New House cuts back on union democracy

A discussion piece by AUD Director Judith Schneider

Now that Democrats are in control, civil libertarians and workers' rights advocates might expect Congress to strengthen union democracy, that is, the rights of members inside unions. It seems they are doomed to disappointment. Republicans and Democrats may alternate in control; the need to defend union democracy remains. The House recently voted to reduce the budget of only one division of the U.S. Department of Labor, its Office of Labor-Management Standards [OLMS,] by $2.1 million. Most Democrats voted for the reduction, and not because they are in an economy budget-cutting mood. Actually, they voted for an increase in the overall DOL budget by almost a billion dollars to $46.7 billion. Why single out the OLMS?

The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, the federal law that protects union democracy and requires disclosure of union finances, assigned enforcement responsibilities to the U.S. Department of Labor. The DOL created the Office of Labor-Management Standards as its LMRDA enforcement division. Union democracy advocates have long argued that OLMS doesn't do enough to fulfill its responsibilities. Now, with less money, it will surely do even less, an outcome that was undoubtedly the intention of its budget-cutters.

OLMS conducts investigations of union elections and supervises reruns. It collects the financial disclosure forms unions are required to file, makes them available for rank-and-file review and audits a small sample (they say only about 4½ %.) It has investigatory authority for civil and criminal violations, refers criminal cases to the Justice Department, and obtains restitution of stolen union member dues. The OLMS is government's enforcement clout supporting the LMRDA. Currently with some 350 employees - it once had over 450 - it now looks like even this truncated operation has been targeted for reduction. A budget cut of $2.1 million- from $47.8 million to $45.7- will be imposed if the House of Representatives has its way. That may not sound like much in the grand scheme of things --- not enough to arouse misgivings. But the administration had proposed that an increase of more than $9 million was needed to enable the OLMS to do its job. It is obvious that if the OLMS budget cut goes through, its operations will have to be reduced

If the demands of economy were not at stake, how explain the OLMS cuts? The AFL-CIO establishment has always been hostile to LMRDA enforcement. Now, that hostility has been reinforced by new DOL requirements of more detailed public financial disclosures by unions. The House majority seems willing to sacrifice the interests of union democracy in order to yield to the concerns of the AFL-CIO top officialdom.

An amendment to restore the funds was rejected on a mostly party-line vote, with almost all Democrats voting against it. The Senate will have an opportunity to restore the funds in September.

A la Nixon: Jimmy Hoffa et al. go to China

When The New York Times interviewed Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. in Shanghai, it reported that, along with other American union leaders, he had come to meet with Chinese union leaders and dine with Communist Party officials. Not that they intended to collaborate with the state-controlled unions but, said Hoffa, "I think a dialogue with them is very constructive. You can't ignore a union that claims to have 100 million workers." The whole 10-day visit was a project of Andy Stern's Change to Win Coalition. The SEIU was there, and Greg Tarpinian, formerly a Hoffa PR rep and now CtoW executive director, was spokesman. It is not likely that Hoffa and C to W hoped to learn from the "dialogue" how they, too, could organize 100 million workers. The Chinese unions, as creatures of the government, enjoy a prefabricated, involuntary membership, a system that is not likely to be duplicated in the United States.

It is curious. What were they doing in China, intermingling with figures and forces so powerful in our global economy? One possible explanation is their hope that somehow some of that power will rub off on them. Or at least lend them the aura of power.

The whole thing seems like another product of the fertile, protean, and somewhat eccentric mind of Andy Stern, president of the SEIU and guiding genius of the Change to Win Coalition. He is preoccupied with creating a new powerful force in America. With a growing base among America's most downtrodden, the unskilled, the immigrants, the minorities, who constitute the growing sector of service workers, he hopes --- by not annoying the captains of industry with individual grievances --- to add them in a not quite defined plan to save the American economy. And to join with Wal-Mart to bring medical insurance --- not quite defined --- to all.

Alan Murray reported in The Wall Street Journal (5/30) that Stern is now cultivating relations with private buyout CEOs. "Mr. Stern told me in an interview," writes Murray, "that he much prefers working with the buyout kings than with their public-company counterparts. 'I've been incredibly impressed,' he said, sharing his impressions of the men, 'Compared with most of my meetings with company CEOs, these men are much more businesslike and have much more understanding of what we are trying to accomplish.'" Just what is Stern trying to accomplish?

And now, somehow to add to the putative mixture, a possible connection with the fastest growing power on earth, the Chinese, what a formidable combination of POWER!

Power for what precisely? That's an open question.

A tale of two Brians -- How do they operate in IBEW Local 3?

When Brian McLaughlin was indicted on charges of stealing millions of dollars from assorted sources, including from the union, he was forced out as president of the NYC Central Labor Council and needed a job while his trial was pending. And so he decided to return to work as an electrician. No problem. He signed the book at the Local 3 hiring hall, waited his proper turn, he said, and was promptly put to work. Everything was in order. He had the right to work. Apart from the presumption of innocence, even if he should be found guilty, he would be entitled to earn a living at his trade after serving his time.

But his experience is quite different from the ordeal of another member of Local 3, Brian Colella. After 14 years as an electrician at the New York Fire Department he was discharged in 2003 (Fired by the Fire Department.) His “offense” had nothing to do with stealing money from anyone anywhere. He was on the department’s hit list, because he was an outspoken leader and advocate of the rights of himself and his fellows, especially their right to payment for hours worked overtime. It took him four years and heavy legal fees to win reinstatement before an arbitrator ruled that he had been framed on spurious charges and ordered him back to work.

Like the other Brian, he had been out of work and needed a job but when he tried to hire out of the union hall, he was not even allowed to register. Union Democracy Review reported the facts at the time, but no one seemed interested except the Chief, that good old civil service tabloid.

