Take this Union and Shove It (to the Left)
The House of Labor - Re-energized
As I write these words, CNN is saying "The House of Labor is Divided" over and over again, lamenting yet another political blow to the Democratic Party, which relies mightily on unified union support.
To that I say, Hooey! Here's the story:
The SEIU and the Teamsters have officially broken from the AFL-CIO. The political issues are legion, but the bottom line is that the breakaway groups - united as the Change to Win Coalition (here too) - want to spend more money on organizing new unions, and proportionally less on supporting Democratic Party candidates who don't win elections and don't sufficiently stand up for organized labor.
In 1955, more than third of all American households were union. Now only 13 percent are. Want Democratic candidates to attend to labor issues? Want Republicans to respect the political power of organized labor? Want to see whole new candidates who not only pay lip service to worker issues but actually believe in them themselves? The best - and probably only - way to do all that is to create more unionized workers. That's the horse. Everything else is the cart. It's as simple as that.
In addition, the AFL-CIO began as, and has always been, a creature of Cold War America. Left members of the CIO were redbaited and purged when it merged with the more conservative AFL; and the union reliably supported the most retrograde - and anti-labor - of U.S. foreign policy initiatives and operations, all in the name of anti-communism.
Current AFL-CIO president John Sweeney comes out of the SEIU ironically enough, and he's a damn sight more progressive than most of his predecessors. Nevertheless, his decade-long tenure has primarily been one of failure, and the organization is still not much for the sort of progressive internationalism an international union should have.
So when any wishy washy liberal or Democratic party shill tells you that this split will only hurt the Democrats and organized labor, you tell them to go pound sand. I'm not thrilled to see Jimmy Hoffa's son acting as the public face of labor reform in America (I'm still mourning the downfall of Ron Carey), but I nevertheless say Good Luck to the new coalition as it seeks a new path in American labor history.
It's about freakin' time.
As I write these words, CNN is saying "The House of Labor is Divided" over and over again, lamenting yet another political blow to the Democratic Party, which relies mightily on unified union support.
To that I say, Hooey! Here's the story:
The SEIU and the Teamsters have officially broken from the AFL-CIO. The political issues are legion, but the bottom line is that the breakaway groups - united as the Change to Win Coalition (here too) - want to spend more money on organizing new unions, and proportionally less on supporting Democratic Party candidates who don't win elections and don't sufficiently stand up for organized labor.
In 1955, more than third of all American households were union. Now only 13 percent are. Want Democratic candidates to attend to labor issues? Want Republicans to respect the political power of organized labor? Want to see whole new candidates who not only pay lip service to worker issues but actually believe in them themselves? The best - and probably only - way to do all that is to create more unionized workers. That's the horse. Everything else is the cart. It's as simple as that.
In addition, the AFL-CIO began as, and has always been, a creature of Cold War America. Left members of the CIO were redbaited and purged when it merged with the more conservative AFL; and the union reliably supported the most retrograde - and anti-labor - of U.S. foreign policy initiatives and operations, all in the name of anti-communism.
Current AFL-CIO president John Sweeney comes out of the SEIU ironically enough, and he's a damn sight more progressive than most of his predecessors. Nevertheless, his decade-long tenure has primarily been one of failure, and the organization is still not much for the sort of progressive internationalism an international union should have.
So when any wishy washy liberal or Democratic party shill tells you that this split will only hurt the Democrats and organized labor, you tell them to go pound sand. I'm not thrilled to see Jimmy Hoffa's son acting as the public face of labor reform in America (I'm still mourning the downfall of Ron Carey), but I nevertheless say Good Luck to the new coalition as it seeks a new path in American labor history.
It's about freakin' time.
Posted at 4:09 PM
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