• AFL-CIO : Bang! Right in the foot AFL-CIO : Bang! Right in the foot St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 10, 2005 One reason that union membership is shrinking in America is because the labor movement regularly shoots itself in the
• AFL-CIO : Bang! Right in the foot
AFL-CIO : Bang! Right in the foot
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 10, 2005
One reason that union membership is shrinking in America is because the labor movement regularly shoots itself in the foot. Be it a corruption scandal (rare these days) turf-squabbles between unions (more common), or a miscalculated strike, labor often limps around as a toeless wonder.
At the moment, feuding union leaders in the AFL-CIO have a loaded shotgun pointed down at their workboots. Several big unions are considering bailing out of the nation’s premier labor organization, and the one with the most political clout. That’s a mistake that would dilute the influence of labor on elections and legislation.
The secession movement might divide labor into two rival groups. They could end up spending as much energy carping at each other and stealing each others’ members as they would pushing the interests of working people.
That would be a shame, because the AFL-CIO stands as the nation’s most powerful voice for ordinary working stiffs. Social Security, health care, overtime, immigration, family leave, the minimum wage – name the issue and the AFL pushes the interests of Americans who have little clout on their own.
The AFL gets its influence through the power of labor to bring voters to the polls and campaign contributions to politicians; it spent $61 million in the 2004 federal election cycle, 87 percent of it on Democrats.
The AFL’s dissidents are led by Andrew Stern, the activist leader of the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union. Unions representing 40 percent of the AFL’s membership are lining up behind Mr. Stern.
He has legitimate gripes. Big Labor has been on the wrong path. Its membership is now 13 percent of the work force, down from 35 percent a half century ago. It needs an infusion of energy and reform, which people like Mr. Stern could bring.
Despite its propensity for selfinflicted injury, the forces shrinking labor are largely societal and economic. Labor’s traditional turf is manufacturing, and factory employment in the United States is shrinking. GOP control in Washington and many states has made regulation more hostile to organized labor.
But labor has also failed to sell itself to the legions of underpaid service workers and workers in new technology industries, who might benefit from union protections and bargaining power. The AFL’s leader, John J. Sweeney, arrived on a reform platform a decade ago but now seems adrift.
Mr. Stern would merge the AFL’s 60 unions into just 20, largely by forcing smaller unions into bigger ones. Unions would be organized by industry, so that management would face a single united union rather than five different unions within a single plant. Turf fights, such as the current battle amid construction unions, would be lessened. He’d also shrink the AFL’s Washington bureaucracy and pour much more money into organizing workers, with a special campaign aimed at Wal-Mart.
Mr. Stern is a strong leader with good ideas. And it is probably time for Mr. Sweeney, 71, to step aside. But Mr. Stern and his allies should work to reform the AFL-CIO, not hobble it.