The question is, then, how do they operate that Local 3 hiring hall? An explanation is missing. Why does the Brian big shot, even after charges of stealing union money, get fair and first class treatment, while the Brian rank and filer, after being victimized for standing up for workers’ rights, is told to get lost?

An injury to one? Not my problem!

by Herman Benson

Are unionists’ grievances against their employers an obstacle to organizing? That odd question is brought to mind by Andy Stern, SEIU president, in an interview with Kris Maher of the Wall Street Journal (subscription only).

In a friendly account, Maher writes, “Mr. Stern says he wants to remake the labor movement by shedding its old adversarial image and creating more labor-management partnerships.” We have to make some allowance for Stern’s apparent desire to do a soothing snow job on the WSJ’s entrepreneurial readers. Actually, under Stern’s stewardship, the SEIU is embarked on an aggressive ---and effective--- organizing campaign among low-paid service workers, complete with strikes, threats of strikes, and mass demonstrations. The union may be ready to make nice to cooperating employers, but it is obviously willing to be as “adversarial”as necessary to get workers into the union under a good contract. The union has succeeded in rallying community support, especially among religious leaders, for its Justice for Janitors campaign of strike and demonstrations in Texas, Florida, and Connecticut. Under pressure from the SEIU, the New York City Council voted to require developers who get tax breaks to pay prevailing wages for janitors.

But what happens after the SEIU brings those janitors into the labor movement? Stern’s talk with writer Maher helps us understand the philosophy that already shapes the evolving organizational structure of the SEIU and that underlies Stern’s image of the kind of labor movement that he hopes to create. In essence, it suggests that to succeed, the labor movement must bureaucratize. If the banner of union idealists was once: “An injury to one is an injury to all,” the new watchword could aptly be: “An injury to one? Not my problem!” Are the needs of the individual to be sacrificed in the interests of what the leaders decide are higher goals, like employer cooperation and industry management?

As he has said many times in many other places, Stern told the WSJ that he wants friendly relations with employers. This time, he added, “People don’t go to work to have a fight. They go to work to provide a service, to build a community to take care of their family. I don’t hear most people say I can’t wait to go to work to have a fight with that boss.”

Of course, all that is perfectly true. But it is not the only truth.

The union is doing a fine job of raising the wages ---and substantially--- of low-paid service workers it protects under contract, and so raises their standards and permits them to live in greater self-respect and dignity in their communities. But the union has another role, or should have. Workers are not looking for confrontation with the boss, but they do ---and justifiably--- look toward their union to defend their dignity, and self-respect, and security on the job, during those long hours, that big part of the day when they are at work. Those who have suffered abuse from overbearing supervisors, from discrimination, contempt, unfair treatment, harassment ---even high-paid workers with lofty salaries--- know how that kind of experience can knot you in the guts and make those long hours, that unending part of the day, intolerable. In the euphoria that arises out of original wage increases from, say, $7 to $15, that second role of unionism may be waived aside, but not indefinitely. All this is relevant because it connects with Stern’s de-emphasis of “individual grievances” --- he is preoccupied with bigger things --- and it affects any conception of internal union organization.

“We want to find a 21^st century new model,” he told Maher, “… that is less focused on individual grievances, more focused on industry needs.” This is a conception that already has drastic effects on how the unions are organized, on union elections, on the relations between members below and leaders high above. Stewards are closest to working members. If stewards are elected directly by their constituents, they will necessarily be sensitive to their needs on the job. If they neglect their individual grievances, they risk defeat in elections ---honest elections, that is. Union leaders, way up there who are too busy to be annoyed by individual grievances prefer to appoint stewards and so insulate them from aggrieved members. The appointed job stewards, knowing that those above who appointed them are busy with higher things, learn not to distract their superiors with annoying grievances. Appointive stewards develop techniques for putting members off: evade questions, dissemble, get lost. They cease to represent the members in the union; they control the members for the union. They collect political action money; they urge members out to vote. They can neglect “individual grievances.”

Such is the fate of appointed stewards. But not even elected local officers are immune. Under federal law, local union officers and executive board members are elected directly by secret ballot vote of the membership. But does election by the membership mean control by the membership? Not necessarily. Not under the system that is developing under our emerging new labor movement. The answer depends on who controls their union salaries. Under the newly emerging system, union officers and board members are being reduced to the same dependent status of the appointive stewards.

In many unions today, elected union officers are entitled to salaries by virtue of their election, a sum often fixed in the union constitution. The security of that salary gives those local officers a certain independence. They are free to criticize the union’s top officers and still get paid, a freedom that enables them, on occasion, to express member dissatisfaction with the ruling administration. In our new times, all that is changing. Under the system that is developing and proliferating, no one, not even lower elected representatives, can hold a paid staff job without the approval of the top chief executive officer, usually the president, or secretary treasurer. When the entire professional personnel of the union, elective and appointive, are at the mercy of the CEO for their salaries, he or she is transformed into an uncontrollable autocrat. Imagine the state of democracy in the country if no one could hold a paid government job without permission of the President!

What are unionists to do while their leaders are preoccupied with remaking the world of industry and other massive projects? If their union neglects their individual grievances, will they need some kind of “union” within their union to force it to fulfill its responsibilities to its own members? In this structure of highly centralized bureaucracy, the need to defend union democracy is bound to be as urgent as ever.

Confronting Corruption in Labor Unions -- conference audio online

From the AUD website:

"On October 14th, 2006 AUD held a one-day conference to assess fifty years of efforts by unionists and government agencies to drive out the mob and rid unions of corruption. The conference was held at the City University of New York and co-sponsored by the Center for Urban Research, and Building Bridges. Thanks to Ken Nash of Building Bridges, over the next month or two, we will post the complete audio.

