Washington Post Article on AFL-CIO

[Anonymous]

Since some want more labor articles, here's one from the UTU website concerning the power struggle in the AFL-CIO involving the Teamsters (including BLET and BMWE):

Labor's inner war

LAS VEGAS -- The era of bad feelings has descended on American labor, according to this report by Harold Meyerson published by the Washington Post.
The executive council meeting of the AFL-CIO that concluded here yesterday leaves the union movement divided into two angry camps, with three major unions considering leaving the federation. A coalition of unions led by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Teamsters -- the federation's biggest and third-largest unions -- failed to persuade their colleagues to back a Teamster proposal to rebate a sizable chunk of the AFL-CIO's budget to member unions with serious organizing programs. The coalition won the support of unions representing roughly 40 percent of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members, but AFL-CIO President John Sweeney got majority backing for a program that directed more resources to the federation's political program than to organizing.

Many of the unions supporting Sweeney argue that electoral work is paramount, that without friendly elected officials unions won't be able to win the changes in labor law that will enable them to grow again. The unions aligned with the SEIU say that until labor organizes more members, it won't be able to win on Election Day. "We can't change labor law until we organize a lot more people," John Wilhelm, president of the hotel division of Unite Here (the clothing and hotel workers union), said at a forum in Los Angeles last month.

There's not a union leader here who doesn't acknowledge that labor needs to expand both its political and organizing programs. That labor's leaders couldn't reach a compromise on a trade-off this week suggests there are other tensions in play. Certainly a number of the leaders in the 40 percent grouping are deeply frustrated at the continuing decline of labor's strength and feel that some of their fellow leaders -- and the AFL-CIO under Sweeney -- haven't undertaken sufficiently radical reforms to cope with the crisis. "The collapse of the labor movement is happening on our watch," Wilhelm declared at the Los Angeles forum.

Between now and July, when the AFL-CIO will hold its convention in Chicago to chart labor's future course, this battle will continue. But there's not much likelihood the SEIU-Teamster coalition will be able to amass a majority for its program. "How do we shake them out of their torpor?" one dissident union leader wondered about the Sweeney coalition. "The threat of disaffiliation is the only card we have to play."

For some months it's been widely expected that the SEIU would leave the federation to "build something stronger," in the words of its president, Andy Stern, if the AFL-CIO did not adopt much of the SEIU's reform agenda. But the SEIU is no longer the only union in which there is talk of leaving. "I think disaffiliation is a real threat," says Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, which will convene a meeting of its leaders later this month to discuss that option. Similar rumblings are coming from the Teamsters. "You can't run the federation," says Raynor, "without the support of the major unions."

Some unions in the dissident coalition appear to have no intention of leaving. Much of this disaffiliation talk could be a bargaining chip to win further concessions. But the polarization of the movement is taking on a life of its own, with longtime allies now routinely disparaging their old comrades.

Yesterday morning, as the council's final session convened, Paul Booth, a leader of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a pro-Sweeney union, was wearing a 10-year-old T-shirt emblazoned with Sweeney's name -- a keepsake from the 1995 campaign in which progressive unions united in support of Sweeney's successful insurgent candidacy. Spying Anna Burger, who had managed Sweeney's campaign and is now a leader of the dissident coalition, he asked if she had any of the old T-shirts lying around. "Yeah," said Burger, unamused. "We use them for dishrags." Under assault at every turn, labor is lashing out at itself.

(The preceding report by Harold Meyerson was published by the Washington Post on Friday, March 4, 2005.)

March 4, 2005

LC

[Anonymous]

So please traslate this for us in plain english. Not all of us speak the language of the Washington Post. Like what does all this mean?

[Anonymous]

This is an easy one. Read the last sentence of the first paragraph and the entire second paragraph.

The idea is to be united in the political process. Elections, elections, and elections. The unions are spilt on how to spend their money and time. Spend money on recruiting new members for the union or spend money on electing politicians favorable to unions. New members could show the strength of unions to the politicians and thus help elect the favorable politicians.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Limitedclear

Since some want more labor articles, here's one from the UTU website concerning the power struggle in the AFL-CIO involving the Teamsters (including BLET and BMWE):

Labor's inner war

LAS VEGAS -- The era of bad feelings has descended on American labor, according to this report by Harold Meyerson published by the Washington Post.

