I am a reform Democrat. When I worked in the labor movement, I was pretty low on the food chain and generally ignorant of union politics, so I tried to stay apolitical as much as I could (that might sound hard for MyDD readers to believe). However, in my time working for the Illinois Federation of Teachers, there were two problems I ran into that quickly turned me into a reform unionist as well.
The first problem dealt with turf wars. Quite honestly, I am not sure who many people in the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association hate more: union-busting administrations or members of the other union. I worked on four campaigns during my time in Chicago, and three of them were adjunct faculty campaigns at community colleges where the NEA was also trying to organize the workers. The bloodiest one took place at Triton Community College, where we won on the first ballot over the NEA by three votes, but were one vote short of a majority (there were four no rep votes), which resulted in a second vote two months later. Both unions threw fairly significant resources into trying to win that campaign. In fact, at any given moment, both sides had three or four organizers working on the campaign. Considering the large numbers of unorganized workers throughout the state that either side could have been working on, it struck me as a colossal waste of resources since either side would have won easily.
As Christopher Hayes writes at In These Times, finding a solution to the problem of turf wars forms the central component of the recently dissolved New Unity Partnership labor reform proposal:
The agenda is spelled out most precisely in SEIU's 10-point plan "Unite to Win." It features a number of suggestions that are fairly non-controversial: The labor movement should launch a campaign to unionize Wal-Mart, it should focus political energy on resuscitating enforcement of statutes that protect the right to organize, and it must build strength in regions of the country historically hostile to organized labor.
The signature proposal--inherited from the NUP, and also the most controversial--is to drastically reduce the total number of unions (from the current 58 to about 15) and to organize each of these new mega-unions around a single industry or sector.(...)
In addition to competition during contract negotiations, unions are also competing to organize the same pools of workers, particularly in the fast-growing healthcare sector, where more than 30 unions are active. SEIU notes, "In 13 of the 15 major sectors of the economy there are at least four significant unions, and in nine of those sectors there are at least six unions."(...)
SEIU itself has reorganized, replacing metropolitan locals with members from disparate trades with regional locals composed of members from a single industry. The union has had success leveraging this collective power within an industry to reach a kind of density "tipping point," after which they're able to secure representation for a large number of workers. And, as they never fail to point out, with 800,000 new members in the past eight years, SEIU is the nation's fastest-growing union, so they must be doing something right.
Sounds pretty good, right? Well, there is a major problem with this proposal that might not be palatable to many progressives:
Those who have taken up the mantle of "union democracy" argue that SEIU's approach, both in its own practices and in what it's proposing, is top-down, technocratic and fundamentally inimical to the values of bottom-up representation that the labor movement should embody. They ridicule Stern for wanting to mirror the structures of the very corporations the movement is fighting (which Stern himself says is one of his aims), where directives are issued by executives and passed down the hierarchy to those at the bottom.
Regional locals and fewer unions might mean more power for an individual union, but it also means less grassroots input and less local democracy. It means fewer local officers, less attention to local concerns, and adopting a significantly greater top-down approach. Other unions have different ideas on how to increase union power without abandoning local democracy:
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) recommends setting up voluntary coalition bodies that can serve the purpose of industry-wide organizing while avoiding forced mergers. The Machinists say the AFL-CIO should start its own TV network to get labor's message out, and create a centralized database of health claims to drive down costs. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) focuses its platform on making unions more responsive to their current members, increasing training for shop stewards and increasing strike capacity by providing more funds to pay striking workers (something the Steelworkers also endorse).
CWA organizer and writer Steve Early, who has probably been one of Stern's most vocal critics, maintains that only by reinvigorating participation and militancy at the local level can the movement grow. In other words, where Stern argues that rapid growth is a necessary precondition for meaningful union democracy, Early argues that meaningful union democracy is a necessary precondition for rapid growth.
afscme, on the other hand, takes the position that becoming more politically effective is the key to reviving the movement. "Whether you do mergers or not, whether you reassert jurisdictional lines or not, whether you have 15 or 50 members of the Executive Committee, those things are important," says Paul Booth, an assistant to the union's president, Gerald McEntee. "But they don't make as much of a difference as winning or losing in politics makes." afscme wants the AFL-CIO to focus its efforts on the one thing it's been undeniably successful at: political mobilization of its members. Under Sweeney, labor has increased turnout of union household voters in each of the last three presidential elections.
Perhaps it is my radical past coming to the forefront, but I still believe that SEIU's approach is the most effective. Certainly, it is important to increase activism and militancy at the local level, to find new means of getting our message out, and to increase political participation, but the sort of reorganization that SEIU proposes is the most expedient means of increasing union power. While more active, democratic unions are important goals, the primary goal is more powerful unions that can improve working conditions, period. If a union is not improving working conditions for its members, then it serves no purpose. We should not turn away from proven methods of doing this simply because more idealistic, and unproven, means of achieving this goal are available.
For more information, over at Labor Blog, in September RT wrote in favor of bigger, merged unions, while in November Trapper John wrote an article opposing them. I'll have another part of this series up tomorrow.