"This conference presented a sometimes upbeat but often grim portrayal of the struggle against corruption. Eleven speakers shared their experiences and ideas with an audience of about 90 people, some coming from as far away as Ohio, Illinois, and even Alaska.

"We welcome feedback and encourage you to discuss the ideas and perspectives presented here in union forums, lists and blogs, both official and rank-and-file. Please let us know about discussions or threads on your site and we will post a link on this page."

Latest Audio: Judith Schneider, introducing the conference and speakers; Herman Benson on corruption and democracy; James Jacobs on the history of government trusteeships.

Benson challenges NYC Central Labor Council

In an interview broadcast on Building Bridges: your Community-Labor Report, Herman Benson discusses the charges against New York City Central Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin, and issues a challenge to the Council's leaders: if you are serious about fighting union corruption, why not conduct hearings into two prominent cases of union corruption?

You can hear the interview, (plus an interesting piece on the Coalition of Imokalee Workers), here.

Thanks to Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg.

--Matt Noyes

Where are those missing AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Codes?

Brian McLaughlin, still President of the NYC AFL-CIO Central Labor Council but now on unpaid leave of absence, has been arrested on federal charges of stealing a few million dollars from the council itself, from his IBEW Local 3, and from assorted political committees. These are familiar sources of illicit take. But from the Queens Little League! That’s going too far. It reminds one of Dave Beck, former Teamster international president, who defrauded his friend’s widow out of her insurance money. When news of the pending charges first broke, McLaughlin voluntarily took a six-month leave of absence from his job at the council, a paid leave of absence. But upon his arrest, the council was shocked, shocked, so shocked that it suspended his paid leave.

Ed Ott, the council’s acting executive director who is in line to replace McLaughlin, has learned something from the shocking facts. The Times reports “he planned to reach out to immigrant workers” and “to help veterans.” It’s hard to believe that the labor movement somehow requires the theft of millions of dollars by one of its top leaders to spur it along the path of progressive social action.

Denis Hughes, who is president of the state federation of labor and chairs the NYC council’s executive committee, proposes measures that are at least relevant to the subject. For one thing he told the Times, he proposes “ethics seminars for state and city leaders.” It is depressing to learn that labor leaders must be taught that it’s not nice to steal union money and certainly not from Little Leagues.

He also says, “We want to have some ethical practices and procedures that make some sense.” Where has he been? The AFL-CIO is already overloaded with Ethical Practices Codes. The first comprehensive AFL-CIO code was adopted back in 1957 and then went through several editions. Enforcement machinery was included in the AFL-CIO constitution. But directly to the point, in 1995 a supplementary code was adopted that applied specifically to city and state labor councils and their officers, like McLaughlin. That code should not have gone unnoticed, because it was debated at the AFL-CIO convention in 1995 which directed the executive council to strengthen implementation of the unimplemented codes already on the books. If Mr. Hughes can’t find a copy he can get it from Jon Hiatt, chief AFL-CIO counsel, which is where we got it.

How can it be that McLaughlin might have been stealing ecumenically from anything anywhere that was not welded down? Can it possibly be that no one anywhere knew, or even suspected? The greatest likelihood is everyone feared to speak out or even mention the subject for fear of retaliation.

Ed Ott told the New York Times, “I’ve always been willing to talk about corruption in the labor movement.” Which may be true. But we are not aware of any public occasion on which he actually yielded to that personal impulse. We don’t suggest that he knew anything about McLaughlin’s derelictions. But if he had spoken out vigorously against corruption, even as an abstract generality, while McLaughlin was still active in power as council president, does Ott imagine he would still be holding his lofty council post? He would have been passed over long ago as the kind of irresponsible, undependable person that no one in power could trust.

Take McLaughlin’s power base, IBEW Local 3, from which he seems to be accused of stealing money. Do you imagine that anyone would dare to suggest that their lofty leader might have been guilty of misdeeds? Most construction unions maintain hiring halls which are clearly union hiring halls and are subject to regulation by the National Labor Relations Board which gives at least certain minimal protection to workers against arbitrary treatment by their union officials. IBEW Local 3, however, is uniquely different; its hall masquerades as a joint industry hall and therefore is immune to NLRB control. Local 3 electricians have no recourse against favoritism or discrimination in the hall. At the mercy of the McLaughlin establishment, are they likely to complain against him or any officials?

And so all this talk about the need for codes, and training seminars, and progressive programs for oppressed workers is just a way to pass the time until the whole embarrassing thing is forgotten until the next one.

Bureaucratizers and super bureaucratizers

Machinists

The Machinists union (AFL-CIO) seems on the road to becoming a copycat super-bureaucratizer, taking as its model the Carpenters union (Change to Win), which is showing all the others how to get around federal law and deprive members of their right to elect union officers.

Members tell the Association for Union Democracy that when IAM District Lodge 747 in California was first established around 2001 by the merger of two other districts, its bylaws provided for the election of the top officer of Directing Business Manager (DBM) by membership vote. In IAM districts, DBMs were traditionally elected by the membership. Apparently that is about to change. Because District Lodge 747 was now technically a “new” district, members were not permitted to vote; the DBM was appointed by the IAM international office. Members never got the chance to vote, because before the term of the appointed DBM expired, the international trusteed the district.

When the international lifted the trusteeship after 18 months, members discovered that they were presented by new bylaws, summarily imposed by the international. The right of members to elect had been eliminated. From now on, only delegates will select the DBM. A portent of things to come in the IAM. A moral victory for the Change to Win bureaucratizers.

Service Employees

Meanwhile, Andy Stern, the practical and ideological mentor of Change to Win, reaches out to grasp the hands of the CEOs of America’s corporate leaders. In a piece written for the Wall Street Journal on July 17, he writes:

“Today I sent a letter to every CEO in the Fortune 500 asking them to make health care the national priority….Our union members ---your employees--- will work with you. The old idea that business and labor can’t work together for the common good is as outdated as lifetime jobs. The Service Employees International Union is the largest health-care union in the country…. We know health care. You know business. Together, let’s build a new 21st-century economy.”

