"What Do You Say to That?"

The split in the AFL-CIO is big news today. The split was made official with the announcement from several dissident unions that they will boycott the AFL-CIO annual convention which starts today. "Over the past nine months, every corner of the labor movement has debated reform," said Anna Burger, chair of the dissident Change to Win Coalition. "The AFL-CIO, to its credit, has listened to us. But in the end, they have not heard us. The language of reform has been adopted, but not the substance. Our principles have been watered down and papered over ... we have reached a point where our differences have become unresolveable."

What’s it all about? Is it in fact about anything meaningful?

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern, a leader of the “dissidents” wrote the other day:

“This convention could have been a chance for workers to celebrate the union movement's modernization after 50 years of change in our economy -- a dramatic event as historic as the founding of the CIO in the 1930s.”

“It could have been an inspirational discussion of strategies to unite workers in each industry or occupation - and to build unions with the focus and resources to do that.”

“It could have highlighted new global union partnerships that are not just about general solidarity but about specific campaigns uniting the strength of employees of the same global corporations.”

“It could have made historic progress on diversity not only through standards and timetables but by setting the stage to help millions of people of color and working women to form unions and change their lives and communities.”

"All this was possible earlier this year when it became clear that 40 percent of the AFL-CIO, including 3 of the 4 largest affiliates, was prepared to support real change. The AFL-CIO officers could have chosen to use their powers of persuasion to build on that base and organize a majority.”

“Instead, they chose to start with the 50-year-old structure of 57 separate and overlapping unions as a given and then water down every proposal so it wouldn't offend entrenched interests and outmoded traditions. They chose not to lead and to help workers win -- but to play it safe and do nothing that might disturb the lowest common denominator status quo.”

“The AFL-CIO's opportunity appears to have been lost, but the crisis facing working people in America remains. It will apparently take another convention this fall of unions committed to change to provide the new hope working people need.”

Joe Hansen, of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW): says:

“We are taking this historic step with our coalition partners to build a 21st century worker movement for a new generation of workers. Unions built the American middle class. We are taking this action to revitalize the labor movement to build worker power.”

“Unrestrained corporate power has set in motion a global race to the bottom—a race dedicated to widening the gap of inequality—eroding basic wages—eroding labor and social standards—and limiting basic democratic participation.”

“Our unions are changing now to win worker power in the workplace, the community, and the political process.”

“The Change to Win Coalition (the new workers organization devoted to “transforming the American labor movement”) is taking the lead to engage and organize workers—and build a worker movement to raise living standards, win health care and pension security, and make government responsive to working people.”

United Farm Workers of America (UFW) President Arturo Rodrigues announced his union was joining the Change to Win Coalition. He said,

"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. 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."

All this sounds pretty good, but are you, dear reader, convinced that the Change to Win group is all it is cracked up to be? Are you convinced they will offer much more than the stodgy AFL-CIO?

JoAnn Wypijewski writes today in Counter Punch that she, at least, is not. She writes, “On the one side, so the story goes, we have the dynamic "organizing" unions with vivid blueprints for revitalization; on the other side, the dinosaur unions and leadership of the AFL-CIO, content with the status quo even as union membership dips to its lowest level in 70 years.”

After pointing out all that Sweeny and Company has not done Wypijewski asks who are the dissidents anyway?

Her answer is none to flattering, “They are six union officials with little in common but their sex and race, hatred of some of the federation staff and leadership, and size of their memberships or egos. Representing five unions with about a third of the federation's members, they have banded together under a program whose only live demands (because the only ones they uniformly agree on) are more power for themselves in an Executive Committee of select larger unions and a 50 percent rebate on the dues their unions pay to belong to the federation. Three of their executive councils have authorized these men to pull their unions out of the AFL-CIO whenever they see fit.”

She writes about the dissidents leading actors:

* Andy Stern, president of SEIU, the nation's biggest union, with 1.8 million members. Wypijewski says, Stern, “…for most of the past ten years that his former mentor, John Sweeney, has been president of the AFL-CIO, Stern has been instrumental in everything from the staffing of the organizing department, to the policy on immigration, to the effort to consolidate state and local labor bodies, to the endorsement of political candidates (spending $65 million of his poor members' money, more than the total spent by the AFL, to try to elect John Kerry). One of Stern's brains trust, Steve Lerner, had charge of the AFL's failed strawberry campaign, its failed Las Vegas building trades campaign, and is married to the woman who headed the AFL's ridiculously bloated and now dissolved field mobilization department.

