Business Unionism And The Crisis In The AFL-CIO

"Chickens Coming Home To Roost"

by Steve Zeltzer

The failure of the Democrats and the Kerry campaign nationally has brought to the fore the growing splits and cracks within the the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The AFL-CIO convention this coming July 25, 2005 in Chicago could lead to the breakup of the AFL-CIO.

The formation of the AFL-CIO was in fact a step backward for the US working class. It came into being in 1955 on the basis of driving communists and militants out of the CIO unions and providing a secure apparatus that the corporations could collaborate with. It helped solidify business unionism and labor management collaboration as the bedrock of US trade unions from the UAW to the Teamsters. It also made it difficult for workers to leave corrupt or politically bankrupt unions since all members of the AFL-CIO are prevented from accepting locals or groups of members from another AFL-CIO affiliated union. This helped lock in workers to unions regardless of how they treated their members.

Bedrock Crumbling

That bedrock is now crumbling. US capitalists and the Democrats and Republicans who they control no longer need their alliance with the trade union bureaucracy. They have shifted production out of the United States using NAFTA and the WTO and they have instituted a thorough-going deregulation and privatisation program supported by the Democrats that has destroyed or whipsawed heavily unionised sectors from trucking, airlines, rail and communication. We only have to remember that Jimmy Carter helped bring in Alfred E. Kahn at the Civil Aeronautics Board. He is known as the father of airline deregulation and this deregulation scam has been used as a weapon to destroy not only hundreds of thousands of unionised jobs in the airlines but in many other industries as well.

The complete privatisation of the federal government, which is now being driven by Bush, has also been supported by Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi and many others. Pelosi voted to privatise federal military workers and supported eliminating union protection for hundreds of thousands of other federal workers under the Homeland Security Act.

The privatisation of medicare was also initially supported by none other than Ted Kennedy when he agreed to "work" with the Republicans to "get drugs" into the medicare program. Kennedy, by helping the Republicans to get this bill taken forward, helped give them cover in their campaign to push privatisation of medicare. Was he another one of the Democrat who was "duped" about the game plan of the Republicans? Now Bush is intent on turning social security into a 401K with no defined benefits or pensions. This wholesale attack on organised labor and the entire working class has been unanswered by any national campaign of the AFL-CIO or any of its affiliates.

It has refused to mobilise its millions against NAFTA, against the taking away of overtime by Bush or the effort to privatise social security as well as to fight the removal of labor rights for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

It "talks" about organising the unorganised but it has refused to provide millions of dollars to organise in the South despite the repeated urging of trade union activists in the South. Their idea of organising is not supporting rank and file militants and activists but bringing in college students who have never been workers. In fact, when Tenneco Corporation orchestrated the kidnapping and drugging of IUOE rank and file organiser Gary McClain in South Carolina, he was literally dropped like a hot potato. He is now destitute because of the refusal of the IUOE and the AFL-CIO "Organising Department" to support him and to expose the use the terror tactics in a national campaign for workers rights. The AFL-CIO's chief of organising Stuart Acoff, who is from Atlanta, did not even know who Gary McClain was when questioned at the last AFL-CIO convention.

Another clear example of this policy was the failure of the AFL-CIO to use the victory of the ILA Local 1422 Charleston 5 dockworkers as a kickoff point to organise the south. Not one international AFL-CIO official even had the time to attend the victory celebration at the ILA 1422 offices. While they initially supported this fight, they refused to use the national victory to build an organising campaign in the South. They of course might have not wanted to offend ILA president John Bowers, who was intent in crushing the ILA 1422 struggle because the local was in opposition to his corrupt and bureaucratic practices.

The silence as well by the AFL-CIO and most of the Internationals to the growing racist attacks in the workplace has been deafening. There has been an epidemic of "hanging noose" incidents, where Black workers and others are terrorised by nooses being put up in the workplace. Not one international union has had an article about these assaults.

Rampant racism in many industries is a norm and again there has been no national campaign by the AFL-CIO to organise to expose these racist conditions.