As he notes, “The employer-based system of health care is over.” It may be an effective tactic, with great PR advantages, to try to induce the rulers of corporate America to abandon any exclusive responsibility for health care ---bound to be attractive to them--- and to join in formulating a new plan to socialize the costs of “a universal system that provides affordable coverage.”

But there are complications.

Some day in that utopian future, in happier times, labor and management may collaborate harmoniously in building an economy that justly serves all. The trouble is that we still live in a harsher world where a central problem for the labor movement is to end the dominance of federal government by those who favor the interests of the corporate rich, represented and symbolized by the Fortune 500. The need is to shape national policy on taxes so that the costs of social needs, like health care, are borne in just proportion by those who can best afford the burden. For that, we need a labor movement that can inspire its own members, rally the majority of people, and change the balance of power in the nation. The big question is: Can a bureaucratically centralized labor movement projected by Change to Win and now being copied by the IAM effectively serve that need? What do you think?

The ABD’s of unionism: Apathy, Bureaucracy, and Democracy

It is becoming fashionable, even among some activists and labor-oriented intellectuals, to derogate internal union democracy as an impediment to the great cause of reorienting and rebuilding the labor movement.

“…[T]he crusade for union democracy,” writes one eminent advocate of a labor-intellectual alliance, “seems interminable and interminably futile.” Andy Stern writes, “Workers want their lives to be changed. They want strength and a voice, not some purist, intellectual, historical, mythical democracy.” And so the Change to Win Coalition, which he leads, proposes to reorganize the labor movement on a new basis, without concern for the rights of workers inside their unions. Stephen Lerner renders the thought deeper: “Considering union democracy as only a question of how a union is governed is too narrow….If only 10% of workers in an industry are unionized, it is impossible to have real union democracy because 90% are excluded.”

If there was no real interest in union democracy, why would you need so many niggling rules to suppress it? Why those meeting attendance rules which effectively exclude over 90% of union members from running for office? Why those tricky long, continuous good standing requirements which disqualify longtime union activists? Why impose burdensome and near-impossible petition gathering quotas on aspiring candidates? Why try to restrict independent access to the internet and websites? Why limit the right of observers to watch the ballot count? Why resist informing members of their democratic rights under federal law? Why eliminate the direct election of union officers? Why, if no one cares or listens, bother to use control over union hiring halls to starve out independent-minded workers who speak their minds. Why, in summary, if there is so little interest in union democracy, are so many union leaders afraid of it?

One radical, a relentless critic of the modern labor movement, dismisses the whole idea of “union democracy” as a delusion and ridicules reformers who would raise it as a demand in their unions. “[A]pathy,” he writes, "reigns too widely and a connected stratum of members simply delivers their votes in exchange for jobs and job security.” In support of that notion, he quotes C. Wright Mills, “Democracy within the unions, as within the nation as a whole, is usually a democracy of machine politics imposed upon a mass of apathetic members.”

Those who minimize the importance of democracy because members are apathetic have matters upside down. Democracy is especially important precisely where there is apathy.

In any social institution involving millions of people, and the labor movement is one such institution, the vast majority is preoccupied with the tough tasks of daily life: finding a way to earn a living, a good place to, live, getting and keeping a marriage, raising and educating children and keeping them off drugs, starting the car on a cold winter day, the rent and mortgage, those aching teeth and sprained ankles.

Overwhelmed by what deep-thinkers might consider these trivial pursuits, they‘re forced to neglect other important but less pressing matters, like union affairs. That is, they tend to become “apathetic.” Where there is a robust democracy, an activist, vociferous, gadfly minority can be available to shake up that majority and force them to face up to the critical issues of the moment. That is, democracy is an indispensable means to overcome apathy.

Those union officials, even those who are contemptuous of others who speak of “union democracy” are fully aware of all this. When they see fit to move an “apathetic” membership, they will utilize the standard tools of democracy. They orate at length to induce members to come out and vote on election day, to raise their dues, to vote to strike or not, to adopt a contract. They fill the pages of their captive union newspapers with exhortation on the selected subjects of the day. Come out on Labor Day, with me at the head of the parade! They are not exactly inveterate enemies of the idea of democracy. They simply feel more secure when they, themselves, enjoy a monopoly of those democratic rights. They get nervous when it is available independently to other union members not under their control.

In our labor movement, there are thousands of active, loyal unionists, and potentially many thousands more, independent-minded, conscious of their rights as Americans, insistent on dignified treatment in their union and on the job. Union democracy is one means of releasing that spirit as an energizing force to help overcome “apathy” in the labor movement.

Assessing a half century of union reform

A discussion piece by Herman Benson (from the May/June 2006 issue of Union Democracy Review)

After decades of union reform effort, aimed at combating corruption, ousting organized crime, and strengthening internal union democracy, where are we?

In his book, "Mobsters, Unions, and Feds," James B. Jacobs, NYU law professor, assesses the results of the monitorships imposed by federal law enforcement authorities over unions dominated by corrupt officials, unions which were heavily infiltrated by organized crime. The government's campaign against racketeers in unions opened in 1982 with a successful federal suit under the RICO statute against Teamsters Local 560, then controlled by Tony Provenzano for the Genovese crime family. Over the years, more than 20 similar actions followed. Each led to some measure of federal control aimed at ousting the mob. A current Justice Department complaint against the International Longshoremen's Association makes clear that the campaign continues.

