Labor's Untimely Breakup

...Union membership had two years earlier reached its highest density in the United States— one-third of civilian, nonagricultural employees...

...Significantly, it has not organized a majority of the labor force in its market sector, including regions with relatively high union densities like New York and Los Angeles...

...Initially it seemed the split would cause irreparable difficulties for city central labor councils and state federations—the organizations that link unions to other community reform movements, generate broad support for workers on strike, stimulate living-wage campaigns, and get out the vote for labor's candidates...

...The Teamsters are still reeling from losses caused by the deregulation of the trucking industry...

...He has allowed them to remain active members of city centrals and state federations if they continue to pay their dues, along with a surcharge to cover AFL-CIO financial contributions to the local bodies...

...The AFLCIO has never been at the center of union organizing...

...As union density fell, AFL-CIO President George Meany (1955-79) seemed quite content with labor's accomplishments...

...Of the latter group, two have since quit the AFL-CIO—unitehere and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFC W)—and two continue to pay their dues—the Laborers' International Union and the United Farm Workers...

...Bruce S. Raynor, president of unite-here...

...On the contrary, absolute union membership rose into the early 1970s, even as an apparently irreversible thinning in union density developed...

...It is clear that unionism does not advance through the slow and steady accretion of new members...

...The new federation's notion of assigning megaunions precise jurisdictional boundaries is similarly problematic...

...If and when the economic, social and political tides shift, as they invariably do, a united labor movement would be best suited to riding them to greater power...

...One must ask, too, how well the CTW coalition members have done with their own unionizing efforts...

...Perhaps both camps can recognize that although John Sweeney has failed to deliver on the promise of his 1995 campaign for the AFL-CIO presidency, only a small part of the responsibility for union membership's ongoing decline can be laid on his desk...

...For over a decade, however, labor's diminishing relative strength and bargaining power were obscured by three factors: 1) increases in the absolute number of union members...

...His successor, Lane Kirkland (1979-95), never claimed equal satisfaction...

...Periods of rapid growth are when the labor movement has tended to split...

...Probably that sort of competition and conflict will reinforce the antipathy many workers already harbor toward institutions they perceive as organs of "union bosses" whose primary motivations are personal power and dues money...

...As an AFL-CIO affiliate, it waged organizing campaigns against supposed brethren, such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (afscme) and the Communication Workers of America (CWA...

...In 1938, when the first divorce between the AFL and the CIO was finalized, various peacemakers sought to restore the sundered partnership...

...From its emergence in the U.S...

...A stymied effort to unionize commercial laundry workers has barely compensated...

...Public employee and service unions replaced their industrial counterparts as the bulwarks of the AFL-CIO...

...It was in 1886, too, that craft unions united to form the AFL...

...Melvyn Dubofsky, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Sociology at SUNY Binghamton, has written numerous books on labor history, including Hard Work...

...Even in Missouri and Indiana, two states where unions have maintained higher than average density, newly elected Republican governors overturned their Democratic predecessors' policies allowing state employees to bargain collectively through unions of their own choosing...

...On all these points, CTW's prospects seem uncertain at best andnegative at worst...

...In key industries the vast majority of workers were organized...

...SEIU has been one of the most active supporters of those local initiatives, yet under AFL-CIO rules nonaffiliated unions cannot participate in local and state bodies...

...Even after the United Steelworkers had ingested the United Rubber Workers and nonferrous metal industries' unions, it had far fewer members than at its peak as solely a steelworkers' union...

...True, SEIU and unitehere have memberships that are heavily female, nonwhite and new immigrant...

...That jump was not followed quickly by a downward phase...

...A similar pattern plays out in the vast majority of states where Republicans hold sway and unions lack density...

...That would entail increasing union density, strengthening unions' ability to "bring home the bacon," achieving greater equity in the workplace, and heightening organized labor's political influence...

...labor movement enjoyed its first surge during what came to be known as the "Great Upheaval of 1885-1886...

...As for UNITE, it could do little other than watch impotently while its core membership in the clothing and textile trades vanished along with employment in the industry...

...In its ranks, private and public employees are organized indiscriminately...

...They enjoyed collectively bargained contracts that provided steadily rising wages...

...At the current ebb tide in labor's fortunes, its responsible captains should follow the advice John L. Lewis' economic consultant, W. Jett Lauck, offered in 1932: "There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at ebb leads on to victory...

