After the Split: Labor Resurgence?

31 July 2005 |permalink | email article

The House of Labor is now divided. At issue: major implications for 2006 state and national elections, the fate of a special California election this fall and continued solidarity within the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Last week the AFL-CIO represented 13 million American workers. Since then, three major unions - the surging Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers, representing more than 4 million workers, have withdrawn. More telling: labor’s membership has declined from 31.8% in 1948 to 12.5% in 2004.

The long festering schism unfolds much to the consternation of civil rights leaders and Democrats who worry that it will dilute the importance of labor endorsements and GOTV efforts in the next two election cycles. Jubilant Republicans and corporate employers hope to make inroads as the union civil war begins.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who refused to acquiesce to dissidents’ demand to rebate half the federation’s dues for more organizing, has advocated using labor’s political muscle to fight for workers’ rights and to protect domestic jobs from overseas competition. The split will cost the AFL-CIO about $25 million a year in dues payments - about one-fifth of its budget.

The dissidents are lead by SEIU President Andrew Stern who sees a different resurgent dynamic to reverse the decline: polls indicate 52% of nonunion, nonsupervisory employees said they would join a union today if they could. Change to Win Coalition will hold a founding convention on Sept. 27 in Cincinnati. The coalition wants more larger, multi-union organization drives against large corporations such as Wal-Mart.

In California, anti-union Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, with a huge approval rating plunge since taking office in 2003, has called an unpopular November special election which threatens to diminish labor’s clout in supporting Democratic candidates and social justice issues.

Proposition 75 would require public-employee unions to get members’ written consent to spend dues on political donations. The governor has yet to take a position; labor defeated a similar measure in 1998. But the so-called “paycheck protection” proposition leads in an early poll, as did Proposition 226, before a strong labor financial counterattack crushed it.

Despite their national split, unions are retaliating with a proposed June 2006 ballot initiative to bar corporations from spending on election campaigns without shareholder approval. A coalition including teachers,nurses, peace officers, firefighters, government employees and SEIU is spending millions this year to soften up Schwarzenegger.

Much focus is on the future of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor which, before the national AFL-CIO split, was an umbrella group of 357 unions with 800,000 members. Members of SEIU locals have constituted 40% of its membership and paid 40% of the Fed’s dues.

In June, Washington Post labor columnist Harold Meyerson wrote in the LA Weekly that the late Miguel Contreras, the powerful leader of the County Fed, anticipating a breakup, was working on an umbrella structure that would keep the Fed and SEIU together in case of a national split.

The Los Angeles Times last week cited Southern California labor leaders in reiterating that hope,, and Meyerson wrote that SEIU was said to be eager to fund the establishment of ancillary nonprofit organizations to advance their political agendas.

But Martin Ludlow, a former labor organizer who succeeded Contreras and is closely allied with L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, was more cautious. He told the Times it was far too early to talk about such a move. Should it fail to jell, the outcome could be disastrous for candidates in heavily Democratic L.A. County.

Ludlow, 40, off the L.A. City Council just a month, may be hesitant because of a memo that Sweeney put out to union leaders across the country on May 31 proscribing just such an arrangement, making it clear that if an affiliate stops paying dues to the national body, its locals may no longer belong to local councils such as the Fed. This is a big story.

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