More than 20 years before the government move against Local 560, prompted by the adoption in 1959 of the LMRDA, which provided support in federal law for rights of members in their unions, insurgent movements, led by rank and filers and a few leaders, sprang to life in the labor movement demanding democratic reforms, an end to corruption, fair job referrals from union hiring halls. A substantial part of that record is preserved in two periodicals: Union Democracy in Action and Union Democracy Review and summarized in my own book, "Rebels, Reformers, and Racketeers." As UDR readers know, movements for reform within the labor movement continue to this day, newly encouraged by easy access to the internet.

We now look back at nearly a half century of intensive reform activity, by government and by unionists. It all began before most of our current readers were born. Has it been a success and to what extent? What's next?

Government drive against mob in unions

Despite mixed results, federal authorities can point to a few notable achievements. Organized crime was pried loose from control over the international offices of the Laborers, the Hotel Employees, and the Teamsters. In Teamsters Local 560, mob domination was replaced by a new leadership recruited from the rank and file. But most cases ended inclusively; suspect forces still hold power or remain as an overhanging threat. In one case at least, Pennsylvania Roofers Local 30, federal control ended in disaster; a corrupt old gang remained in power and was allowed to threaten opponents and drive them out of the union and out of the industry. A few years later, in 2005 (after Jacobs had completed his book) the international imposed a trusteeship and removed all officers; they had brought the union, its pension fund, and its welfare fund to the point of bankruptcy; they were allowing contractors to hire nonunion workers. There have been battle victories but no Big Success in the war. Organized crime and corruption remain as major evils, poisoning our labor movement.

Summing up his estimate of the outcome of 20 federal monitorships over the previous 20 years, Jacobs writes:

"…. it has fallen seriously short of its full potential. The majority of trusteeships have not produced regime change. Many have not produced a single fair, much less competitive election. The majority have probably not completely purged organized crime's influence from the union….Only three of the hard-fought RICO trusteeships can be judged to have been completely successful, for many of the others, it is still too early to say. Some…must be considered complete failures. The Cosa Nostra crime families are much weaker … but they continue to be a presence in most of the cities where they have existed…."

Reform insurgency

After 50 years of insurgency, running through the labor movement, making an impact on most major American unions, with their rights newly protected by federal law, reform movements forced the union establishment to make concessions to the principles and even to the practice of union democracy. The victory of the Miners for Democracy overturned a murderous regime in the Miners union, gave the union a new democratic constitution, ended generations trusteeships over the union districts, and eased the way of Rich Trumka as secretary treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

In the Teamsters union, the setback of organized crime in 1991, the victory of Ron Carey, and the rising influence of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union marked the high point in the movement for reform. Carey's victory changed the balance of power in the AFL-CIO and made possible the election of John Sweeney as AFL-CIO president. His ascendancy, despite the later setback for Teamster reform, opened a new stage in the history of the American labor movement. Reform battles legitimized union democracy, which is generally honored as a principle even where it is violated in practice.

However, despite the upsurge of union insurgency and despite the immense expenditure of federal money and manpower which did weaken the mob, there have been only a few instances where suspect union administrations have been overturned and then replaced by organized democratic reform movements. There have been a few exceptions: like the Miners; Musicians; Marine Engineers; Masters, Mates, and Pilots. More complicated, in the Teamsters. But they remain exceptions. Borrowing modern war-related terminology; There have been few major "regime changes."

And so corruption and mob infiltration remain, weakening the labor movement as it tries to rally public support for its organizing campaigns, and, most decisive, to win political support to change the balance of power in America. The problem is not merely "pockets of corruption" but a major disease, chronic and obtrusive. For proof, one need only read Jacobs and study the report of Edwin Stier on his aborted campaign to create a self-reform program for the Teamsters union.

Even if it were proper and convenient to shrug it all off as an embarrassment, in the hope that no one will notice, labor's adversaries will not permit it. Corruption undermines the labor movement; a campaign against it is part of the battle to strengthen the labor movement.

Why after all this time and trouble by government and by union reformers, and despite their achievements, is the record so inconclusive?

The limits of government action

The power of the government to effect change, despite its enormous power, is limited; that truism surely applies to its campaign against rackets in unions, mainly because it relies for execution essentially upon lawyers, prosecutors, former FBI agents, and assorted other law enforcement personnel.

Bolstered by all the resources of government and the power of the RICO act, federal attorneys can compose complaints and indictments against racket-influenced unions so persuasive that judges agree to impose federal monitorships or trusteeships over locals and internationals, Once government prosecutors have established a measure of control, to enforce their authority and back up any program of reform, they are armed with FBI surveillance powers, and the power of subpoena, the threat of fines and jail sentences. and the threat of contempt of court citations. These are powerful enforcement weapons, not available to union reformers or even to union leaders who would like to act against the mob.

The potential for government action against racketeers is so sweeping that union officials charged with corruption are ready to 'voluntarily' accept limited measures of government control in order to avoid trial and ward off even more drastic measures imposed by a federal judge. So it was that the Laborers, the Hotel Employees, and the Teamsters avoided total government trusteeship and submitted to some reforms. Even in the ILA, which so far has avoided court control over the international, the rank and file Workers Coalition has been able to function in a union where insurgency once meant death.

Those 20 years of federal action against labor racketeers have been good for the labor movement and made life more tolerable for independent-minded unionists.

But these were the big cases, open to close public scrutiny. However, as Jacobs concludes, the results of all those years and all that effort have been mixed. More bluntly, disappointing.

The prosecutors, lawyers, and appointed monitors have the power; they may be experienced in dealing with crooks, but they lack the knowledge and ability needed to reform a union. Some get nowhere because they have no idea that they must aim to replace a corrupted union with a good democratic effective union. Others have the will but don't know the way; without union experience, they don't know the good guys from the bad; they fail to encourage members to become union activists; they can't develop a new leadership to replace the old.

