this country.

Does it make unions more open, participatory, and democratic? After taking a beating at the hands of SEIU’s strategists, democracy has emerged as a point of contention. Rank-and-file unionists can easily come up with a list of reforms that would make workers more powerful within their own unions.

Does it help workers develop an independent political voice? As even the AFL-CIO leaders will tell you, unions have little to show from decades of support for the Democratic Party. Will matters improve if the AFL-CIO dedicates even more money and staff time, and recruits more volunteers, to campaign for Democratic candidates? Is the SEIU position of “no permanent allies, just permanent interests”—meaning votes for Republican candidates who are helpful to the union in some way—a real alternative?

Does it build global solidarity? Not the bureaucratic solidarity of the official international trade union secretariats, but direct, worker-to-worker, union-to-union solidarity?

The global justice movement that union reformers in Seattle joined with such great effect continues to grow and develop. Efforts by U.S. unions at global solidarity are still very limited. The AFL-CIO has failed to take a clear and forthright position on the Iraq war. How can we build global solidarity if we are not willing to tackle U.S. foreign policy?

These benchmarks are not particularly original; I picked them from former Labor Notes staffer Kim Moody’s books, An Injury to All and Workers in a Lean World, and from A Troublemaker’s Handbook.

I find it useful to go back to these basic ideas in order to make sense of the AFL-CIO debate and keep my eyes on the prize. If a new workers’ movement could be built by the union officials debating in the AFL-CIO, we might be able to relax and let them do the thinking for us, but this movement will have to be built the same way everything else is—by workers.

So, what are your benchmarks?

Matt Noyes is the Internet Coordinator for the Association for Union Democracy.