The highly touted Immigrant's Rights Caravan launched by the AFL-CIO was bureaucratically organised and the issue of the Patriot Act and the repressive "anti-terrorist" legislation [46K PDF] and the massive round-up of Arab and Muslim workers in the United States was not even an issue at their rallies and national campaign.

Labor On The Democrat's "quarantine list-again."

In the recent Dec 2004 - Jan 2005 journal of the Operating Engineers [3MB PDF], Frank Hanley, the international president, reflected on the growing crisis within the AFL-CIO:

That post-election meeting produced an unheard-of-outpouring of anger and disgust with the Democratic Party. Council member after council member, all of them heads of their respective, affiliated unions, vented disdain for the labor movement and its members. This despite the fact that had it not been for labor's Herculean efforts for the most part on behalf of the Democrats, their losses would have been even more drastic than they were." The Democrats treat labor like it's some kind of infectious disease between elections. How much labor legislation have we gotten out of the Democrats over the last 50 years even when there were in power? Don't rack your memory too hard because I can tell you we haven't received much. And labor certainly hasn't received anything relative to or equal to its efforts on behalf of Democrats. However, come election years and the Democrats fall all over themselves trying "to put the arm" on labor for its funds, talent and volunteers. They cajole, they promise the world in return for labor's support. But then the elections are over, and win, lose or draw, the Democrats immediately relegate labor to the quarantine list-again.

Behind the growing anger and crisis within the well-paid top layers of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy is the fear that business unionism and their alliance with this or that capitalist politician is not working anymore, either to allow them to bring more workers into their unions or to make deals with the politicians.

The "Shakers" In The AFL-CIO

The biggest "shakers" in the AFL-CIO who see the writing on the wall are the NUP or New Unity Partnership [now disbanded - Ed]. It consists of SEIU president Andy Stern, Unite Here president John Wilhelm, LIUNA president John O'Sullivan and Doug McCarron of the Carpenters. In their view, the crisis is fundamentally an organisational problem. What is needed is for all workers in the same industry in the same union and the elimination of the smaller unions of the AFL-CIO so that they will have more power.

They say they want to "streamline" the AFL-CIO and do more organising. McCarron is supposedly a prime example of what they have in mind. He has eliminated membership control over union locals, taken away the right to vote on contracts and the vote on union representatives. Regional directors that he basically appoints are in control of districts with tens of thousands of members. Stern has organised along similar lines in the SEIU. Mergers are being pushed through against the will of the members and he is appointing his cohorts to run locals of tens thousands of members. These apparatchiks have never worked as hospital or public workers but are "professional" labor hacks. At the last convention, Stern's cronies turned off the microphone to prevent delegates from challenging his effort to push through autocratic rules that would set up appointed regional bargaining teams. He also prevented Massachusetts Local 509, led at the time by John Templeton, from introducing a resolution for direct election of the top officers like Stern by a vote of the membership.

One effect of these top-down policies is not more organising but more corruption. It is interesting that the new "breed" of leaders of the AFL-CIO would align themselves with McCarron. McCarron has been a big booster of Bush in part to keep himself out of jail. During the ULLICO (a union-owned pension plan) crisis, it was exposed that the leaders of the AFL-CIO including McCarron were profiting personally by buying stock in this union pension fund and then selling it to make a profit of hundreds of thousands of dollars for themselves based on insider information. McCarron, caught with his hand in the cookie jar, promised that nothing was wrong since he was returning the money he made from his members' pension funds. Sweeney and other top officers had voted for policies that allowed this double dipping.

Corruption, however, is only one of the reasons that this crew is so concerned about Bush. Bush and his hack Chao at the Labor Department are intent in going after some of these unions for financial malfeasance and threatening any union that gets out of line. During the recent use of the Taft-Hartley Act, Chao along with Ridge threatened the ILWU leadership with being targeted as "terrorists" if they fought Taft-Hartley. Since the use of Taft-Hartley by Bush, not a word has been heard by the AFL-CIO about any effort to get rid of this slave labor legislation.