Usually they look for a fast cheap fix. But where rackets have been in control for decades, no union can be rescued in just a few months. Racketeers solidify their own base of support by intimidating and demoralizing all others. It takes time, resources, and union skills to pry them loose. The two most effective RICO suits were long and hard: It took 13 years before the Local 560 trusteeship could be lifted. After 18 years and with the existence of a dedicated reform opposition, a federal judge and his appointees are still needed to watch over the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The limits of rank and file reform

For insurgents, a war against the mob is no do-it-yourself operation. They need help.

Citizens anywhere, armed or unarmed, rely on the power of government to combat organized crime; it is no different when racketeers wear a union label. All the obstacles that face insurgents in opposing any administration regime are multiplied overwhelmingly in mobbed up unions. Incumbents normally enjoy the advantage of greater resources: a permanently organized political machine, full time officers and staffers, access to the membership and union publications, control over the election and disciplinary apparatus, and more. Rigorously centralized bureaucratic unions provide no space where critics can develop the skills necessary for an alternative leadership.

Where racketeers are entrenched, all the normal advantages of incumbency are backed up by threats of violence and actual physical assaults, occasionally even murder. With the tolerance, even the direct assistance, of consenting employers, the mob blacklists stubborn opponents, starves them out by denying them work, and drives them out of the industry. For all these reasons, union reformers, however courageous, dedicated, and self-sacrificing, need the help of law enforcement authorities to oust the mob from their unions.

Greatest successes where two forces combine

If reformers need government support, government needs active help from union reformers; the greatest successes ---perhaps the only really major successes--- have been achieved when the authority of government and the power of reform insurgency have combined in mutual support in the war against thugs and mobsters. In the United Mine Workers, after a federal court armed insurgents with the tools of democracy and fair elections, the Miners for Democracy movement was able to get rid of a murderous officialdom and write a new democratic union constitution.

In the Teamsters union, court-appointed monitors warded off racketeers and presided over the first direct membership election of top officers in the union's history. With their rights protected by federal authorities, insurgents took control of the union's national office and elected Ron Carey as president. Even after Carey's defeat, still under the umbrella protection of federal monitors, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union has transformed itself from a small band of dedicated reformers into a formidable movement in opposition to the old guard. On a smaller scale in Teamsters Local 560, federal trustee Ed Stier wrested control of the union from the Genovese crime family; he succeeded because he understood the need to encourage a new leadership to come forward from the ranks and recruited a Teamster member, a former staffer, to help him run the union while under trusteeship.

Affirmative action to recruit reformers

Getting rid of racketeers and replacing them with a genuine union leadership is a tough job, really tough. Active or retired, those prosecutors, attorneys, and assemblage of federal agents simply cannot do it by themselves. The problem is that responsible federal reps who hope to get the job done are all lawyers themselves and are comfortable only with other lawyers. They need the help of union reformers at all levels. But where to find them? They need a new kind of affirmative action program to recruit union activists. Announce the need! Advertise! They are there: associates of the Association for Union Democracy; supporters of Labor Notes; and hundreds of others with union experience.

For federal authorities, it is a matter of recognizing a need and making a decision. Many union reformers, however, will be skeptical. "You can't trust the government," they will say, which is probably true but that simple truth is not a dependable guide to action. Nobody fully trusts the government. For Republicans, government and Democrats are the problem. Democrats don't trust Republicans. The FBI doesn't trust the CIA and vice versa. Half of Congress and a big part of the population do not trust the President. The State Department often doesn't trust the Pentagon. Nobody trusts the IRS. And so it goes. Government under a democratic system gets to be complex; in this intricate labyrinth of distrust, we decide how best to do what's right. It will be said, "Government intervention will undercut unions." For the unalloyed right wing, that may be quite true. But it is not true of the Office of Labor Management Standards which enforces the LMRDA. It is not true of the government action against racketeers in unions under the RICO suit.

Federal action against racketeers in unions opens the way for change. Even while remaining skeptical of government, union reformers should be alert to seize the opportunity.

Note: In submitting this subject for discussion, these comments are not intended to discuss once again the broader questions of workers' rights in their unions. Union democracy remains embattled even in unions with good, honest, but benignly bureaucratic leaders. That's another matter. It is relevant here essentially because it can be an effective instrument for combating corruption.


See also "The RICO Trusteeships after Twenty Years: A Progress Report," by James B. Jacobs, Eileen M. Cunningham, and Kimberly Friday

Don Taylor and Herman Benson on union democracy and Change to Win

Don Taylor is Education Coordinator for SEIU Local 1984 in Concord, NH, and teaches in the Political Science department at the University of New Hampshire. He has been an AUD supporter since 1997. AUD recently published a piece Taylor wrote for the March 2006 issue of Yankee Radical, the newsletter of the Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, along with a reply by Herman Benson.

From Taylor's piece:
"...Think back to the great struggles in the automotive industry in the 1930s. How different would the outcome have been if the General Motors workers in Cleveland, at Detroit's Fisher Plant No. 2, and at Fisher No. 1 in Flint had been split between different unions? The outcome could not have been the same, and the history of the labor movement would be markedly different. Yet, for some reason, many in the labor movement accept today's atomized status quo. Some even applaud it-like the folks at Union Democracy Review, who seem to think workers' ability to change between unions like trading in an old car for a new one is more important than building power."

From Benson's reply:
"...Don Taylor allows his admirable hopes to overwhelm any sense of reality. His disenchantment with Sweeney and the AFL-CIO seems rooted in his feelings about the cold war, rigid anti-communism, business unionism, and other evils of a "nakedly aggressive monopoly capitalism." But it is an illusion to dream that a new labor coalition of the Teamsters under Hoffa, the Carpenters, the Laborers, and the Food Workers will deliver something closer to his heart's desire. He imagines it; they haven't even made the promise. In these times, when there is so little to cheer about, some radicals grasp at straws. The danger is that, in a desperate search for reassuring signs, they are being taken in by a new ideology of super-centralized bureaucratic labor unionism."

