Potentially successful new union strategy, or more hot air?
LA Times reports:“Unions Set to Offer New Strategy; The leaders expect the New Unity Partnership to consolidate the labor organizations”
(This story is by Nancy Cleeland — an LA Times writer who frequently covers important labor and employment stories, which is why LA Times Business is on my blogroll at right.)
Presidents of several of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing unions are expected to lay out plans . . . for fundamental changes . . . that could result in a massive union consolidation and an overhaul of the AFL-CIO.
[T]he five presidents have been quietly meeting for nearly a year to discuss what they call the New Unity Partnership. They envision a massive consolidation of unions in the U.S. — from about 65 to 15 — and a more national and global approach to organizing and bargaining. . .
UNITE and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union . . . are expected to ratify a merger between the two. The combined union, to be called UNITE-HERE, would combine militant memberships and leaders and would focus on low-wage hotel, laundry and other service workers. [SEIU is one of the other major lower-wage unions involved] . . .
The New Unity Partnership proposals have already generated heated discussion, and plenty of dissent, among union leaders and labor researchers. . . .
A decade after John Sweeney won the presidency of the AFL-CIO on a platform of organizing new members, unions have continued in their three-decade decline. The union share of the private workforce was 8.2% last year, down from 8.6% in 2002. . .
[T]he United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners left the AFL-CIO three years ago, saying [they] could use . . . membership money better for organizing. Since then, . . . the union membership has grown — to 538,000 currently — while most other unions have lost members. Read more
Well, construction has been booming, so it’s not clear how much credit Carpenters’ organizing should get.
For some labor viewpoints on the New Unity Partnership, see:
Union Democracy Review: “The New Unity Partnership: Sweeney critics would bureaucratize to organize” (by Herman Benson)(contains further links at bottom)
[I]t does seem clear that the NUP will put substantial resources into organizing. If they follow through, we can expect progress. Bureaucracy at its best, spiced with a dash of idealism, is bound to chalk up some real achievements in organizing the unorganized. If they fail, it will be another in a line of disappointing and discouraging efforts.
If they do succeed, the danger is that they . . . will deepen the trend toward bureaucracy and authoritarianism in the labor movement. . . .
The New Unity Partnership plan in brief:
1. An extended reaffirmation of the truism that everyone already accepts: unions must organize the unorganized.
2. A lengthy visual defense of this point in the form of charts, graphs, and statistical tables.
3. A plan for bureaucratization of the labor movement.
4. A statement that the five internationals intend to put massive resources into organizing and forge ahead without waiting for the rest of the AFL-CIO. Read more
Workers’ Action website (a refreshingly radical site in Commie Red, complete with images of Lenin and a Soviet-retro hammer & sickle): “The New Unity Partnership and the Crisis of Labor”
To fight against corruption and bureaucratization in the union movement, no leader should make more then the average worker in his/her union. Furthermore, the rank and file should have the right to immediate recall of any leader. There is no more chance that the NUP leadership will agree to this then the AFL-CIO leadership. [Of course not] They are sitting fat and comfortable on top of the union movement, even as their memberships’ jobs disappear and their wages and benefits decline.
No doubt, but this is scarcely a cause of the unions’ decline. These utopian radicals should realize that the higher pay of union leaders proves (among other things) that the power of the market prevails over ideology every time. To attract and retain the best people, for union leadership as for any other job, you have to pay them at a level competitive with other alternatives available to them.
Union leadership types who rise through the ranks have typically demonstrated skills, quality, and ambition such that they could be starting their own businesses, or getting promoted into management instead of becoming union leaders — and many of them are.
Over the long haul, you can’t pay people less than they’re worth on a free labor market; just as you can’t pay them more.
The latter point is a major cause of union decline — over time, union-coerced above-market wages shut down businesses or force them to move. Short-term, the strongest unions can coerce the weakest employers to pay above-market wages and benefits; long-term this is simply unsustainable.
The Workers’ Action Commies continue:
When there was an eruption of unionization in the Thirties, it was propelled by mass militant actions that lead to solid victories. [That and the Great Depression.] Complete confidence in the power of the rank and file to shut down production is needed to revitalize the union movement today. [Confidence is for squat if you can't actually do it -- and they can't. The smarter leaders know this.] Non-union workers are less likely to join unless they see an organization fighting for their interests, winning real gains, and building solidarity through action with all workers.
Yet such actions [pay cuts and recalls] would threaten the big wigs of the NUP and the AFL-CIO with their cooperative relationship with management and all the perks this provides them. They want to straddle the line between what is good for the workers and the bosses. But the union movement can’t have it both ways, which is becoming increasingly clear in the period of crisis capitalism has entered. Without a mass militant fight back against the capitalists, any organizing drive, no matter how well funded, will have piddley and temporary results at best.
If the labor movement is to be “revolutionized” and the fortunes of unions reversed, a clear class line must be drawn between the workers with their unions and the bosses with their government. The union movement must stand against compulsory arbitration and no strike clauses. Read more
Wow. They want to take us back to wildcat strikes over minor disputes, when the termination of one union-connected employee could result in union leaders forcing an entire workforce out on the street, instead of arbitrating the termination.
One of the problems is that this class warfare language is hopelessly out of date. Today, unions are “straddling the lines” between the working poor (e.g., the SEIU’s “janitors for justice”) and the comfortably upper-middle class.
In the “good old” radical unionism days, unions represented the downtrodden. Now they represent many of the highest-paid hourly workers in the country (world?)
Is it any surprise they have a hard time getting traction. SEIU, HERE (hotel and restaurant workers) and UNITE (textile workers) are working to organize some of the lowest-wage sectors of the economy, where they find more sympathy for their message.
And why should workers fight against “the capitalists” when they are all capitalists themselves, counting on corporate profits to fatten their 401(k) accounts for retirement?
Finally, “A Rank and File Perspective on the New Unity Partnership” (.pdf) (by John H. Hovis, General President United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE))
[C]ount me among the skeptical that the plan put forward by the New Unity Partnership (NUP), at least as presently advertised, provides the organizational features to attract the new members the NUP is counting on. . .
Under the proper circumstances structural changes designed to pool organizing resources would be a necessary, welcome step. However, in and of themselves structural change and greater resources will not get the job done. Attracting the number of new members required to increase union strength at the bargaining table and in the halls of Congress will require the type of unity, determination and sacrifice that have not been seen in this country since the industrial organization of the 1930′s. . .
From the outside looking in, the strife within the house of labor doesn’t look too inviting to those of us in independent unions, let alone the unorganized. . .
One obvious fault with the strategy being put forward by the leaders of NUP is the lack of importance they place on membership involvement in the mass movement they hope to create and the lack of democratic principles within the organizations they hope to build. . .
It is absolutely true that the corporations fight unionism tooth and nail, but unions also have to overcome their own negative image. Employers paint unions as undemocratic organizations headed by greedy, heavy handed, union leaders with massive egos who relate better to the boss than to the members they represent. It’s a graphic image unions have to work hard to overcome. Read more
There’s some good insight there.