It is significant that Stern would align himself with a crook and charlatan like McCarron. While McCarron wanted to support Bush and even took rides on Bush's plane, Stern touts a plan to get better Democrats. Both however are united that there should be no rank and file control or power of "their" trade unions.

Another concern that these bureaucrats have is the growing threat of workers dumping AFL-CIO unions for independent unions. AFSCME has lost tens of thousands of members to an independent union at the University of California and the IAM has lost tens of thousands of mechanics to AMFA, an independent craft union within the airline industry.

In San Francisco, the janitors voted to decertify statewide SEIU Local 1877 after the state-wide local officials merged the former San Francisco Local 87 into a statewide local. Eliseo Medina, a vice president of the SEIU and a hero to some immigrant rights activists in the labor movement had promised the members when the local was put in trusteeship that there would be no merger unless the members voted for it. So much for promises.

One of the economic roles that the trade union apparatus plays is as a broker between the working class and the bosses. This economic role that they play is being undermined daily by the fact that the capitalists are no longer offering better wages, working conditions and benefits.

Imposing the Cutbacks

In fact, what this trade union bureaucracy is now doing is imposing the very cutbacks and attacks that the employers are demanding from the UAW at CAT to City workers in San Francisco. The UAW at CAT has imposed a permanent two-tier with UAW members making $14.00 an hour and locked into this for life. The CWA's leading lights like Larry Cohn talk about defending their members but in fact they have collaborated with the telephone monopolies for rate increases while pushing two-tier wages at SBC and other telephone companies that they represent workers at.

In the airline industry, all the unions including the IAM, ALPA, IBT, CWA and AMFA are negotiating away all their wages, benefits and concessions won over 40 years in the legacy airlines. None of the unions has launched a campaign for re-regulation much less nationalisation of the airline industry under workers' control. They have bought hook, line and sinker the line of the Republicans and Democrats along with the corporate media that deregulation is here to stay. They refuse to even call an emergency conference of all airline workers to discuss how to defend their industry and jobs from organised butchering. This typifies the mentality of this trade union bureaucracy. Rather than mobilising the rank and file to shutdown the entire industry which they have the power to do and force the government to deal with these attacks, they are helping in the rationalisation and destruction of union conditions and benefits.

These policies are creating a massive backlash among more and more workers. Many workers are beginning to ask why they have to pay a union official to tell you to take cutbacks when this is exactly what the boss is saying. One of most common statements of these officials is the need to go back to the days of Roosevelt.

Let us go back again to Hanley:

I think it is high time for the Democratic Party to get back to its roots, to re-adopt the policies and principles that were so prevalent in the party during the days of FDR, to concentrate on and to champion bread-and-butter issues such as jobs and healthcare that are so vital to working men and women and their families.

This wishful hoping for the days of FDR of course means very little to today's workers who were not even alive at that time, but the lessons of FDR are indeed important. He rose to power during the depression but he made major reforms of capitalism to save it. Millions of workers were in the streets occupying auto plants, leading general strikes in Minneapolis and San Francisco and challenging the capitalists head on. It was the fear of revolution that forced the capitalists to turn to Roosevelt. It was also the fear of a trade union movement where power rested on the shop floor to close factories and offices. The attitude of Stern and company is that they want more power to control the workforce and not fight the bosses. In fact, Sweeney came to head the AFL-CIO after he had destroyed the rank and file movement of janitors in Los Angeles in the successful organising drive. After militant janitors won contracts they wanted a union that fought the bosses on the job. They were told by Sweeney, and his operatives like Bill Fletcher, that they would listen but instead they merged the locals and took away any membership control.

It is important to note that some left forces in the labor movement are arguing that all the AFL-CIO has to do to solve its crisis is to take the correct position on Iraq or other international questions. The national AFL-CIO leadership continues to support the war in Iraq and has refused to even report that its own major affiliates like the SEIU, AFSCME and the CWA have called for the immediate withdrawal of the troops. Journalist David Bacon and former AFL-CIO Sweeney Special Assistant Bill Fletcher have both argued that if the AFL-CIO took the correct position on imperialism and the US foreign policy, this would put the AFL-CIO on the right track. In fact a change of positions will not solve the systemic problems of corporate unionism and a top-down centralised bureaucracy that acts more like a corporation than a worker-run union.