Read the pieces here.

From Review of Poor Workers' Unions, by Vanessa Tait

"...Take one square mile of working people's homes, poor or not, at the core of any metropolitan center. Here you can find more injustice, more exploitation, and more misery than can be overcome by any private organizations in a lifetime of devotion. Into this thicket of inequity come small bands of dedicated idealists inspired by visions of a more just society. They undertake the responsibility of fighting for the rights of those at the bottom, those who are ignored by other organizations which are unable or unwilling to undertake the burden, or even ignorant of the needs of those below.

"These pioneers enter boldly where others will not tread; they lead a virtual guerrilla war against injustice, battling here, battling there, wherever opportunities open. They sometimes win; they often lose; even the victories often prove ephemeral. But even in defeat they can win a moral victory as society slowly is sensitized to the need. They help keep the nation's democracy alive..."

Read more

Benson Wins “Lifetime Troublemaker” Award

Herman Benson, AUD co-founder, received a “Lifetime Troublemaker” award at the Labor Notes conference “Building Solidarity From Below” in Dearborn, MI, May 5-7. According to Labor Notes, “These awards are intended to recognize grassroots activists whose efforts may not have made headlines, but have contributed to the struggle for union democracy and workplace justice.”

Benson’s acceptance speech (listen here):

“I never saw myself exactly as a troublemaker but rather as one among many trying to get rid of the world's troubles. As they say, however, it takes one to catch one. If your assemblage of the world's top expert troublemakers agrees that I fit properly among them, I must accept the parahonor with thanks. A word about my old friend Erwin Baur who helped steer me toward one of the best decisions of my life: becoming a machinist and toolmaker. When he was president of a Steel local in the late thirties, right after the defeat in Little Steel, when times were real bad, he convinced his members to yield to a wage cut rather than risk a hopeless strike. I was there. It taught me that a good troublemaker must sometimes see trouble ahead and lead people away from it. Thanks for the tribute to three representatives of a fast-dwindling generation. Now it's up to you.”

(Editor’s note: AUD friends Erwin Baur and Harry Kelber also received “Lifetime Troublemaker” awards.)

For Democracy! But not on our block!

Labor union leaders are leading the charge for 400 proposals to improve democratic procedures in organizations. Sadly, however, these proposed reforms are not for workers in their unions but only for stockholders in their corporations. Labor leaders are militantly in support of the right of stockholders to greater control over the executive officers of corporations. Dan Fisher tells the story in Forbes magazine.

In the vanguard of the battle for stockholders democratic rights is the Carpenters union. According to Fisher, it submits around 80 to 100 stockholder reform proposals every year. He writes, “The union’s director of corporate affairs, Ed Durkin, said in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News that corporate directors need to be more accountable to shareholders. ‘If they know they have to get elected, that it not a foregone conclusion, then boards become better-functioning entities,’ Durkin said.”

Seems obvious? But the Carpenters union, which presses so ardently for the right of stockholders to keep corporate directors accountable, has reorganized itself to insulate its regional directors, the top leaders, from membership control. Their selection is indeed a “foregone conclusion.” These top union directors are not accountable to the membership because they are not elected by the membership.

Perhaps the solution is for the union to privatize, issue shares to members as stockholders, and seek a listing on the New York Stock Exchange…. No, we have to withdraw that suggestion. . The danger is that they might declare corporate bankruptcy while someone walks away with the money. Carpenters for a Democratic Union have a better idea: one member, one vote in the election of union officer-directors.

A lesson from Transit Workers’ Local 100: The Limits of Bureaucratic Centralization

When Roger Toussaint was an insurgent in TWU Local 100, the 38,000–member union of New York City subway and bus workers, he campaigned to curb the authoritarian powers of the local president and to expand the countervailing power of the division chairs and representatives elected by the rank and file. But after winning election as president on the insurgent New Directions slate, he changed his mind. As he explained to the Chief, the civil service weekly, he decided that the most effective way to run a union was to centralize authority in the hands of a CEO, with full control over the paid staff and all phases of day-to-day operations. And so he proceeded successfully to wield powers that he once would have denied to others. Noel Acedevo, who was elected recording secretary along with Toussaint on the New Directions slate, says that when he expressed misgivings over the shift, he was with treated with contempt like an unwelcome clerk, confined to his office room, his incoming and outgoing mail carefully scrutinized, and denied meaningful participation in local affairs.

Ainsley Stewart and Toussaint were once fellow insurgents in New Directions, the opposition caucus that won the election for Toussaint just before the group fell apart. Stewart was later elected one of the division vice presidents in opposition to Toussaint. As vice president, Stewart is entitled to a constitutionally fixed salary. But now he is in federal court complaining that Toussaint unilaterally cut his bi-weekly salary installments whenever he decided that Stewart was not devoting time to pushing the official line. Stewart claims a loss of around $20,000 up to now.

Toussaint succeeded in entrenching himself organizationally. But when TWU members voted down the contract he had negotiated to end their three-day strike, they demonstrated that the power of bureaucratic centralization has its limits.

All went well for Toussaint until the three-day New York transit strike. By a tiny majority, the membership voted down the contract he had negotiated to end the strike, a contract which he and the executive board had campaigned hard to put over. Bitter over this rejection of his authority, he denounced those who had campaigned against it. If, only they had been responsible, if only they had not misled the voters, if only they had not lied, he insisted, what he proclaimed to be a fine contract would never have been defeated.

In this, he was perfectly correct. If no one had spoken against it, if everyone was willing to go along, of course it would have been adopted. But that’s not how the world works. If only Republicans had not criticized Democrats, John Kerry would be president today, or Al Gore. Toussaint says they lied about the contract’s defects; they say he lied about its virtues. That’s how it goes. Leaders in unions, as in politics, must live with it. No one is entitled to an automatic pass.

