Witnesses to the AFL-CIO’s Decline
Labor Movement’s Woes Can’t
Be Fixed, Say Experts
By Patrick J.
Reilly & John Tuason
Capital Research Center
Summary: The AFL-CIO is
faced with serious problems: declining membership, failed
political efforts, internal disputes over dues payments and
funds for organizing, unions threatening to withdraw from the
federation, and a potential challenge to John Sweeney’s
presidency. None of this surprises observers of the waning
labor movement.
Dime-store novelists claim that gloom around the
AFL-CIO is palpable—it hangs so thick in the air you just
might choke on it.
Maybe that’s hyperbole, but anyone
listening to labor union officials in recent weeks can imagine
the fog that has wrapped itself around obviously distraught
and desperate men. Gathered last month in Las Vegas, the
kingpins of the labor movement seemed more like bitter losers
out on the Vegas sidewalks, trying to come to grips with how
their fortunes have slipped away.
“These are the darkest days that I have
ever seen for American workers across the United States,”
Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), told The
Washington Post .
John Wilhelm, leader of the hotel
employee division of the recently merged (July 2004) Unite
Here union, admitted, “The collapse of the labor movement is
happening on our watch.”
Both were referring to ongoing
developments that union officials are unable to affect: a
steady decades- long decline in private-sector union
membership, a Republican-controlled Congress and White House
determined to protect workers rights and curtail union abuses,
and the failure last November of the AFL-CIO’s well-funded
political machine to unseat President George W. Bush.
Observers of unions’ impact on the
American economy and politics agree with that analysis.
Experts interviewed by Labor Watch argue that union
leaders’ soul-searching is a symptom of the labor movement’s
growing awareness of its irrelevance to most workers.
They say it may even hasten the
AFL-CIO’s decline as gloom turns to anger and infighting.
“All the soul-searching in the world
won’t change the fact that organized labor is in deep
trouble,” says David Denholm, president of the Public Service
Research Foundation and an observer of public employee unions.
“There are forces at work beyond its control which will make
the trouble deeper.”
And he doesn’t shed a tear.
Wrestling With Change
|
“The
choice between politics and organizing is a lose-lose
one for the unions. They have come to realize that
present laws protecting employee rights to decide on
whether or not to organize are working against them
because American workers are increasingly rejecting
unionism. They must then choose political activity in
the hope of changing those laws.” |
|
Bitter divisions were evident as the
AFL-CIO executive council met last month in Nevada. The
National Journal’s James Barnes noted that “by the time
the union presidents left town, their differences were more
exposed than a Las Vegas showgirl.”
A territorial dispute between the
leaders of two of the largest unions “turned into a
curse-filled shouting match that could be heard in the hall”
from the casino conference room where they were meeting,
according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Andrew Stern of
the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFSCME’s
McEntee were fighting over which union should represent 50,000
child care workers in Illinois, but it was their opposing
views of AFL-CIO president John Sweeney that had them at wit’s
end. Stern was so fed up that his SEIU is prepared to break
ranks with the labor federation “I think there’s a high degree
of tension,” Unite Here’s Wilhelm told the Inquirer,
with the kind of obvious understatement one might expect from
a labor boss-turned-politician who hopes to unseat Sweeney at
the AFL-CIO convention in July. “We’re in deep trouble. We
need to have a debate, but also a fight about how to turn this
around.”
A fight is clearly in the making. Harold
Meyerson, a columnist at The Washington Post, reports
that AFSCME official Paul Booth attended the Las Vegas meeting
with a t-shirt from Sweeney’s 1995 campaign for the AFL-CIO
presidency.
Booth asked Anna Burger, who managed the
campaign but now works with Sweeney’s most vocal critics, if
she had any more of the old t-shirts. “Yeah,” Burger
reportedly replied. “We use them for dishrags.”
These may be just the first salvos in an
internal battle likely to escalate before the AFL-CIO national
convention in Chicago this summer. It is then that the
70-year-old Sweeney is up for reelection, with Wilhelm his
prospective challenger. Before the convention opens at least
three member unions will demand significant changes to the
federation’s budget, policies and structure—or threaten to
bolt the AFL-CIO.
Creating the most division in the labor
movement are proposals put forward by the New Unity
Partnership (NUP), a coalition of union leaders representing
about 40 percent of the nation’s union members.
