AFL-CIO WORKING WOMEN'S CONFERENCE
The exultant new face of labor
By Shelley Ettinger
Since October 1995, when the new, more progressive, more
struggle-oriented leadership under John Sweeney took over at
the AFL-CIO, developments in the labor movement have been
mixed.
There are steps forward--like the emphasis on organizing
low-wage workers, which mostly means women and people of color.
But there are also steps back--like the campaign against
China.
And for all the talk of a sea change, there is a lot of
staying in the same place. Unions are now winning slightly more
representation elections than they're losing, and the number of
new union members is finally growing. Still, the proportion of
the work force that is in unions remains flat, at 13.9
percent.
Yet unions remain the only organized expression of the
workers as workers. That's why an event like the AFL-CIO
Working Women 2000 conference in Chicago the weekend of March
11-12 was so important.
Five thousand women workers were there, from many unions and
from every region in the country. About 60 percent of the
participants were white and 40 percent women of color. By far
most of the women of color were African American, although
there were also Latina and Asian women.
In the huge hall packed with 5,000 women workers, there was
a sense of the awesome potential for struggle. There was
electricity in the room. These workers seemed ready for
battle.
And they were provided with plenty of information and
motivation for battle. AFL-CIO Working Women's Department
Director Karen Nussbaum reported on thousands of "ask a working
woman" meetings held around the country, and on a national
survey. The number-one issue for women workers is better pay.
Other key issues are health care, paid medical and parental
leave, retirement benefits and union rights.
Lula Bronson, an African American Service Employees
organizer, reported on the drive to win union rights for home
health aides in Illinois. Noemi Fulgencio, a cashier at the
Metropolitan Opera cafeteria here in New York, told how she and
her co-workers are fighting for union recognition.
WNBA basketball star Kym Hampton of the New York Liberty
thrilled everyone with her story of fighting for decent pay and
benefits for women athletes--and riled everyone up when she
pointed out that although the WNBA players now have their first
union contract, the minimum salary is $25,000 compared to the
$250,000 for the NBA. "Who stole the zero?" she asked.
Myung Ja Koo, a Korean immigrant worker, told of the
horrible conditions Asian women face in electronics-assembly
shops on the West Coast. Farm Workers Vice President Dolores
Huerta said that any time a government body made up only of men
tries to meet it should be declared an illegal assembly and
shut down.
Workers told of struggles at Bridgestone-Firestone, the
University of Illinois and Delta Airlines. A leader of United
Students Against Sweatshops who was recently jailed for the
sit-in in Madison, Wis., spoke.
And there was a stirring call to action from Dita Sari, the
courageous young labor leader who was just recently released
after being imprisoned for three years by the U.S.-backed
Indonesian government. Sari named U.S. banks and corporations,
the IMF, the World Bank and WTO as the causes of Indonesian
workers' misery. She called for real international solidarity,
not just rhetoric.
When she finished speaking, the workers rose to their feet
in an ovation as AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda
Chavez-Thompson embraced her.
In some ways, Dita Sari's talk was the most important of the
weekend. It was certainly the most political, the most overtly
class-conscious, and the most anti-imperialist.
And it shone a spotlight on the central glaring problem of
the conference.
For Dita Sari's talk was the last one of the weekend. It was
delivered to a hall that was half empty.
At some point between the time the original conference
brochure was prepared and when the final schedule was printed,
someone in the Sweeney leadership realized that the Saturday
afternoon plenary session would be the best attended, the high
point of the conference.
Originally the Saturday afternoon session was to be on
organizing and international solidarity and the Sunday morning
one was to focus on the bourgeois elections and the Al Gore
campaign. Instead, the schedule was flipped to devote the
Saturday afternoon plenary to Gore.
Reports by Dita Sari and other leaders of actual women
workers' struggles were relegated to Sunday morning when most
people were already heading home.
