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Tuesday, July 26
Top Ten Problems within the Labor Movement
by
Caroline Vernon
on Tue 26 Jul 2005 05:43 PM CDT
 Top 10 Problems within the Labor Movement
by Ralph Nader
From Commondreams.org
Rose Ann
DeMoro is the Executive Director of the California Nurses Association
(CNA) - the country's fastest growing union. Since 1992, union
membership has grown from 13,000 to the present 63,000. And it was
since 1992 that the nurses became more prominent in participating in
and running their own unions. No coincidence.
Whether
it is CNA getting patient protection bills through the state
legislature or exposing the gouging pricing of health care while the
HMO bosses each take away millions in executive pay every year, this is
the standard-bearer for larger stagnant unions to look up to and
emulate.
With
Arnold Schwarzenegger riding high last year in the polls as Governor,
the nurses took umbrage at his selective cuts for people programs while
performing as a corporate cyborg for corporate greed and tax escapism.
When he called them a "special interest", the nurses swung into action
and Arnold's polls have not stopped dropping.
Now Rose
Ann DeMoro has weighed in on the clash of large labor unions coming at
the AFL-CIO's convention in Chicago that starts July 25, 2005. The
"Change to Win" group of dissident unions led by SEIU and UNITE are
making breakaway noises from the large labor federation if their
demands about succession to AFL-CIO leader John Sweeney and budgets for
organizing are not met. Ms. DeMoro thinks this is a power struggle with
much ado about nothing very substantive.
Here is her succinct critique labeled "Top 10 Problems with the Current Debate in the Labor Movement".
There
are no real ideological disputes, in part because the current AFL-CIO
leadership and programs were, mostly, put in place by those now
challenging them. It appears to be more about egos and an effort by
specific unions to anoint themselves as the group who should control
the AFL-CIO.
No
workers or rank and file union members are involved, and it is their
labor movement. Much of the discussion is based on recommendations of
consultants and Madison Avenue approaches such as branding, polling and
focus groups, and scripted blogs, rather than engaging the membership
and the public on helping shape the future of the labor movement.
No
issues affecting the majority of working Americans are being debated -
declining real wages, the health care crisis, the continued erosion of
democracy in the workplace, outsourcing of jobs across the skill and
pay spectrum, a deteriorating social safety net, declining support for
public education, environmental degradation, social justice and ongoing
racial and gender inequality, alienation and disaffection from the
political process.
No real
solutions to these problems are being proposed - curbing corporate
control of the political and economic system, single payer-universal
health care, a progressive tax system that restores fair share taxes on
corporations and wealthy individuals, taking corporate money out of
politics, a new industrial trade policy, a peace, not war economy as
well as a strategy for reforming repressive/crippling labor laws and
enforcement bodies.
The
specific proposals by the Change to Win group are structural and
bureaucratic, not programmatic - rebating union dues, forcing unions to
merge, limiting the executive council to the largest unions, and
claiming sovereignty for unions by industry or sector based on a
union's density in that area. There is no evidence any of these changes
would solve labor's problems.
To read the rest of this article, click here.
Vilsack: Democrats Must Unify
by
Chad Thompson
on Tue 26 Jul 2005 01:07 PM CDT
 Vilsack: Uniting The Democratic Party
This
morning while driving into work, I heard WOI cover Tom Vilsack's first
speech to the Democratic Leadership Council - where Vilsack spoke about
the need to unify the Democratic Leadership Council. (Article below from the Des Moines Register.)
Columbus,
Ohio - Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, in his first speech as chairman of the
Democratic Leadership Council, challenged his party Monday to channel
its frustration over the party's election failures into productiVity.
Vilsack
also announced that Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York would join him in
an effort to establish a centrist national agenda for the party.
"We
can't afford to be angry, unless we turn that anger into passion and it
fuels long-term commitment," Vilsack told 300 Democratic state and
local leaders from across the country at the group's annual meeting.
