SYMPOSIUM: Split to Win?: Assessing the State of the Labor Movement
Merrill, Michael
THE LABOR MOVEMENT has a structural problem: there is no mechanism that holds it accountable to the class as a whole. In the rest of the world, working-class political parties provide that...
...A call to this sort of class action— as opposed to institutional or occupational action —is the only basis for unity across the movement as a whole...
...High-wage, public sector, and professional workers are more conservative and demand a different kind of representation than do low-wage workers...
...But it won't be achieved or sustained without a serious political presence, which the U.S...
...The unions that have remained in the AFL-CIO will make their mark to the extent that they can organize high-wage, public sector, or professional workers in whatever sector—a task that will require different appeals, if not always different methods...
...To the extent the current split results in an effective recognition of this difference and a division of organizational labor between those who would serve the former and those who would serve the latter, it will invigorate rather than enervate the movement...
...In the rest of the world, working-class political parties provide that mechanism...
...socialize the risks of illness, injury, and unemployment and the costs of health care, dependent care, and education...
...The priorities of low-wage service workers, however, are not the same as those of high-wage or public sector workers, whose jobs are more stable and more "professionalized...
...They have different institutional priorities and membership service requirements...
...The fight is not between industrial and occupational unionism...
...MICHAEL MERRILL is dean of the Harry Van Arsdale Jr...
...In the United States there is no such party, and there has not been one for a long time...
...Two features of the situation strike me...
...labor movement wholly lacks...
...Center for Labor Studies at Empire State College/State University of New York...
...AT THE SAME TIME, the shared interests are as important as the differences...
...In the absence of a clearly defined legislative and political agenda (which is not to be confused with an electoral "get-outthevote" program) and a mechanism for enforcing this agenda—the national and local centers of the labor movement will not hold...
...In fact, they are scarcely heard from...
...The recent split has, instead, pitted occuDISSENT / Winter 2006 57 pational unions that primarily serve low-wage workers—SEIU, UNITE-HERE, UFCW, and the Laborers, with the Teamsters and Carpenters along for the ride for their own reasons— and those who serve primarily high-wage workers, such as the "mechanical" building trades, the Machinists, what's left of the CIO, and public sector unions that represent a significant number of professional or supervisory personnel (such as AFSCME) or both (like the CWA and the United Federation of Teachers [UFT...
...The only structure that will or has ever served this purpose is political...
...This same imperative acts at the national level...
...There is a large and growing lowwage service work force consisting of a disproportionate number of new immigrants who demand old-fashioned "pure and simple" contract unionism, by which they secure wider recognition of their needs and interests on the job and in the community and, especially, higher wages and a measure of protection from arbitrary management and employment policies...
...The movement needs a political mechanism that can, among other things, take wages and benefits "out of competition...
...Second, with nothing to hold them together, it is not at all surprising that these groups should split...
...The most recent fragmentation is a product of the underlying play of forces...
...Unity exists among the various unions on either side of the recent split at the local level, to the extent that it does, only to the degree that political necessity requires that they act together...
...The actual point at which a mechanism that held the movement accountable to the class as a whole ceased to exist-1920, 1948, 1968, or some other year, or even if it ever did exist—is a matter of dispute...
...They have more to conserve and they work in occupations where wages and working conditions, although important, must compete for attention with career and professional development issues...
...But they are different, even given a measure of overlap...
...58 DISSENT / Winter 2006...
...First, AFL unions are playing the leading part on both sides of the split...
...Absent a compulsion to unite—a compulsion that must be institutionalized and enforceable to be effective —the movement will always cycle through alternating periods of falling apart and coming together...
...The industrial unions are in decline and will remain so...
...Occupational unionism has won...
...Economists have long talked of a "dual labor market," and it is by no means surprising that this dualism would be reflected in a "dual labor movement...
...The CIO unions have not bolted...
...Indeed, some amount of differentiation and specialization is to be expected and even desired...
...The recent split in the AFLCIO does not address this structural problem, but it is an expression of it...
...This is not a replay of 1935...
...Their choice is either to become "general" or "amalgamated" unions that represent wage earners in occupations far removed from their origins, as is the case with the Steelworkers and the Autoworkers, or to become occupational unions themselves...
...The needs of low- or high-wage workers or of manual or professional employees or of the public or the private sector are equally worthy of attention...
...They cannot do otherwise, for their strength is in mature, "disaccumulating" industries where labor requirements decline, whether the output of the industry shrinks or grows...
...A growing workplace presence would, of course, be a great thing...
...and internalize to the profit-taking class the costs of economic changes from which profit-takers mostly benefit, but for which wage earners mostly pay...
...What is to be done...
...The Change to Win unions have appropriately set their sights on this group and will make their contribution to the extent that they can organize the new immigrant work force and the low-wage service sector...
...For that reason alone, the movement sorely needs an institutional structure that recognizes and addresses its commonalities...
...It is, of course, possible to overdraw this contrast...
Vol. 53 • January 2006 • No. 1
