SYMPOSIUM: Split to Win?: Assessing the State of the Labor Movement
Freeman, Joshua
MORE THAN A decade ago, John Sweeney ousted Lane Kirkland and promised to revitalize the labor movement. He put a greater emphasis on organizing and more militant action on behalf of America's...
...It plans to mount large-scale, multi-union organizing campaigns focused on jobs—such as retail, building services, hospitality, health care, food service—that cannot be outsourced...
...Was the split necessary...
...Although the AFL-CIO managed to bring new attention to workplace injustice, it failed to engineer a wholesale shift in national perceptions...
...If that is what we expect from either side of the split labor movement, we are bound to be disappointed...
...JOSHUA FREEMAN is professor of history at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York...
...Concentrating on organizing workers whose jobs cannot be moved is not new either (though announcing it so publicly is...
...Its steady decline has led to lower living standards for millions of workers, a frightening growth in inequality, a weakening of liberalism...
...The odd alliances that emerged seemed as motivated by individual and institutional self-interest as by principle...
...It is not because either side has wonderful new ideas or especially promising strategies...
...Instead, they have swelled in spurts, at moments of economic crisis, when ruling elites have lost legitimacy, or in conjunction with broad democratic struggles...
...For all its risks, the break from the AFLCIO by the Change to Win Coalition (surely the worst name of any labor federation in American history, so lacking resonance with notions of solidarity or class) once again brings currents of hope and energy to a stalled union movement...
...In the recent New York City mayoral race, two huge SEIU locals backed rival candidates...
...As was arguably the case with the CIO, it may be that the spirit of Change to Win, its sense of urgency, even desperation, will prove its great asset, not its theories about how to organize and structure itself...
...LABOR'S SPLIT will have costs, but both sides are trying to minimize them, working to limit raiding and maintain cooperation in local and state labor councils...
...Much of what Change to Win proposes involves little change...
...But the disappointments of the past ten years have more to do with developments out54 DISSENT / Winter 2006 side of labor's control than within it...
...The Sweeney years saw none of this, as corporate power ballooned, and neoliberal politics flicked aside as hopelessly outdated ideas of social contract and collective action...
...Coordinated organizing and centralized leadership have been tried before, too, by the founders of the CIO, succeeding, but only for a brief while...
...reaching out to students, clergy, and the left...
...Allocating more resources to organizing might help, but some well-financed efforts, such as the CIO's Operation Dixie, have been flops, while some of labor's greatest gains, such as the organization of the auto and maritime industries, required almost no money...
...Even a partial implosion of Republicanbusiness hegemony—not unimaginable—will create new openings...
...MANY OF US FEEL ambivalent about the split in the labor movement...
...Sweeney and his team brought many positive changes to the AFL-CIO—a willingness to reach out to students and the broader progressive community, a new approach to the international economy free of cold war concerns, a robust political program—yet labor's decline continued...
...The discussion that accompanied it was narrow and rancorous...
...The ouster of the old leadership of the AFL-CIO brought refreshing breezes into the musty, sometimes foul, atmosphere of the House of Labor...
...Still, some good may come of it...
...and bringing greater diversity to the leadership of the AFL-CIO...
...Yet today, in many respects, labor is worse off than when Lane Kirkland held office...
...They want it to serve its own DISSENT / Winter 2006 55 members, treat them democratically, woo them to the left, advocate for everyone else, act as a surrogate political party, and supply troops and money to favored causes—a huge, sometimes contradictory agenda...
...Organized labor itself caused some of the problems...
...The larger of them, 1199-SEIU, has one of the most effective union political operations in the country, but it has used it mostly to advance jobrelated interests of its members, allying with sleazy, anti—working-class politicians such as Governor George Pataki, whose policies in such critical realms as education have hurt working people throughout New York State...
...Last year, seven unions with a combined membership of six million workers left the AFL-CIO to form a new labor federation called Change To Win (CTW...
...John Sweeney and his allies did so many things right: embracing militancy and the cause of low-wage workers...
...Things look grim now, but sometimes time moves fast...
...Labor must articulate a moral stance and common sense counter to the ideas put forth by the two main parties, the media, and corporations, much the way John Sweeney did so brilliantly when he first took office with his slogan "America Needs a Raise...
...Within a few years, the CIO proved unable to impose jurisdictional boundaries or develop effective structures for emerging economic sectors, from the burgeoning airline industry to white-collar work...
...SEIU president Andy Stern's calls for organizing and militancy as a path toward partnership with business seem cut and pasted from the speeches John Sweeney gave a decade ago promoting a revival of liberal corporatism...
...What will be the political impact of the split...
...International economic restructuring, along with political and cultural conditions, made advancing organized labor an impossible task...
...Unionists on both sides of labor's fissure were deeply disappointed by the events of the last decade...
...Ironically, when the CIO left the AFL, the AFL ended up outpacing its growth, in part by adopting some of the very measures that it had previously spurned...
...We have asked some close observers of the labor movement to evaluate these recent developments...
...preaching the gospel of organizing...
...Leftists always ask too much from the labor movement...
...The AFL-CIO—which still has plenty of resources...
...Modeled, in part, on the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the new federation promises a single-minded focus on organizing...
...Ultimately, the success of both sides of labor's split will depend on the context in which they operate...
...Coordinated political action may suffer, but it has not paid off nationally in recent years, and locally there often is no coordination...
...Who would have thought, even a year ago, that that mighty template of modern capitalism, Wal-Mart, would be facing moral delegitimation and slowing growth as a result of rising oil prices and sniping by social activists, unionists, left intellectuals, class action lawyers, local politicians, investigative reporters, and outraged filmmakers...
...But it just might be that the dynamics of competition, a new openness to big experiments, and the widespread sense that this may be labor's last shot will increase the odds that unions will succeed in seizing the opportunities that present themselves, to the benefit of us all...
...Unions have rarely grown through steady accretion...
...His books include Working- Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II...
...Labor's revitalization remains a prerequisite for a progressive politics...
...smart, experienced leaders...
...Enormous energy was devoted to a parting of ways that might not have been necessary...
...and a commitment to organizing—may end up enrolling as many or more new workers than its rival...
...EDS...
...Various labor leaders engaged in or tolerated corruption, including in parts of the movement not previously associated with venality or illegality, such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), ULLICO (labor's insurance arm), and the reform wing of the Teamsters...
...Many unions that already had organized what they thought of as their jurisdictions never shared the sense of crisis that impelled labor innovation and did little to sign up new members...
...But free from one another, both have the chance to act on their own beliefs and, perhaps more important, must justify their positions and past actions by showing results, however they can get them...
...Does Change to Win represent a new approach to dealing with labor's crisis...
...He put a greater emphasis on organizing and more militant action on behalf of America's working families...
...Is the labor movement weakened by the split...
...beefing up labor's political operation...
...The unions in CTW argue that the AFL-CIO as currently structured, a loose federation of independent unions, each responsible for organizing in its own jurisdiction, is incapable of addressing the crisis of American labor...
...Who knows...
Vol. 53 • January 2006 • No. 1
