The Threat to Labor's Political Operations

By DHinMI

The NYT's Steven Greenhouse, one of the few journalists at a mainstream publication with excellent knowledge and contacts in organized labor, has a decent piece in today's paper about the troubles facing AFL-CIO president John Sweeney.  Last Friday the United Auto Workers publicly pledged to support Sweeney's reelection bid, which will be contested at the AFL-CIO's convention in July.  With the UAW's support, Sweeney is probably assured of reelection.  But his reelection may lead five unions that represent more than 20% of the AFL-CIO's membership to withdraw from the national labor federation. 

Greenhouse lays out the basics of the dispute with the dissident unions, who formed the New Unity Partnership, and which is led primarily by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Andy Stern and Teamsters president James Hoffa.  (Trapper John had an excellent primer on the AFL-CIO and the underlying dispute back in March.)  Greenhouse mentions the recent massive layoffs at the National AFL-CIO, in which Sweeney, partly to appease the New Unity Partnership, sacked about 100 of the 460 employees at the AFL-CIO in Washington.  According to the article, if the NUP unions withdraw from the AFL-CIO, the resulting loss in revenue will force the AFL-CIO to fire another 100 staffers of the Washington DC operation. 

What Greenhouse didn't mention was that the effects of a pullout by any or all of the five NUP unions wouldn't be limited to just the national federation.  If the NUP unions withdraw from the national AFL-CIO, they will also be pulling out of every state and local AFL-CIO federation in the country, with significant loss of revenue to most of those bodies.  The effects wouldn't be uniform, as SEIU and UNITE-HERE--another of the NUP unions--aren't evenly distributed around the country.  SEIU has a huge share of the membership in NY and CA, and because they represent almost all the casino workers in Las Vegas, UNITE-HERE has over half of all AFL-CIO union members in NV.  The departure of SEIU from the state federations in NY and CA would be severe, and the departure of UNITE-HERE from the Nevada state and local federations would be catastrophic.  And because the Teamsters, Laborers and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)--the other AFL-CIO affiliated unions in the NUP--have members spread across the country, their departure would ensure some negative impact on just about every AFL-CIO body in America. 

Some people, looking at the fading share of union-represented workers in the American workforce, might conclude that anything that "shakes up" organized labor would probably be good.  The reality is much more complicated.  But one thing is certain; if the NUP unions pull out of the AFL-CIO, the significant coordinated resources that AFL-CIO bodies use on behalf of labor-endorsed candidates and campaigns, especially issues campaigns, will be uncoordinated and more likely used on opposite sides of contested primaries.  If the NUP unions leave the AFL-CIO, the effects are likely to reverberate beyond union politics into Democratic politics and campaigns. 

Comments

[emptywheel]

I brought this up at a local party board meeting. No one believed me when I suggested it might be a problem. Mind you, I live in UAW land. But still--local Dems have been taking unions for granted for too damn long and will be really hurt in places that are more exposed to an NUP pullout.

[janinsanfran]

To a Californian who frequently works with labor on political campaigns, this is a nightmare scenario. I tend to believe that the networks of functional cooperation (outside the labyrinthine official labor structures) will survive for awhile -- lots of places SEIU outweighs the local labor council in campaigns and folks have more or less worked around that. Still, it is going to be tougher if SEIU goes.