...Yes, the SEIU has become the largest union in the nation, but that process began under Sweeney's stewardship there...

...But CTW's proposals for rebuilding labor outside the AFL-CIO raise more questions than they answer...

...It is equally apparent, as the labor historian David Brody has noted, that union expansion is rarely triggered by the labor movement itself...

...By 1922 the United Mine Workers, the International Association of Machinists, and the garment industry unions had lost most of the members added during the Great War...

...By then, unfortunately, the split had grown too personalized and the competing leaders too embittered and disdainful of each other to consider a reconciliation...

...World War II saw the recently independent CIO cement its industrial unions...

...The broad-based Knights of Labor reached a high of some 700,000 members...

...The question now is whether the action taken by Stern and his allies bodes well for the labor movement...

...STERN speaks often and loudly about opening the labor movement to new influences and heretofore neglected working people...

...The United Packinghouse Workers and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters disappeared into the UFCW as minority divisions of a union dominated by supermarket clerks...

...A decade after 1885-86 the Knights of Labor, with the AFL at its heels, claimed less than 100,000 members and passed into insignificance...

...The Republicans in power in Washington have made organizing exceedingly difficult...

...The labor market remains loose and the sectors Stern and his allies contend are most open to organizing are those most affected by immigration, legal and illegal...

...in the last quarter of the 19th century until 1955, trade unionism grew in sudden bursts and receded with almost the same rapidity...

...Stern also implies that his coalition will be more sensitive than the AFL-CIO—traditionally under white male leadership—to minorities, new immigrants and women...

...But they did not prove durable...

...Despite opinion surveys indicating a majority of nonunion workers would join a union if free to do so, behavior implies otherwise...

...Not surprisingly, three of the unions that represent service and public employees (SEIU, unite-here, UFCW) are the core of Change-to-Win...

...Few signs exist of a rising militancy among workers...

...Thus while American automobile, steel, rubber, farm implement, and electrical companies continued to recognize and bargain with unions, they shed workers...

...they will undoubtedly remain smaller and less influential than they were in the 1950s and '60s...

...That arrangement implicitly governed industrial relations and sustained an economy of high mass consumption...

...A good case can be made that especially in the 40 states with low union density and weak union traditions, antipathy toward labor surpasses sympathy...

...Even large enterprises that remained nonunion—IBM, EastmanKodak, DuPont, Sears—did so by granting their employees comparable wages, benefits and forms of job security...

...The persistent decline in density from 1955 to the present has proved an exception to historical trends...

...Further, Sweeney has recently devoted more money and effort to organizing than ever before in the AFLCIO's (orthe AFL's) history...

...Portions of the population drifted away from existing union strongholds in the Northeast and Upper Midwest to the South and Southwest, where union density was low and hard-core antiunionism had resulted in bans on union security...

...The modern US...

...Is CTW likely to revitalize trade unionism in the manner of the CIO...

...Three of the key CTW players are general unions, including Stern's SEIU...

...Drawing a lesson from that experience, today's AFL-CIO and CTW leaders would be wise to hold reconciliation talks aimed at achieving a reunion before mutual recriminations become too poisonous—à la the rhetoric about treason that filled the air at the AFL-CIO convention...

...The Lessons of History Labor's Untimely Breakup By Melvyn Dubofsky WHEN THE American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (ClO)reunited 50 years ago, after two decades of civil war, trade unionism mattered...

...Indeed, the return of the Republi cans to national power precipitated the ree onciliation of the AFL and CIO...

...company-financed health insurance and pensions, among other fringe benefits...

...Labor lobbyists and leaders also played a vital role in enacting the civil rights legislation of 1964-65...

...job security guarded by the principle of seniority and a legalistic grievance procedure...

...The other half of this odd couple, here, has not won any impressive victories lately either, and is unlikely to repeat elsewhere what it achieved during the '90s in the Las Vegas hospitality industry...

...Previously, union ranks swelled in tight labor markets, the World Wars, and when the political balance of power tilted in labor's favor...

...Finally, the basic industries where union power had been concentrated not only lost their dominance in world markets, they also found themselves in stiff competition in the domestic market...

...professional employees and medical personnel are lumped together with custodians, janitors and othermenial service workers...

...Two of the largest AFL-CIO unions, the Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), refused to attend the biannual conclave, said they would cease paying dues to the AFL-CIO, and announced the formation of a new federation named Change-to-Win (CTW...