NUP is committed to dramatically
expanding efforts to organize workplaces and increase union
membership. (See
Labor Watch, February 2004.)
The group is led by the SEIU’s Stern, who commands the largest
AFL-CIO member union and is the most likely to quit the
federation if NUP’s proposals are rejected.
Others making similar threats are Unite
Here, which held a leadership meeting in March to consider
disaffiliation, and the Teamsters. Some unions do not appear
inclined to leave the AFL-CIO, but have supported NUP’s
efforts, including the Laborers International Union and the
United Food and Commercial Workers.
One of NUP’s more radical proposals is
to force a merger of AFL-CIO member unions to create a few
large unions organized by industry sector. Aside from a few
voluntary mergers, this proposal has gained little traction.
NUP has found more interest in its
proposal to rebate as much as fifty percent of member union
dues to the AFL-CIO, allowing the unions to use more of their
own funds for organizing. The proposed dues rebate would favor
unions that already devote significant funds for organizing to
boost their membership.
The status quo, which suits many of the
AFL-CIO’s smaller unions just fine, is NUP’s greatest
obstacle. Under the NUP plan, smaller unions would be expected
to abandon their traditions and history of independence,
merging into larger unions by industry sector (even though
some small unions like the Firefighters are particularly
successful). The smaller unions are also unlikely to benefit
from any dues refund for significant spending on organizing.
Sweeney recognizes NUP’s clout and has
supported minor AFL-CIO reforms to appease his critics. But
his main focus has been to complete the federation’s
transformation into little more than a political lobby. This
strategy enabled Sweeney to prevail last month in the first
major test of his challengers’ strength. The federation’s
executive council rejected Teamsters president James Hoffa’s
proposal for a 50 percent dues rebate, which would have
required layoffs of nearly half the AFL-CIO headquarters
staff. The council instead endorsed Sweeney’s plan to rebate
about $15 million in dues for union organizing, while
approving an additional $45 million for year-round political
action—a dramatic one-third increase in political spending.
The news media reported Sweeney’s
victory as a “show of power” and evidence that NUP’s crusade
could not succeed. While clearly a setback, NUP vows to
overturn the executive council’s decisions at the July
convention, where the larger unions have more influence.
Sweeney won approval for his counter-proposal with a 14-8 vote
of the executive council. (Because even tiny unions get one
vote per council representative, the larger NUP unions have no
advantage in the executive council.) But at the July
convention, SEIU will enjoy voting power proportionate to its
1.8 million members. With NUP member unions already
representing about 40 percent of the AFL-CIO’s 13 million
union members, it is not implausible that their lobbying could
secure a majority by July.
Even without a clear win, NUP has set
the terms of debate. The New York Times noted that
during the executive council meeting, Sweeney made more new
proposals significantly affecting the AFL-CIO’s future than at
any other time in his presidency. Some of the proposals—such
as the dues rebates for member unions’ organizing and
proposals that mildly encourage unions to merge—were reluctant
attempts to satisfy the NUP. Sweeney’s other proposals to beef
up the AFL-CIO’s political machinery with more funding and
tightened control over state federations and central labor
committees seemed a defensive reaction—some might argue an
expensive over-reaction—to Stern’s criticisms and the NUP
demand for more organizing.
What the March executive council meeting
reveals is how deeply the AFL-CIO is split. Public displays of
disunity are rare; the movement is usually well-disciplined.
But following the council vote, five union presidents scolded
the council before a gathering of reporters.
Politics or Organizing?
At the root of the divide between NUP
and Sweeney is a fundamental disagreement about how to rescue
the labor movement: Should unions concentrate on aggressive
politics and lobbying or aggressive organizing for new
members? Both camps agree that unions have insufficient
resources to do both well, so each has drawn a line in the
sand and hoisted its banner. One flag proclaims “Organize or
Die,” the other “Seize Washington or Die.”
“A long-term plan for greater political
and legislative mobilization is essential to strengthen and
build the labor movement,” says a Sweeney statement. The
federation president argues that despite the need for
increased union membership, the future of the labor movement
depends on electing a union-friendly president and
legislators. Many union leaders are distraught by Republican
gains in Congress and the Bush Administration’s effort to rein
in union abuses, including its attempt to improve union
financial disclosure requirements and the National Labor
Relations Board’s willingness to reconsider Clinton-era
rulings. (See
Labor Watch, February 2005.)