"Because that's what it's going to take," he said. "There's nothing easy about this road we're about to travel."
For the most part, Vilsacks' speech is agreeable.
If you ask any Democrat (or Democratic activist), you will hear
agreement on the need to focus on "core values" of the Democratic Party.
The
problem that I personally have with DLC philosophies lie with the way
their leaders have rather consistently supported the tenents of
laissez-faire economics - except for election years, very similar to
how Republicans play social issues for votes.
Tom Frank today pointed out (in response to comments about his book What's The Matter With Kansas?) that the Democratic Party (under DLC leadership in the 1990s) has abandoned discussion of economics out of fear of being labeled "Marxist":
To talk about economics isn’t Marxist. Alan Greenspan does it all the
time; so does the WSJ editorial page. To talk about the relationship
between economics and culture isn’t Marxist, either: They do it in
every issue of Advertising Age. To think that economics are more
“fundamental” than culture is also not Marxist; it’s common
sense. It’s the shared assumption of every banker and Chicago-school
economist in America, along with every person who’s ever had trouble
paying rent or doctor’s bills or tuition or buying food.
Perhaps most importantly, it is not Marxist to criticize the political
order we live under from the perspective of working people. This is
deep in the American grain; it goes all the way back to the founding;
it was once the province of the Democratic Party as well as the labor
movement and countless home-grown radical movements (such as the early
SDS), none of them doctrinaire or Marxist. If we rule all this out as
the territory of vulgar Marxism, not only are we doing violence to
figures like Franklin Roosevelt and Bob La Follette, but we are
damaging our own movement in the here and now, putting a huge range of
the human experience—work, money, the economy—off limits to ourselves.
(Ed Kilgore, operator of the "New Democrat Network" also had an interesting reply to Frank which is also worth reading.)
Pandering on economic issues
is not a core value, nor does it move us forward into the centrist
future Gov. Vilsack forsees. I wish Governor Vilsack the best - I
really do - but I also do not want to see the DLC expect to "unify"
Democrats around a centrist platform that refuses to discuss issues
like a living wage, health care, and an honest assessment about the
future of the economy under "globalization".
Two Key Unions, SEIU and Teamsters, Leave AFL-CIO
by
Linda Thieman
on Tue 26 Jul 2005 04:00 AM CDT
 Two Key Unions, SEIU and Teamsters, Leave AFL-CIO
by Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Yesterday's
announcement by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters that they were quitting the
AFL-CIO was no less stunning for its absence of theatricals. What we
know is that the split - which is likely to grow as several other
unions announce their own disaffiliations over the next couple of weeks
- sunders a union movement that is already weaker than it has been
since the 1920s. What we don't know is whether the new organization
that the SEIU, the Teamsters and their allies will form in the coming
months can and will do anything to bolster the power of America's
indispensable, if enfeebled, labor movement.
For now,
it's a lot easier to see the damage than it is to foresee the gain.
Both sides acknowledge that the labor political operation that AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney has crafted over the past decade is the sine qua
non of progressive politics in the United States, and the split clearly
imperils that program. Yesterday the departing presidents - SEIU's Andy
Stern and the Teamsters' Jim Hoffa - made clear that they want to
support the political operation even though they're leaving. Hoffa said
he'd instructed his locals to keep paying dues to the local AFL-CIO
bodies, the central labor councils, that coordinate labor's
get-out-the-vote drives.
The
split comes, moreover, just as the AFL-CIO was gearing up a long-term
campaign to organize Wal-Mart. But the lead unions in this campaign are
the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which is boycotting the
convention and is widely expected soon to announce its own
disaffiliation, and the SEIU. Yesterday, though, one lone SEIU official
with particular responsibility for the Wal-Mart campaign still was
working the floor of the AFL-CIO convention, even though his union was
just then quitting the federation.
(Click here to read the complete article - free registration required.)
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