The Strange
Debate
By Steven
Miller
BusinessNevada
If you’re getting
the impression that something about the on-going spat between
union chiefs in the AFL-CIO federation doesn’t quite compute,
you’re not alone.
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) boss Andrew Stern
and his allies say they want to restructure Big Labor so that
it can more often “win.” If they can’t get the go-ahead from
the other federation brass (and federation President John
Sweeney’s job), they very well may split in order to build
something “new.” Even for many union insiders, however, that
explanation doesn’t quite work.
An example is Matt Noyes, a staffer with the Association for
Union Democracy, a union reform group. After the March meeting
in Las Vegas of the AFL-CIO’s executive committee, he
published an article on the LaborNotes.org website titled, “My
Union President Went to Vegas… and All I Got Was This Strange
Debate.”
The discord between the two groups is strange, said Noyes,
“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.” Moreover, both sides admit
that union leadership failures and lack of strategy have
played a big part in Big Labor’s decline, and both sides
agree, essentially, on the current priorities they prescribe
for labor: new organizing and political action.
“It’s not that there are no real differences,” says Noyes,
“but they don’t correspond well to the supposed principles at
stake.” Indeed, he points out, “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 [the
American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees],
who both want to pick up a large unit of child care workers in
Illinois.”
Noyes points out that Stern & Co. were all behind Sweeney nine
years ago when the self-described-socialist Sweeney led a
leftwing takeover and “transformation” of the AFL-CIO. Now the
Stern-led group prescribes more use within the federation of
the organizing and restructuring tactics that Sweeney himself
pioneered when holding Stern’s current job. This does
not
suggest a major difference in vision—a point that Sweeney
attempts to exploit with a document now on the federation
website.
So, if differences between the two factions are
less than meet the eye, what’s the fight really about?
You probably already know, but a 43-page
“Resolutions and Amendments” document recently put forth by
the Stern group provides extensive evidence.
“The heart of the ‘reform,’” recently noted
David Denholm, of the Public Service Research Foundation, “is
to greatly expand membership in the AFL-CIO Executive Council
to the point of it being meaningless and then to create a much
smaller Executive Committee that will really hold the power.”
While one of the top priorities of most union
members has long been greater union democracy and
accountability, the “restructuring” that has been proceeding
in American labor in the last two decades has actually been
quite authoritarian, where members are ignored—when not simply
being told what to do. Nevertheless, the essential criticism
launched by Stern’s “Restoring the American Dream” faction
against Sweeney and most of the other union bosses is that
they haven’t been authoritarian enough!
How the AFL-CIO would handle union mergers—under
the “Dream” proposal—is illustrative: the executive committee
would create a “Blue Ribbon Panel on Strategic Mergers” to
evaluate jurisdictions and propose mergers. The executive
committee would then “facilitate” those mergers. However, “In
those special cases where the AFL-CIO Executive Committee is
unable to facilitate a voluntary merger…” it has the power to
invoke sanctions to force recalcitrant unions and members into
line.
Throughout the document the approach is similar,
whether addressing bargaining demands or political action.
Federation members will be encouraged to meet the “benchmarks”
established by the executive committee. Failure to do so will
result in penalties.
The fight, therefore, is really over power: Just
who can be the most obsessed.
Several recent books have noted the increasingly
prominent authoritarianism in unions like SEIU—and have linked
it to the dominant presence in these unions of former ‘60s
radicals who are still out to control and reshape other human
beings. Though all these books are decidedly pro-union, they
still acknowledge the ex-radicals’ conspicuous arrogance.
Leading to the question: Given how they treat
their own union members, how will they—given the chance—treat
the rest of us?
Steven Miller is editor of BusinessNevada (biz.npri.org) and policy
director for the Nevada Policy Research Institute (www.npri.org).
