Continued from the home page
“America's unions have a critical mission to perform in restoring the American dream for working families in the 21st century.
“Job insecurity is a now a permanent feature of work in America. Living standards for the majority are falling. Health and retirement security are being eviscerated and destroyed. Government regulations and laws designed to ameliorate the effects of the ‘free market’ have been undermined or done away with. Workers who fight back are illegally fired.”
And further:
“We are confident that American labor's resources are sufficient — if properly aligned and leveraged — to serve as the economic and organizational foundation for a new movement to successfully organizing the millions of workers who hold out hope for the American Dream. And we are certain that if do not act quickly and decisively, our strengths will be squandered and it will be decades before they are recovered.”
“Our unions stand for investing the maximum resources possible to build a movement of working people that can confront and restrain corporate power in both the workplace and the community. We do not believe our nation's political course can change fundamentally unless more working people belong to unions. We believe that the only way to generate truly meaningful political outcomes is to empower working people through organization. A pro-worker political consensus in America will emerge only when millions more American workers belong to unions.”
And later on they say it more bluntly:
“Increased political spending without a program for growth will not lead to either increased power for workers in the workplace or in politics.”
Their solution is:
“The organization needed to engage millions of workers in a fight for a better future requires dramatic and meaningful change in the way the labor movement as a whole operates and engaged the struggles of our day. And that requires a change in the operations and orientation of the AFL-CIO.”
They have a five point “Agenda for Worker Strength.” The first point deals in detail with their proposals for changing the activities and structure of the AFL-CIO.
The first point “Uniting Workers for Economic Strength” makes some very specific proposals:
“We believe that half [their emphasis] of what unions now pay to the AFL-CIO should be rebated to unions that have a strategic plan and commitment to organizing in their core industries based on the formula outlined in the Teamster proposal.”
“The AFL-CIO should play an active and direct role in working with affiliated unions to facilitate mergers — subject to approval by the affected members — that lead to increased power for workers in the same or complimentary industries.”
“The AFL-CIO must assume the role of the overall coordinator of labor’s efforts to unite workers to build bargaining strength. It means identifying lead and dominant unions by sector, industry, employer, market, and, where appropriate, craft, along with the responsibilities that go with it.”
“We support the creation of a dedicated fund of $25 million out of the current AFL-CIO to finance large, multi-union movement-wide campaigns directed at reversing the Wal-Marting of our jobs and our communities by large low-road employers.”
“Our program must be workplace-centered, worker-oriented, and independent of any party or candidate. Our purpose is to be the voice of workers in the political process, not the voice of politicians or parties to the workers. … Labor’s political program must be fully aligned with our organizing and growth program.”
“First, democratic change requires the creation of a streamlined Executive Committee comprised of the largest unions that represent most AFL-CIO members and are responsible for uniting workers in the major sectors of the economy, with several additional rotating seats to ensure diversity. … An AFL-CIO is that more than the sum of its parts, not one that is governed by a lowest common denominator formula should be our objective.”
“The AFL-CIO needs leadership that is committed to the kind of fundmental restructuring of the federation that we are proposing. Our unions will support leaders who aggressively support fundamental change.”
The last four points of the statement are:
2. Reflect and Represent all American Workers
3. Make Workers’ Money Work for Working Families
4. Unite Workers Strength Across Borders
5. Lead a Campaign for Health Care and Retirement Security
Under each point that they propose various campaigns which, by themselves, are not particularly controversial in the AFL-CIO.
In fact, the AFL-CIO leadership responded with a counterproposal for changing the AFL-CIO “Winning for Working Families.”
“… [A]fter the defeat of John Kerry …. our movement’s failure to grow had clearly contributed to the inability to put a friend of working families in the White House.
“America’s union movement need to make some big changes, and the AFL-CIO needed to lead the way.”
“In 1995, with the election of the current executive officers, the AFL-CIO was turned in a new direction. President Sweeney stated bluntly that the federation, up to that point, had been created and maintained to wield power. What was needed now was an organization that could also build power …”
“But the narrow loss of Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 made it plain that the American labor movement’s growing political effectiveness could not compensate for its loss of membership density.”
“Our goal is clear: we must rebuild our movement to create a stronger voice and a better future for working people.”
