It won’t be on the front pages, but everyone who cares about good jobs, decent wages, civil rights, women’s rights, corporate accountability, worker health and safety, retirement security, and much more has an enormous stake in the debate that is now shaking the house of labor.
Four unions have announced they will not attend this week’s AFL-CIO convention that convenes all of labor to chart the future. Many of these are reportedly ready to disaffiliate completely. If all four leave – the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, the Food and Commercial Workers, and UNITE-HERE – that would represent about one-third of the total membership of the AFL-CIO.
America’s democracy, its prosperity and any progressive reform cannot be sustained without the strong support of labor unions. Labor’s voice is too weak, sapped by the loss of members, the rapid growth of the big-money corporate lobby, the brutal assault of an anti-labor administration and, most of all, by a global economy with a constitution of, by and for the multinational corporations that is undermining workers across the globe.
That weakness, and the decline in union membership over the last years, is the reason for the deep arguments within the house of labor. Labor has to change what it is doing or it will die. Aggressive organizing is essential. The Change to Win coalition led by SEIU is understandably impatient with the lack of progress.
Whether the unions leave the AFL-CIO or not, they must decide to differ but not divide. The internal labor battles must not leave so much blood on the field that labor is weakened in the external battles with those who would crush working people. Labor leaders are accustomed to negotiating tough deals. Now they must do a difficult thing – negotiate an operational unity in labor even if they decide to operate separately.
There are those who argue that labor must invest more in organizing and go South, where most unorganized workers are. There are those who argue that labor must invest more in politics and change the political leadership, so that government becomes an ally of labor. Surely both are right.
This division comes at a perilous time. Global corporations are exporting union jobs and importing cheap products and exploitable labor. They have made authoritarian China – with repressed workers forced to work for dollars a day – into the globe’s production center. That forces all other countries into a race to the bottom.
At home, anti-union forces control the administration and Congress and are pushing to take control of the judiciary. The Department of Labor is weakening workers, not defending them, and the National Labor Relations Board is selling out workers’ rights, not enforcing them.
This internal debate must unleash energy for the external fight.