Here is the core contradiction, the
one-step-forward-one-step-back,
undo-with-the-right-hand-what-the-left-hand-is-doing problem of
the Sweeney leadership: the failure to lead the workers wholly
in the direction of genuine independent struggle. The failure
to break from reliance on the Democratic Party--a party that
represents the boss class.
It's more than a failure. It's a betrayal. Here were workers
ready to struggle. And here were their leaders talking of
struggle. Ultimately, however, where do the leaders lead? Not
toward real struggle, but down the tired old dead-end alley of
bourgeois electoral politics, making workers who want to fight
the capitalist class instead be captive to it.
This is accomplished by lying to the workers.
When Al Gore spoke Saturday afternoon, the workers roared
and stomped and waved signs. They were genuinely fired up. Why?
Because he was presented, and he presented himself, as the
candidate of class struggle.
Listening to his speech was quite instructive. He told the
women he is himself a working parent. That he knows what women
workers want. And he'll fight for it all.
Gore promised a national commitment to quality child care.
After-school care. Universal preschool. To raise the minimum
wage.
In fact, he concluded, "I will put the concerns of working
women right at the top of America's agenda."
That is simply not true. He won't. But only through this
claim can Gore win workers' support, and get them mobilized to
do the legwork and phone calling and so on so he can get
elected.
Does the Sweeney leadership actually believe Gore will be
this great labor president? Most of them know better. But they
are afraid of Bush and the Republicans.
And they are oriented so heavily toward bourgeois-political
action instead of toward mass worker action that they don't
know what else to do but rely on "friendly" politicians instead
of on worker mobilization.
Especially in the wake of the ouster of the Ron Carey
leadership at the Teamsters, there is an even heavier reliance
on the Democrats now than earlier in the Sweeney years. There
is in fact some deterioration, a letting up on the emphasis on
organizing, and this is the direct result of the desperate,
fearful obsession with electing Gore.
There were 85 workshops at the conference. There were nearly
50 plenary speakers. Topics included international solidarity,
living-wage campaigns, lesbian/gay/ bi/trans workers,
contingent workers, health care, organizing and violence
against women. Women from the Boeing strike were there. Women
from poultry-processing plants in the South. And so on.
Yet overall, the emphasis on the Gore campaign was so heavy
that you could easily forget about these struggles.
Instead of palling around with Gore, Sweeney should be
marching against the police killing of another unarmed Black
man by New York cops.
Labor should be organizing prisoners and demanding living
wages and union rights for them.
Labor should be protesting the exclusion of the Irish
Lesbian and Gay Organization from the St. Patrick's Day parade
and congratulating the state of Vermont for moving closer to
equal rights for same-sex couples.
Labor should be standing with the People's Republic of China
against U.S. imperialism, not leading a jingoistic, racist mass
campaign against China.
And what about clear-cut union issues--like workfare
slavery? And full rights for immigrant workers? Labor has the
right position on these struggles on paper, but why isn't it
organizing struggles on them instead of organizing political
campaign rallies for millionaires?
And where is labor in the struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal?
Many local unions have passed resolutions and gotten involved.
But the national leadership shrinks from taking on the racist
ruling class in such a direct confrontation as defending this
political prisoner.
Yet winning a new trial for Abu-Jamal would strengthen the
entire working-class movement and help push back the bosses'
ongoing offensive against the workers and oppressed.
Luckily, this alternative perspective was heard at the
conference. A Workers World Party delegation reached out to the
women workers with a message of revolutionary struggle. WWP
members handed thousands of labor fliers for the May 7 rally
for Mumia at the Madison Square Garden Theater.
Presidential candidate Monica Moorehead herself opened the
2000 Workers World Party election campaign at the conference.
Thousands of beautiful new Moorehead/La Riva campaign brochures
were handed out. Moorehead chatted with women workers at a
"meet the candidate" reception.
Despite the AFL-CIO's heavy-handed push to line up the
workers for Gore, these women's openness to the Moorehead/La
Riva campaign showed that workers can be reached with another
approach--one that is grounded in optimism and confidence in
the power of the working class.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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