Sweeney goes so far as to suggest that
costly organizing campaigns will mean little unless unions
have friends in government. Sweeney backer Larry Cohen,
executive vice president of the Communications Workers of
America, observes that even NUP’s proposed 50 percent dues
rebate will not add much to the total organizing budget of
large unions like SEIU and the Teamsters.
“Unless we change the anti-worker
policies that are destroying good jobs and stop the
forces—from the National Labor Relations Board to state
governments— that are rolling back workers’ rights, we can’t
win gains for workers,” Sweeney told reporters.
If the AFL-CIO executive council’s
recommendations are approved at the July convention, Sweeney
will have succeeded in transforming the federation’s already
expensive interventions in political campaigns into a
year-round operation. That will allow the AFL-CIO to push for
more grassroots mobilization and increase its impact on policy
debates like Social Security reform.
Sweeney’s critics turn his argument on
its head: the labor movement’s success in politics depends on
mobilizing the grassroots, they say, and the AFL-CIO’s
political clout will only weaken until its membership expands.
Hoffa argues that “a massive shift in resources and focus on
organizing and growth is the only path to rebuilding worker
power in the workplace and the political process.” Relying
primarily on politics “simply ensures further decline.”
Stern sees no point to the executive
council’s proposed “massive boost in political spending” when
the AFL-CIO’s clout is waning—even, according to Stern, within
the Democratic Party.
“I do not put much faith in elected
officials of either party,” Stern told the Washington Post.
Conservative critics of the AFL-CIO see
little merit in either strategy.
“The choice between politics and
organizing is a lose-lose one for the unions,” Denholm says.
“They have come to realize that present laws protecting
employee rights to decide on whether or not to organize are
working against them because American workers are increasingly
rejecting unionism. They must then choose political activity
in the hope of changing those laws.”
Stan Greer, an official of the National
Right to Work Committee, points out that despite enormous
membership losses, Sweeney has not been AWOL on union
organizing. Likewise, the AFL-CIO’s electoral losses doesn’t
mean it hasn’t made a huge commitment to politics.
“The fact is, the investment of union
funds into organizing has already increased substantially
under John Sweeney’s presidency,” Greer says.
“Most top officials at AFL-CIO
affiliates believe massive additional investments would be
subject to the law of diminishing returns.” That’s a
reasonable assumption, and the same can be said about
increasing union political spending.
But Ryan Ellis, executive director of
the Alliance for Worker Freedom and federal affairs manager at
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), believes NUP’s call for
increased organizing is the labor movement’s “only hope to
stem the tide of declining membership”—an opportunity that has
been lost with the AFL-CIO executive council’s embrace of
politics.
“This will lead to a continual and even
accelerated vicious cycle of more money spent on politics,
losing in elections (as they have done every year Sweeney has
been at the helm), alienating and losing members, and trying
to change the subject of declining influence by spending yet
more on politics,” Ellis predicts.
Value of Politics
The AFL-CIO claims it is responsible for
a significant increase in voter turnout—a claim that is key to
Sweeney’s argument for expanding the federation’s political
and lobbying program. The portion of the total U.S. electorate
attributed to union households increased from 14 percent in
1994 to 26 percent in 2000, and probably a similar portion in
2004. Without union support, Democrats would fare much worse,
an argument that explains Howard Dean’s aggressive courting of
union leaders as soon as he took the helm of the Democratic
National Committee.
But what if the voter turnout numbers
are wrong? John Judis of the liberal New Republic —who
argues that the debate over organizing and politics is less
important than finding a replacement for John Sweeney—cites
research that suggests union voter turnout has remained
substantially unchanged. The AFL-CIO relies on Voter News
Service polls, but post- 1994 numbers are based on a survey
method that may overestimate turnout.
In any event there is no doubt that
union political support is key to almost any Democrat’s chance
for national office. However, union eagerness to award
members’ dues almost exclusively to liberal Democrats is part
of the problem. It’s what led the Wall Street Journal
last month to declare politics “the root of Big Labor’s larger
membership crisis.” Polls show union members are much more
conservative than the politicians they help elect, especially
on cultural issues.
Harold Schaitberger, president of the
International Association of Fire Fighters, has advocated a
less partisan approach to union politics: “We shouldn’t be
taken for granted by any party, and we shouldn’t be owned by
any party.” Echoing statements made by Stern and Wilhelm,
Schaitberger told the New York Sun that the Democrats
“have often been less loyal to labor than labor has been” to
them. Unfortunately, instead of provoking discussion,
Schaitberger has been marked a traitor by many in labor for
even suggesting openness to more liberal Republicans.