Wypijewski adds that the SEIU, “…is notable for the biggest, most geographically outstretched (therefore least participatory) locals, the most aggressive application of trusteeship (stripping power from an inordinate number of locals), and the heaviest reliance on national staff with no experience in the jobs or culture of the workers.”

* James P. Hoffa, president of the Teamsters, the nation's biggest general union, representing everyone from truckers to warehousers to clerks to casino workers to nurses and public defenders. The Teamsters has 1.4 million members. Wypijewski says, “Hoffa's own grasp of organizing is tenuous. He is close to the most reactionary and corrupt elements in the Teamsters. His most energetic political interventions have been to thump for Arctic drilling and to attack his own reform-minded members. Yet Hoffa was embraced by Stern when the former proposed the 50 percent dues rebate. Though it has been promoted as an incentive to organizing, the dues rebate is, in essence, a tax cut for the largest, richest unions. It is now the top "insurgent" demand, on which, they say, they will brook no compromise."

Hoffa's brand of "aggressive organizing", writes Wypijewski, “…is best illustrated by his collaboration with Tyson Foods earlier this year to decertify his own union's Local 556 in Pasco, Washington. The 1,500 meatpackers had been led by Maria Martinez, a co-chair of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. After a relentless campaign, in which workers were bombarded by literature bearing Hoffa's attacks on the local leadership, threatened with plant closure and forced to vote twice, the workers capitulated. They are now among the 92 percent of private sector workers whom the Change to Win Coalition has dedicated itself to unionizing.”

Next up for Wypijewski is:

* Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) with 1.4 million members). “Hansen,” he writes, “is given to thundering in the press that "the status quo will not stand.” However, according to Wypijewski, “Hansen is intimate with the status quo, his reputation stamped in the mid-1980s when he was the UFCW leadership's tool in destroying the strike and ultimately the union of meatpackers with Local P-9 at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota. ”P-9" is one of those markers in labor history, emblem of both the courageous spirit of rank-and-file workers and the machinations of treacherous union leadership. Hansen, who'd plotted with strikebreakers, was made the trustee from which position he expelled the workers' elected leaders, offered unconditional surrender to the company, and saw to it that none of the strikers ever returned to work.”

Wypijewski says Hansen is well known for his sandblasting of 16x80 foot mural that 100 workers had painted on a labor center wall, “erasing first the painted faces of the workers and then the slogan "Solidarity".

And it goes on. You get the drift.

Bill Fletcher, Jr., long-time labor and international activist, is currently president of TransAfrica Forum in Washington, DC. He wrote a column a while back in Black Commentator in which he accurately pointed out the issues raised by the “dissidents”, “…were important, but largely secondary to the greater challenge facing organized labor. Missing from the SEIU analysis (and virtually anything else that has subsequently appeared from either SEIU, its allies or its opponents) have been issues including a clear understanding of the forces of capitalism that workers are up against, including but not limited to globalization; the manner in which the US government has shifted more and more to the Right and become increasingly hostile to workers and their unions; how unions should organize critical regions like the US South and Southwest, and particularly how to ally with African Americans and Latinos in these regions in order to be successful; how to engage in political action in such a way that working people can advance an agenda and candidates that represent their interests and not simply the institutional interests of unions or established political parties; the continued relevance of fighting racism, sexism and other forms of oppression and intolerance if workers are to ever unite; how to work with and build mutual support with workers in other countries; and the critical importance of joining with others to fight for democracy.”

He wrote that the debate in the AFL-CIO was taking place on “Mount Olympus.” The rank and file workers were not being asked to participate in the debate over the future of organized labor. “No attempt has been made by either side in this debate to bring the debate to the members. The members have not been asked their opinions…”

A cover story in a different issue of the Black Commentator boldly declared, “"Even as unions struggle to respond to forces bent on their annihilation, they remain deformed by racism – the same plague that has crippled the U.S. labor movement at every stage in its history. Black workers, the most enthusiastic ‘joiners’ and activists, also face the most dire consequences of labor’s historical weaknesses. Yet, too often, their white comrades – including those who proudly consider themselves ‘progressives’ – seek ‘solutions’ to labor’s problems at Black workers’ institutional expense."

As Kansas City’s Walt Bodine used to say, “What do you say to that?” Sources: Labor Advocate, UFCW, Huffington Pos, Daily Kos, Black Commentator, Counter Punch, Change to Win Coalition