Well yes is the answer, rail labor news should be reported, this is general labor news, it should not be reported on this forum! The above has no direct tie to railroading. But, since you decided to report non-related labor news let me through this gem throw this at you:

Opinion: Why Republicans should love Unions
(The following column by David K. Shipler appeared on the Los Angeles Times website on March 6. It is an excerpt from his latest book, "The Working Poor: Invisible in America.")

LOS ANGELES -- If Republicans were true to their stated principles of smaller government, free-market economics and the "ownership society" touted by President Bush, they would do something quite alien to their traditional practice: They would support the spread of labor unions instead of trying every trick to foil workers' efforts to organize.

Unions have almost disappeared from the private sector, where they represent merely 7.9% of workers. Government employees are better organized, at 36%, but overall union membership in the country has fallen to its lowest level since the Depression — about 12.5% of all workers, a steep decline from 35% half a century ago.

This makes pro-business conservatives happy, but it shouldn't, because it throws a monkey wrench into the machinery of capitalism.

Republicans who believe that the source of economic well- being is the private sector, not government programs, cannot shrink government in a just way until the private sector functions well for workers at the bottom rung of our society. That won't happen until employers pay higher wages and benefits. They won't do that until the market requires it, and the market won't make that demand until workers can level the playing field with their employers through collective bargaining. A marketplace works freely only when both sides of the transaction have negotiating power.

Plain, everyday facts subvert the conservative agenda of privatization: Without higher earnings, millions of workers will continue to depend on Medicaid for their children's health insurance, on food stamps to feed their families and on housing subsidies to bring rent down to manageable levels. Either government pays or private employers pay — or people go sick and hungry and homeless.

Yet the Republican Party, seduced by campaign contributions from big business and the wishful thinking of some theorists, marches in near total anti-union lock step.

Is this really good politics? Would broader unionization help or hinder Republicans at the ballot box?

Unions usually campaign for Democrats. John Kerry won 65% of union members' votes last November. But a group of congressional members who call themselves "labor Republicans," mostly from the Northeast, routinely breaks that pattern by supporting unions.

Sen. Arlen Specter won the endorsement of the AFL-CIO last year and got 52% of the union vote in Pennsylvania. He was one of 10 Republican congressional candidates endorsed by the AFL-CIO for supporting a bill to protect workers from harassment and dismissal when they try to organize. The measure — which didn't pass but is being reintroduced in the new Congress — has two main goals. It would stiffen fines against employers found to have harassed employees who wanted to unionize and it would allow for a simpler, faster way for workers to be unionized, replacing all-out, heavily contested elections with a simple "card-check" that recognizes a union if most workers sign up to join. (Elections sound democratic, but they can be delayed by employers to allow time for threats and propaganda. For example, managers have singled out union supporters for extra work, summoned them individually for interrogation and called in police on election day to create an air of intimidation.)

Today, much of organized labor's decline has resulted from the global outsourcing of manufacturing jobs and the fact that rising service and technology industries are not yet unionized. There is also an out-and-out assault on the already unionized.

Two new Republican governors, Matt Blunt of Missouri and Mitch Daniels of Indiana, suspended collective bargaining by their state employees as soon as they took office in January. Bush has proposed revising decades of Civil Service rules by giving managers enormous authority to set the pay and assignments of federal employees.

Certainly unions are not perfect institutions. When they get too powerful, they can drive companies out of business; there are examples in the newspaper, railroad and airline industries. When they are too weak, they can help their members only marginally. Now, for the most part, unions, such as those among janitors and parking garage attendants, are too weak and too small, giving employers excessive power.

Conservatives should not like this. They should not want the free market to fail millions of the employed. They should not want to lose labor votes. "Whatever party you're in," says Andy Levin, director of the AFL-CIO's campaign to change the federal law on organizing, "if you're for the robust protections to form unions, we're for you." The question is, what are Republicans for — a free market or a rigged market?


Jim - Lawton, NV MP 236