One of the significant points about the debate today is the lack of concern the bosses presently have with the crisis in the AFL-CIO. They see no real economic or political threat to their power. The AFL-CIO top officials, including those presenting themselves with a new plan, refuse to support or take the kind of actions that brought workers forward in the 1930s and 1940s. In fact they can only apologise when workers do a sickout, like the workers at US Air during the recent Christmas seasons. The leaders of the IAM and CWA could only plead that their members had not done the sickout on purpose after taking pay cut after pay cut.

Another clear example of these policies was the recent effort by the Million Worker March Committee to mobilise workers independently for their own demands with the mass demonstration in Washington D.C. The AFL-CIO leadership was so concerned about this they not only sent a letter to every labor council in the country to halt any support but they met with Kerry to talk about how to head this off.

Heeding Gomperism?

Another cornerstone of the AFL-CIO bread and butter unionists is their support for "Gomperism". IUOE President Frank Hanley again argues for holding on to Gomper's politics.

I always have -- and always will -- hold as gospel truth that we should support those who support us, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, or any other affiliation. I strongly recommend organised labor take closer heed of Samuel Gompers' oft quoted mantra to reward our friends and punish our enemies. He didn't say reward only Democrats and punish only Republicans. In other words, party labels are not necessarily synonymous with friends ... or enemies.

Hanley of course and the rest of the crew have refused to support the formation of a labor party in the United States. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on corporate-controlled politicians who support NAFTA, wars and privatisation yet they complain that they are not getting anything out of their investment with the rank and file dues. Hanley also gave Bush a press relation's bonanza in Ohio during 2003 when he invited Bush to join him in opening an IUOE training center at IUOE Local 18. This we should recall is was one of the "swing states". At the same time, other sections of the AFL-CIO such as the Firefighters IAFF are arguing against a labor party -- "Forming a labor party as some would suggested would not work" --but for giving more money to the Republicans. IAFF president Harold Schaitberger brags that in the last election cycle their union gave 32% of PAC funds to Republicans. The logic of this for the members who now face the danger of having their public service defined pensions privatised by Bush and his supporter Schwwarzenegger must be creating some consternation among his membership.

The issue of the workers' independence of course is not a side issue. One of the major failings of the labor battles of the 1930s and 1940s was the failure of the labor movement to break with the Democrats and support a labor party.

Instead the trade union bureaucracy with the support of the Communist Party continued to support the Democrats as the solution for working people. This has left the US as one of the few industrialised countries without a mass labor or working class party.

The recent election is a clear example of where this has left labor. Kerry and the Democrats were 100% behind winning the imperial war in Iraq and voting for hundreds of billions of dollars to do it. Both parties, while cutting benefits for education, housing and healthcare, are intent on "winning" in Iraq.

The silence of the entire trade union bureaucracy on this issue is deafening. Who do they think is paying for the war but their members? Yet not a peep against Kerry and his support for the war by any of the AFL-CIO international unions. Their contempt for their members' positions should be obvious. Despite the fact that the CWA, AFSCME and a host of other internationals came out with positions for the withdrawal of all troops from Iraq they all refused to call on their candidate Kerry to change his tune. One positive development in this internal crisis within the AFL-CIO is the call by SEIU president Andy Stern to open up the debate to the rank and file and his establishment of a web site www.unitetowin.org where rank and file members can speak out about what the causes and solutions of the present crisis are. This can provide an excellent opportunity to open up the debate about where the AFL-CIO is going and it should be taken advantage of by those who want to deepen this debate.

The war on the people of Iraq and the war on the working people of America are connected of course, and that connection will only grow as more and more US workers see their lives torn apart by this economic crisis and as their children are sent off to fight this criminal war. We can only say that a new workers' movement will make this connection paramount and will help not only end the war but end the corrupt and bureaucratic ties that are an obstacle to defend working people in the United States.

-- Steve Zeltzer