“The AFL-CIO political program has
devolved to the point where we are only an appendage, or a
wing, of the Democratic Party,” argues Wilhelm, who needs
rank-and-file support to contest Sweeney in July.
Unions like AFSCME, the American
Federation of Teachers and the Communications Workers of
America already rely heavily on politics and lobbying to reach
their legislative goals. Ironically, the success of
conservative politicians has increased their determination to
endorse Sweeney’s strategy of increasing union political
power. NLRB rulings and state restrictions on public employee
bargaining rights are “politically driven decisions by
right-wingers,” AFSCME’s Booth told reporters, and they
increase union leaders’ resolve “that we must be effective in
the political sphere just to save the amount of rights that
workers have today.”
So what do conservative observers of
union activity say about Sweeney’s heavy emphasis on politics?
Steven Miller, policy director of the Nevada Policy Research
Institute in Las Vegas, watched the AFL-CIO dispute play out
in his backyard. He recalled the aphorism, “What you are
shouts so loudly that I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
“In other words, no matter how much
money the AFL-CIO puts into political organizing, the
essential rancor at the heart of the organization always tends
to surface in various ways and turns people off, while
stimulating active opposition,” Miller says. “This has always
been Big Labor’s effect, and I would tend to think that in the
new media environment we’re entering, it will be so even
more.”
ATR’s Ryan Ellis notes that union ties
to the Democrats are stronger than ever: More than 98 percent
of union contributions have gone to Democrats since 1988. But
he points to the results of all this political spending:
“Uninterrupted Republican control of the House—the only
interlude happening not because of an election, but because of
the Jeffords defection—with more Republicans than ever; eight
years of George W. Bush and [Secretary] Elaine Chao at Labor;
and before that a NAFTA/GATT/WTO-signing Bill Clinton.”
“Does the AFL-CIO really think this
political money was used wisely” Ellis asks, “and could it
have slowed the slide from 16.5 percent union membership in
1994 down to 12.5 percent today?”
Stan Greer and Paul Kersey, a labor
policy analyst who has worked at both The Heritage Foundation
and Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy, disagree
about whether the AFL-CIO’s emphasis on politics will increase
its clout within the Democratic Party.
Greer thinks so. “The Bill Clinton wing
of the party that was willing to buck the union bosses on
trade and a handful of other issues is in decline,” Greer
says. “Therefore, I think union officials will have a bigger
say than ever before in picking who the Democratic nominees
are in the 2006 and 2008 congressional races and the 2008
presidential campaign.”
The success of these union-picked
Democratic candidates is another question, says Greer, “and
that depends in large part on how the White House and GOP
congressional leaders respond to unprecedentedly monolithic
Big Labor opposition.”
Kersey, however, sees a possibility that
Democrats will loosen their ties to labor.
“Stern is a bit more enlightened than
Sweeney, but neither of them is likely to break the links to
the Democratic Left, meaning that both the AFL-CIO and the
SEIU group remain wedded to the Left and have little room to
maneuver,” Kersey says. “Division in the house of labor will
make union leaders even less credible in the counsels of the
Democratic Party.”
The AFL-CIO could still secure political
victory despite itself, Denholm suggests.
“Much of how the unions fare politically
in 2006 and 2008 will depend on the economy,” Denhom predicts.
“If there is a strong economic downturn, some incumbents will
lose elections, and it is very likely that organized labor
will have supported their opponents. Then, like a barnyard
rooster convinced the sun rose because of its crowing, they
will claim to have been responsible—but it is unlikely that
knowledgeable observers will give this much credence.”
Choosing a Leader
Upon taking office in 1995 John Sweeney
promised that he would not stay more than ten years. Now he
says he is still the best man for the job. He claims to have
all the support he needs to win reelection, including backing
from AFSCME, the Communications Workers, the Machinists and
Aerospace Workers, and several small unions.
Nevertheless, Wilhelm reportedly has
told associates that he expects to challenge Sweeney if he
thinks he can win. Wilhelm has the backing of Unite Here, SEIU,
the Laborers and the Teamsters. Other potential supporters
include the United Auto Workers and the United Food and
Commercial Workers. Altogether, these unions still do not
constitute the majority of votes Wilhelm needs, but they put
him in striking distance.