“…we must focus sharply on two interdependent goals: helping affiliated unions organize, and engaging working people in deeper, broader, ongoing mobilization to win legislative and political gains that build a better future.”
“We reject the notion that we should concentrate on one of these paramount goals at the sacrifice of the other.”
“The challenges facing America’s working families and our unions will not be met solely by changing the structure and programs of the AFL-CIO -- no matter how significant the changes.”
“We must increase the size of our membership and restore union density -- especially in key industries -- or no other strategies to strengthen our movement will work.”
They go on to list a number of changes to structure and program that appear to be responses to the demands of the unions that now make up the Change to Win Coalition.
The Left
Many currents on the left have either condemned the Change to Win Coalition for splitting the union movement or say that both of the organizations — the current AFL-CIO and Change to Win — are equally linked to the Democrats, equally linked to the corporations and therefore neither deserves support over the other.
But the crisis of the trade unions is developing much faster than any opposition, reform group or socialist tendency can win working class people to their program. Therefore, the anger and the discontent of the workers in the trade unions has not, does not, and for the near future, will not have a clear program to struggle against the top leaderships of the unions.
In face of this contradiction, over the past quarter century workers have launched a series of unsuccessful militant strikes (Staley-Bridgestone/Firestone-Caterpillar in Decatur, Illinois, P-9 in Austin, Minnesota, Detroit Newspaper workers to name a few); they pushed out the old AFL-CIO handpicked leadership of Donahue and forced the creation of the New Voices slate of Sweeney, Trumka, and Chavis-Thompson. And now the discontent in the ranks has forced the creation of the Change to Win Coalition.
The most conscious effort to overcome the crisis of the unions was the labor party effort initiated by Tony Mazzocchi and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) in 1989. This movement, which culminated in the founding of the Labor Party in Cleveland in 1996, identified one of the key weaknesses of the current leaderships of the unions, supporting the bosses parties, including the Democratic Party. Many activists fought long and hard to make the dream of a labor party come true. As of this date, the Labor Party has not become an important priority for any union and it has foundered. The Labor Party and its Program of Economic Justice was certainly one of the clearest attempts to change the orientation of the trade unions toward advocacy for millions of unorganized workers politically against the bosses’ parties.
Whether it was the strikes, or the responses of the leadership to discontent in the ranks, each of these efforts has deserved the support of the socialist left as an opportunity to patiently explain, with words and actions, what is wrong with the trade unions supporting the capitalists and their government. Without the Change to Win coalition responding to the ranks of the labor, there would be much less discussion in the broad ranks of organized workers of the errors of the Sweeney leadership, which includes the same leaderships that are splitting!
As a side note, the existence of the Teamsters and Laborers in this coalition may not be what it seems. It is entirely possible that the Teamsters and the Laborers are not there for the best of reasons — perhaps they joined to keep an eye on it, perhaps to muddy the goals. In any case, the current policy of the AFL-CIO leadership, perfumed a bit in response to the Change to Win Coalition, is completely inadequate to address the crisis. “More of the same” borders on the suicidal.
Supporting the Change to Win Coalition does not mean that the main goal of trade unionists in unions still in the AFL-CIO is to agitate to leave and join the Change to Win Coalition. The discussion underway in the ranks, and the concrete actions toward organizing and resource allocation for organizing, these are areas where unions should work together no matter what federation or coalition they are in.
The Change to Win Coalition states that “…American labor's resources are sufficient — if properly aligned and leveraged — to serve as the economic and organizational foundation for a new movement to successfully organizing the millions of workers who hold out hope for the American Dream.”
The forces they refer to, the organized labor movement under Sweeney’s and their leadership, are not sufficient. The US left, no matter what any one section’s opinion of the rest of it is, is key to the success of this effort. It is from the ranks of the left, whether it is college students or long-time activists, that some of the most dedicated and consistent defenders of workers, of workers rights, come. These people will play a prominent role in the revitalization of the labor movement.
Playing a more important role requires taking advantage of every opening, every split, to advance a new program for the trade unions -- a program of resistance to the bosses’ attacks, of workers’ laws to make legal the right to a job, to healthcare, of independent labor candidates for public office. It is down this road that US workers will revitalize their unions. -- Fred David