Editorial for Friday — July 29, 2005

• AFL-CIO : Sinking the ship

AFL-CIO : Sinking the ship

St. Louis Post-Dispatch — July 27, 2005

Back in 1935, the last time organized labor fought a civil war, a stronger union movement emerged from the struggle. Those planning to divide the AFL-CIO this week are hoping for the same result.

But the world has changed much in 70 years, and labor’s current rebels may learn that history rarely repeats itself. With union membership shrunken to just 12.5 percent of the work force, it’s in the unions’ best interest not to shatter the AFL-CIO.

Shattered it will be this week. The Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters quit the nation’s premier labor organization on Monday. Two other unions — United Food and Commercial Workers and Unite Here, a group of textile and hotel workers — seem ready to bolt. Together, they represent about a third of the AFL-CIO’s membership.

They’re forming their own coalition, called Change to Win, to rival the old labor group.

The rebels claim that the AFL-CIO’s leadership, under President John Sweeney, is stodgy and out of step. In that, they’re right. The answer to labor’s woes is to get busy organizing more workers into unions, say the rebels. To do that, they would pull money away from politics, running the risk that the balance of power in Washington and state legislatures will tilt even further against labor.

That’s a gamble worth taking. Labor’s political clout is declining along with its membership. Unless the membership decline is reversed, organized labor will fade into irrelevance.

In the depths of the Great Depression, the American Federation of Labor in fact had fallen behind the times. It was organized around 100 different craft unions. That system worked well for carpenters and plumbers, but American industry had moved toward mass manufacturing.

Dissidents, led by United Mineworkers Union President John L. Lewis, argued for organizing industry-wide unions. When the AFL resisted, Mr. Lewis founded the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Mr. Lewis was proved right. The CIO went on to organize auto, steel and rubber industries among others. By 1955, when the AFL and CIO made peace, roughly one-third of American workers were unionized.

It has been downhill from there. Membership plunged as industrial employment shrank and shifted south. Labor failed to make its case to legions of service workers who now dominate the work force.

It’s obvious that organized labor is poorly led. Enter Andrew L. Stern, president of the 1.8 million-member service employees union and one of the most successful organizers in the country. He’s leading the secession movement.

Besides being gungho on organizing, he proposes merging 60 big unions into just 20 centered on specific industries. The idea is to increase labor’s clout by facing a single employer with a single union, rather than five or six separate ones.

Both are very good ideas, but busting up the AFL-CIO is a bad one.

In politics, labor speaks most powerfully when it speaks with one voice. The AFL-CIO has been that voice. It has pressed for real family values including decent wages, a strong Social Security system, family leave and health care.

The union movement’s united ability to direct money and volunteers toward the election of friendly politicians gives influence to ordinary Americans who otherwise would have little – especially compared to that of huge corporate contributors.

Instead of one strong voice, labor may now have two or more weaker ones that will spend much time carping at each other and swiping members.

Mr. Stern is too hasty in giving up on the AFL-CIO. His argument is powerful enough to win over his fellow unionists over time. He would do better to work for reform within the AFL-CIO, while his coalition throws its own resources into organizing.

Mr. Stern and his allies know the right course for labor, but he shouldn’t sink labor’s ship in an effort to turn it around.