Toward a Stronger Labor Movement
View Point: Change with Consensus or Change by Threats
Five of the sixty-plus Internationals in the AFL-CIO believe they have the solutions to Labor’s shrinking membership or at least strategies that will turn it around. Bruce Raynor Unite (200,000, Doug Mc Carron, Carpenters (530,000), Terry O’Sullivan, Laborers (320,000), John Wilhelm, HERE, (240,0000), and Andy Stern, SEIU, (1.3 Million) formed a group known as New Unity Partnership (NUP).
Some of you have heard about this by Web sites, news media or not at all. I will tell you my thoughts based on the information that is available and what it means to me as a CWA local officer.
To start off, I must address the possibility that this group might consider withdrawing and split labor’s house and have a less publicized agenda of replacing current AFL-CIO board members. One has to believe Andy Wilhelm and company would then force feed NUP’s agenda on the other 55 Internationals, which scares the hell out of me. The largest group involve, SEIU, has grown by using a corporate route through merger and acquisitions to streamline their operations. Forcing locals to mega mergers (top to bottom environment) leaves bitter feelings that destroy rank-in-file incentives to remain active mobilizing internally or externally for new union members. What’s left, hired guns to organize more members into a environment that has no real participation.
Some of their changes can be attained over time but one that won’t see the day of light is for instance is that CWA would have to give up their members in the medical field because SEIU thinks they can do a better job. And the reason being NUP says so, isn’t going to cut it. The nurses who went to CWA did it for good reason and it happened three times in Buffalo , New York . It was because of CWA’s reputation in the community servicing members in their backyards from its bottom to top power structure and of course our track record and NOT from hundred of miles away by phone or a occasional visit.
When I look at every Union and see how they all faired motivating members in the 2004 election season, I believe more work is needed to mobilize and educate internally and then strive to organize the unorganized. Having an army of dissatisfied members who don’t speak out or volunteer will not help the labor movement. The culture in America doesn’t bode well for unions to be knocking on doors and telling workers they are missing the boat by not being union. Today’s laws do not offer Unions or at-will-employees any protections with teeth in them to eliminate the fear created by anti union employers and their hire union-busting firms. We need to address this problem first before we fight each other on strategies we haven’t even reached consensus on.
My opinion of mega locals is that they do not produce a bottom up environment where a solid union family could flourish knowing everyone had an opportunity to truly participate in their future. Top down driven unions/locals offer little to non-union workers to show them they are part of the process and just dues paying members made to wait to see what a few negotiate on the behalf every contract expiration.
Ownership built strong unions and that equates to free advertising in our communities as in the case with the nurses seeking out CWA in Buffalo . Another problem I have with mega locals is that the leadership usually gets appointed instead of elected every so many year’s. It does not breed aggressive and energetic leaders all the time who need to be accountable to the membership and not the union’s national executive board. Do a good job and get elected to a higher spot based on what you accomplished and not whom you know.
Forcing mergers of internationals or taking non-traditional workers away from Unions who heard the call to organize the unorganized twenty, thirty years ago like CWA, couldn’t be anymore disastrous then President Bush’s second election win. We need Democratic, Independent, Republican, Green Party... Union members to focus fighting for legislation (Freedom of Choice Act) that will level the playing field for at-will-employees to organize in the right environment when they are ready to reach out for representation.
When I hear complaints that have any validity about a CWA Local or any other Union local, it usually stems from lack of membership participation or the leadership is servicing the members by phone or just periodically when they can get around to visiting the members. In any case, you go nowhere when the bottom to the top isn’t working on all cylinders.
Change is inevitable and to voluntarily change, we must be in consensus and NOT forcing ourselves onto others. From what I have learned about the labor movement, it has been for the most part a democratic path that brought us to where we evolved before the exodus of jobs from America .
As I mentioned earlier, some professions can be merged together but wouldn’t it be great if it didn’t cost them their participation in the process (keeping bottom to top environment). Since this article appeared in my newsletter in December 2004, the NUP has dissolved paper wise but the issues still remain. More issues have surfaced and ones that need to be addressed long before we fight between ourselves over mergers or acquisitions. The AFL-CIO needs to solve their own demographic problems in areas such as, Dental Labor Council participations in all 50 states, placement/use of AFL-CIO staff, reorganizing budget priorities and setting unified goals for all to agree on and move forward together.
Michael Jordan
EVP CWA Local 1120
