AFL-CIO organizing runs into political attack
By Shelley Ettinger
Coming together at a moment of contradictory
challenges and opportunities, the AFL-CIO Executive Council met
in Las Vegas March 18-20.
The resort town is the scene of a massive multi-union
organizing drive that is expected to make Las Vegas the most
unionized city in the United States.
By meeting there, the labor movement's top officials
underscored their stated priority: organizing. Much of their
discussion focused on how to bring in new union members,
especially low-paid women workers.
But labor's renewed emphasis on organizing and its revived
fighting spirit-shown most strikingly with last summer's
victorious Teamsters strike at United Parcel Service-have
enraged the bosses. At the same time, with corporate profits
rising, there are signs that workers want to fight for higher
pay and improved benefits. This too has alarmed the capitalist
class.
So at the Las Vegas meeting, the AFL-CIO leadership had to
focus on defending the labor movement from the intensifying
attack the bosses are mounting.
One part of that attack is the war against the Teamsters
union and its president.
Ron Carey did not attend the Executive Council meeting.
Carey is on leave while he fights to defend himself and his
union. At a crucial moment, then, the AFL-CIO is without the
services of one of its most militant leaders.
Teamsters to be Gingriched
The House subcommittee "investigating" the Teamsters is set
to open a new round of hearings March 26. Subcommittee Chair
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Education and Workforce Committee Chair
Rep. William Goodling, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich met
March 18 to plan strategy for this next stage of the
anti-Teamster attack.
According to a March 19 report in the Washington Post, the
three discussed issuing a new set of subpoenas to force the
union to turn over all its financial records.
This situation was undoubtedly a prime topic in private
sessions at the Las Vegas meeting. Yet AFL-CIO President John
Sweeney did not publicly denounce the persecution of Ron
Carey.
Sweeney missed an opportunity to take a forthright stand in
solidarity with Carey and the Teamsters. It would have been
especially timely had Sweeney linked the attack on Carey with
the other attacks he and the Executive Council did address.
For example, the union leaders said they would work to
swiftly defeat a bill headed for a House vote the week of March
22. Goodling introduced the bill. He calls it the "Fairness for
Small Business and Employees Act of 1998."
Goodling's bill would allow employers to fire workers who
sought their jobs for the purpose of organizing a union. It
would also change the labor law to make it harder for unions to
organize workers at individual stores, restaurants or nursing
homes in a chain.
Two years ago Congress used that same tactic-forcing a union
to organize an entire company spread out over the country
rather than letting it target specific locales-to pass a law
specifically intended to stymie union organizing at Federal
Express.
Another bill, the so-called Paycheck Protection Act, would
bar unions from using membership dues to fund political
activity unless they get each member's express consent.
Acknowledging that this bill may not pass, the anti-labor
forces are taking a page from their own book: employing the
same tactic with which they won "right-to-work" laws barring
union shops in about half the states. They're turning to a
state-by-state strategy to push through measures barring unions
from using dues for any but the most limited purposes.
In California, Proposition 226 is a statewide version of the
"Paycheck Protection Act." Voters there will decide on
Proposition 226 in the June 2 primary.
The business class sees it as a great weapon against the
unions. The bosses are pulling out all the stops to win its
passage.
Gov. Pete Wilson is fully behind Pro position 226. So is the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which also backs similar measures in
30 other states.
Political mobilization
or worker mobilization?
In Las Vegas March 19, the Executive Council voted to ask
each of the AFL-CIO's 72 member unions to make a special
one-time contribution of $1 per member to the federation's
political-mobilization fund. This would bring in $13 million
more than the $15 million already approved.
The money is to be earmarked to fight Proposition 226 and
the other anti-labor bills on the national and state levels. It
will also go toward fighting to win a raise in the federal
minimum wage. On March 19 Sen. Edward Kennedy introduced a bill
to raise the minimum by 20 percent, to $6.15 an hour.
The money will also be spent on backing politicians'
election campaigns. A troop of them made appearances in Las
Vegas.
Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, House Minority Leader Richard
Gep hardt and Vice President Al Gore all addressed the
Executive Council. President Bill Clinton spoke to a group of
Electrical Workers union apprentices.
In fact, the big-business media portrayed the Las Vegas
meeting as though its main item of business was support for
Democratic Party politicians. The media essentially defined the
Executive Council as cheerleaders for the Clinton
administration.
The Las Vegas meeting would have strengthened organized
labor much more if Sweeney and the leadership had challenged
that definition-for instance, by announcing bold new
initiatives to mobilize the workers on a mass scale.
Everything on labor's agenda-raising the minimum wage,
expanding and winning organizing drives, winning more funding
for child care, making every employer provide free family
health care for every employee, defending affirmative
action-all this demands mass mobilization. And bringing the
workers into action is certainly the way to drive back the
ruling-class attacks now pounding the labor movement.
Anything less is inadequate to the task. Relying on
lobbying? Behind-the-scenes maneuvering? Campaigning for
politicians whose only interest is union money and labor
votes?
None of this will defeat the attacks or move the workers'
movement forward.
Since the government opened the latest phase of its war
against the Teamsters union-also threatening action against
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and several national
union presidents-the labor leadership has seemed stuck.
Apparently, they are unsure about how to proceed in light of
the attacks.
So they have allowed some of the momentum and excitement
built up in the first two years of the new AFL-CIO to ebb.
Labor should respond by going on the offensive. As they say,
the best defense is a good offense.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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