As Bush savors election victory
Anti-war labor movement grows
By Milt Neidenberg
Hardly any attention has been paid in the media to the labor
movement's role in the Nov. 5 elections and how labor will be
affected in their aftermath. The AFL-CIO, except for a few
defections to Republican candidates, went all out to defeat the
Bush administration. It failed. Much can be learned from
defeats; maybe these leaders will do some heavy soul searching
in the stormy period ahead.
One fact stands out. The AFL-CIO's support for the
Democratic Party and its liberal wing cost dearly. Republican
and Democratic campaigns alike buried the issue uppermost in
workers' minds: the economic crisis. Waging war against Iraq
along with homeland security and the so-called war on terrorism
overwhelmed the electorate. The AFL-CIO's top leaders got
entangled in the capitalist web.
Millions of the multinational work force--people of color,
women, youths and seniors, unemployed, lesbian, gay, bi and
trans workers, the poor--stood on the sidelines as the
Democrats succumbed to the blitz by Bush and his billionaire
supporters. Only 39 percent of eligible voters pulled the
levers in this lackluster election.
The workers expected a vigorous campaign to take on the
greedy, profit-driven moguls. It didn't happen.
AFL-CIO National Political Director Steve Rosenthal, who
directed labor's election strategy, ignored all these critical
factors in explaining labor's setback. He offered a tepid
criticism of the Democrats: "Overall, a lot of the building
blocks you need to put together Democratic victories just
weren't there in a lot of states. ... Republicans gave their
voters a reason to go out and vote and the Democrats did
not."
Nevertheless, the AFL-CIO leadership tried to overcome the
fruitless, do-nothing Democratic campaign. Led by AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney, they put on a massive push using union
power, money and other resources to get out the membership to
support the very same Democrats who had failed their
constituencies--labor, African Americans, Latinos, women and
the rest of the workers.
They contacted each of the 13.5 million members at least
four times. They deployed 750 full-time political organizers
across the country, handed out 20 million leaflets and arranged
transportation to the polls for tens of thousands of
workers.
In Las Vegas alone, they tracked over 10,000 union
households a day with high-tech PalmPilots and then downloaded
the data every night into a central computer. They followed
this up with an army of door knockers to get out the vote to
elect "labor-friendly" Democratic candidates. A
password-protected web site made this campaign available to
many other cities.
In late May, the AFL-CIO General Executive Board levied an
increase of four cents, making a total of 10 cents, on each
member of the 66 affiliates to build up the organizing and
electoral funds. How many millions of dollars were spent has
not been announced, but the labor movement was totally outspent
by its Democratic "friends" and billionaire Republicans.
Now the Bush administration intends to turn back the clock
on many of the laws that labor fought for and won over decades
of struggle. Corporate America has begun to target the labor
movement. A Wall Street Journal headline on Nov. 8, only three
days after the Bush victory, gloated: "Big Labor Could Pay
Price After GOP Gains." The article cited only a few of the
labor-friendly laws still on the books that have to go.
The Fair Labor Standards Act is one. It protects workers'
rights with many regulations. Employers want to lengthen the
40-hour week to the "good ol' days" before unions were
organized. They want to weaken the Family and Medical Leave Act
that gives workers as much as 12 weeks of unpaid leave for
health and related problems. The bosses want these workers on
the job. Forget about their health and safety and that of their
loved ones.
Then there is the concern that the International Longshore
and Warehouse Union is too strong. Options include placing dock
workers under the auspices of the Railway Labor Act. That would
make government intervention against the union easier than
using the Taft-Hartley Act. An ILWU spokesperson quoted in the
Journal said these threats "are unlikely to succeed."
There is a resistance emerging from below that could take
the glow out of the Bush electoral victory. The Wall Street
tycoons' shameless conduct has infuriated millions of workers.
They identify the Bush administration with the obscene wealth
that has been ripped off at their expense.
New York Times labor writer Steven Greenhouse, who has
extensive ties to both labor and management, wrote in an Oct.
29 article that "the ebullient mood of American workers during
the 1990s boom has evaporated over the last two years, a victim
of recession, rising unemployment, a hobbled stock market and
scandals at WorldCom, Enron and other corporations."
In the piece, headlined "The Mood at Work: Anger and
Anxiety" and published a week before the election, Greenhouse
warned his liberal capitalist constituents that workers are fed
up with the direction of the economy and that major class
struggles may soon break out:
"Most workers surveyed said they would vote to join a union.
... Workers are voicing a sense of anger, even betrayal toward
top executives. ... They're asking people to make sacrifices
... [while they're] feeding at the trough to enrich
themselves."
Opposition to the Bush billionaire clique and their lies
about Iraq, homeland security, and the so-called war on terror
is growing. A sector of the organized labor movement and a
significant number of AFL-CIO labor councils have taken up this
attack. From the Washington State Federation of Labor to the
second-largest Teamsters union in the country to the Albany
Central Labor Council, many unions, too numerous to mention,
have passed anti-war resolutions with overwhelming votes.
They oppose the Bush strategy to feed the war drive and the
military-industrial complex with billions of dollars that could
go toward desperately needed social and economic programs.
As the anti-war labor movement grows, the labor bureaucracy
will feel the pressure to change direction. They have reached a
crossroad. The AFL-CIO must break with the two-party system and
the warmongers who speak for different wings of the capitalist
bosses. The labor movement's destiny lies with the millions of
anti-war activists and their many constituencies that include
anti-racist, anti-globalization fighters, youths, seniors,
women, and others. In the stormy period ahead, there is no
other way.
Reprinted from the Nov. 21, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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