...2) the rise in the number of public employee union members, especially in the 1960s when the Federal government and several states legitimated union membership and the right of those unions to bargain collectively...

...The post-World War II accommodation between corporations and unions collapsed as employers battered a weakened labor movement...

...No deep divination is required to understand the grievances of the dissident labor leaders—Andrew L. Stern, president of SEIU...

...that is the job of the federation's affiliates...

...In the United States the impact of global economic shifts on working people was intensified by internal developments...

...Does it offer a strategy and tactics for organizing nonunion workers superior to what AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney proposes...

...3) a continued rise in real wages and incomes combined with more generous fringe benefits and an expanded Social Security system...

...Where unions have nevertheless emerged, the GOP has obstructed their efforts to negoti ate contracts...

...History may teach few usable lessons, yet it does offer abundant evidence about labor's triumphs and failures...

...The AFL-CIO, as constituted after its recent convention, has placed more women and people of color in positions of authority than CTW...

...The UFCW is still blocked by Wal-Mart, and is unable to penetrate Tyson or Iowa Beef, the giants of the meat-processing industry...

...and John W. Wilhelm, head of the HERE branch...

...To remain competitive, or escape bankruptcy, enterprises sought to raise productivity by substituting capital for labor (automation), or by moving manufacturing to lowerwage nonunion locations at home and abroad...

...Consequently, it is condemned to offering concessionary contracts to the unionized retail and packinghouse competitors of nonunion enterprises...

...Instead, the July 2005 AFL-CIO convention became the occasion for a new divorce...

...The brokers of the 1955 remarriage no doubt hoped the reunited couple would today be enjoying a glorious golden anniversary year...

...And rather than organize workers through the efforts of 57 varieties of trade unions, he would fashion a smaller number of megaunions, each with sole responsibility for specific sectors of the economy...

...In addition, a 1965 change in immigration law opened the gates to millions of legal and illegal immigrants from Latin America and East and South Asia who entered already loose labor markets...

...In 1905, following the steepest climb in AFL enrollment, the radical and revolutionary bent of the Industrial Workers of the World took center stage...

...Joining them in CTW were the independent United Brotherhood of Carpenters and four other AFLCIO affiliates...

...Sweeney has proffered an olive branch to local unions whose nationals have departed the federation...

...James P. Hoffa, president of IBT...

...Organized labor, moreover, was the key constituency in the New Deal Democratic coalition that dominated U.S...

...In the New Deal and World War II eras, the time of the CIO's rise, politics and labor markets once more comtuned to benefit workers and theirumons...

...In any event, a no-holds-barred competition for members between CTW and AFL-CIO affiliates will not necessarily improve union density...

...As this brief history suggests, CTW's timing does not augur well for its success...

...CTW asserts that higher expenditures on organizing, assigning more staff to the task, and an independent political stance will enable unions to rebuild density...

...From the moment the AFL and the CIO rejoined, union density began to decline because enrollment did not keep pace with the growth of the work force...

...With the advent of World War I, the Federal government encouraged "responsible" unions and the AFL again made gains...

...politics from 1936 until President Dwight D. Eisenhower's election in 1952...

...Themergerpaid dividends: Democrats regained control of Congress in 1958 and the White Houseinl960, ushering in the New Frontier followed by the Great Society...

...Stern gives the impression of taking to heart the Italian Communist theorist Antonio Gramsci's imperative to operate with "optimism of the will," but neglecting the other half of the aphorism calling for "pessimism of the intelligence...

...The massive industrial unions born after 1937 saw their size shrink substantially...

...Between 1897 and 1904, a flourishing economy and a demand for skilled workers boosted AFL membership from roughly 500,000 to nearly 3 million, and a confluence of circumstances enabled it to hold on to most of them...

...Yet their most outspoken leaders are white men with Ivy League backgrounds...

...Kirkland's tenure coincided with the long economic contraction (1973-93) that partly reversed the trend of rising real wages and brought mass unemployment to the leading industrial nations...

...Indeed, there is simply no evidence that the unions associated with CTW are better equipped to win the loyalty of these groups than afscme, the CWA or the American Federation of Teachers...

...Politically, the AFL-CIO provided the funds, voters and lobbyists that prompted Congress to raise the minimum wage and widen Social Security coverage during the Eisenhower years, and that led to still more generous social legislation in the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson years...