“I always run as if I’m in the toughest
battle of my life,” Sweeney said in Las Vegas, after Wilhelm
declined to announce his candidacy. “Nobody has told me they
are going to run for any of the offices in the AFL-CIO, but
we’ll look forward to any challengers we have.”
Denholm thinks Sweeney has nothing to
worry about, and the news media covering the AFL-CIO seems to
agree.
“It is unlikely that there will be a
dramatic change in leadership in the labor federation this
year or for the next four years,” Denholm says. “The personal
interests of some leaders are very entrenched and are
threatened more by the idea of a radical change in leadership
than they are by a continued gradual decline in membership.”
Going Nowhere Fast
“My best guess regarding the likeliest
outcome of the current furor in the labor federation is more
of the same—more decline in membership, more backbiting and
infighting, and more turmoil in the leadership for years to
come,” predicts Nevada’s Miller.
Other union critics agree. None sees a
rosy picture for the AFL-CIO regardless of what it decides to
do.
“Neither ‘side’ in the current
leadership wars wants to really address the fundamental
problem afflicting organized labor,” Miller observes. The real
problem is increasing numbers of “better informed workers out
in the marketplace who do not, fundamentally, want to fit into
the traditional role into which the union bosses insist on
shoving them: ignorant stooges who toe the line, shout the
right slogans on demand and muscle-up individuals who prefer
to go their own, unorganized way.”
Denholm also thinks union leaders “are
caught in a time warp going back to at least the 1930s.”
“They refuse to acknowledge that the
world of employment has changed, in most cases for the
better,” Denholm says. “Unions are built on conflict, not
cooperation. Both employers and employees have discovered that
they are better off with cooperation than with conflict. That
is not to say that there are not still differences of
interests, only that there are better ways to deal with those
differences than labor unionism.”
Mike Antonucci, whose Education
Intelligence Agency challenges the exaggerated claims of
teachers unions, notes that the declining size of the 13
million-member AFL-CIO unions will soon match the growing
number of self-employed Americans, now more than 10 million.
“Soon there will be more people signing
their own paychecks than paying dues to a union,” Antonucci
predicts. “Is there a place in that world for the AFL-CIO?”
Miller says there is certainly room for “thoroughly
professional representation agencies that truly work for the
best interests of their clients.” But that is not American
organized labor, he says.
Instead, it appears the AFL-CIO is
intent on using its waning influence acting as a political
interest group. Ellis predicts more electoral losses, but
perhaps some influence on legislation in coming years.
“The unions will continue to throw money
away, lose, and throw more money away to cover their prior
losses,” Ellis says. “In the meantime, they will use their
declining influence—but still most powerful among the Left—to
try to stop Social Security reform, tax reform, judges, and
moving to defined-contribution public sector pensions.”
Will the current disputes lead to the
threatened union defections from the AFL-CIO? “Those unions
interested in stopping or reversing membership declines would
have to give it strong thought,” says Ellis.
Kersey’s “educated guess” on what
happens next: “SEIU and a handful of unions walk out of the
AFL-CIO. You may see some attempts at raiding as SEIU and
allies liberate themselves from the AFL-CIO’s jurisdictional
limits. The results may include an up-tick in union membership
as Stern puts more effort into organizing, but the effect will
be disappointing over the longer run because Stern only grasps
half of the problem: the union movement’s policies— political
and economic—are not as attractive to workers as they once
were.”
Denholm also raises the prospects of
union raiding.
“As the union movement consolidates
through mergers, there will be less and less reason for a
labor federation,” Denholm argues. “The AFL-CIO’s rules
against raiding make it very difficult for member unions to
fight over the pieces of an increasingly smaller pie of
potential members. Ambitious unions that want to play the
‘king of the hill’ game of ‘last man standing’ unionism will
find it necessary to leave the federation.”
Predicting exactly what will happen at
the July convention is next to impossible. The AFL-CIO’s next
president, its budget and its membership are all uncertain—and
there could be surprises. But the AFL-CIO’s future is
relatively clear and simple: it will experience continued
turmoil and decline.
“The economy would have taken care of
the unions within two generations,” Ellis concludes. “Their
stupidity and the economy together should do it in just one.”
Patrick J. Reilly is editor of Labor
Watch and a senior fellow at
Capital Research
Center. John Tuason is a freelance writer in Virginia.