It’s tough to get a great contract these days, one that excites near-universal delight. You take the best you can get. Sometimes, you even have to take the least bad. Everyone should know that; New York Transit workers surely know that. Any debate over conflicting details gets so complicated and confusing that it’s often impossible for working members to decide what or who is right. And so, how can they make up their mind? They tend to accept the advice of leaders whom they respect and in whom they have confidence. Toussaint knows that. In a letter to The Chief discussing his contract defeat he wrote that the question is “why enough transit workers weren’t willing … to say that if Roger and our executive board say this is the best we can do, we trust them.” And he referred to this question as the “central issue of confidence in our union.”

Is he aware of the significance of his own words? A majority of the voters rejected the contract because they had less confidence in Toussaint’s executive board and more confidence in rank and file leaders who were independent of Toussaint and critical of him. In solidifying his personal power, Toussaint alienated a whole cadre of respected, independent-minded, local leaders, many of whom had originally supported him for president. In losing their support, he lost the support of the voting members.

Alan Saly, former managing editor of the Local 100 newspaper, told The Chief that when Toussaint fired one close supporter who opposed him on a minor matter, ”He made one too many enemies.” Richard Steier, editor of The Chief, wrote, “Mr. Toussaint has compounded his internal problems by taking harsh action against numerous former allies…. The net effect has been to wind up running the union largely on the strength of his own will.”

After his election, Toussaint ran a local which stands up militantly on behalf of its members against the Metropolitan Transit Authority. That might have been enough in a local of new unionists, subdued, inexperienced, grateful for modest gains, a union where no possible alternative leadership had yet emerged from the ranks. But Local 100 has a membership which has already fought its way up. It has a long tradition of internal political rivalry; Toussaint rode that tradition into power. On the job, transit workers fight for dignity and demand respect from a mean employer. Toussaint responded to that demand. In the union, however, there are rank and file leaders who insist on respect and dignity inside the local itself. In his obsession with power, Toussaint feared that insistence as a challenge to his authority.

Local 100 is composed of seven divisions, organized by job titles. Each division membership elects its own chairperson and is represented on the local executive board by one local vice president. The three top officers, plus the seven VPs plus 39 representatives elected by the divisions make up the 49-person executive board. In this big 38,000-member union, only the seven VPs and the three top officers receive any salary by virtue of their union office. Apart from these ten, the entire paid union staff numbering in the scores --- somewhere around sixty or more --- are all appointed by Toussaint. Division chairs get no pay unless appointed to a paid position y Toussaint. Disputes over this structure have triggered many a bitter battle.

The elected division chairs have position but no real power. The paid staff assigned to the divisions is appointed by the local president. The local president, not the division chairs, designates who can be released from their job and be paid temporarily for division union work. Insurgents have fought to give real power to the elected division chairs. A key demand in their platform, while Toussaint was part of the opposition, was to turn those powers over to the elected chairs. The old guard resisted. Once elected, Toussaint, having changed his mind, continued the old system, which remains today.

In 1999, according to Naomi Allen, Ainsley Stewart and Toussaint, then collaborators, sued to win the right of division chairs to a measure of participation in contract negotiations. They won something in court, but nothing changed on the ground. According to Toussaint’s critics, division chairs are still shunted aside at contract time.

In the past, the seven division vice presidents had been elected at large. In 2000, the insurgents won their battle for election of VPs by the membership they represented when the old guard yielded and changed the bylaws. Since then, the VPs, now elected by the members they represent, have become one source of potential power independent of the president. They cannot simply be ordered about; they must be convinced.

After many years of battles against private owners and city officials to establish a strong union, after decades of internal union battles over power and democracy, Local 100 developed a strong cadre of independent-minded union activists, sometimes in the ranks, sometimes in the leadership. Precisely because they were there, Roger Toussaint could be elected president as an insurgent in opposition to the local administration and in defiance of the international. After election, in his drive for centralized power, he alienated precisely the kind of unionists who lifted him into power.

In searching for the source of Toussaint’s troubles, his union rivals and outside neutral commentators alike find the answer in his personal quirks, in his inability to tolerate even mild criticism. Perhaps. But there is more to the story. His regime is representative of a growing trend in our labor movement, one which is moving beyond (or below!) the familiar bureaucratism of narrow-minded union officials: authoritarianism in practice but not backed up by ideology. The new tendency is most obviously revealed by the Change to Win coalition of unions which have seceded from the AFL-CIO. Its advocates, many of whom are dedicated unionists with an honorable record in civil rights and labor causes, offer an alternative philosophy. For them, authoritarianism is not an embarrassing problem; it is an indispensable part of the solution.

They would solve labor’s problems by undercutting local autonomous rights and concentrating power in the hands of a small well-meaning leadership. To them, union democracy, while perhaps fine as a somewhat Utopian long range goal, is an immediate practical hindrance. They would bureaucratize to organize. One model is supplied by the Carpenters union, which has merged locals into big regional councils, wiped out membership rights, turned locals into powerless administrative units, and assigned overwhelming authoritarian powers to a single council executive secretary treasurer.

In milder form, the Service Employees International Union has dissolved and merged locals into huge sprawling units, held together and administered by a small top leadership with full control over the paid staff, a system which makes it enormously difficult for any alternative leadership to coalesce.

In that new spirit, the regime of Roger Toussaint took form. At one critical moment in the local’s experience, in the post-strike contract referendum, that system obviously failed.

Technorati Profile

Thinking about the New York City transit strike

By Herman Benson

Most of the media comments and all of the outrage were focused on the inconvenience inflicted on the suffering riding public by the 33,700 New York City subway and bus workers during their three-day strike, right in the middle of the holiday season. All those mythical million dollars worth of business presumably “lost!” But why did they do it? That question, lost in the arguments over bargaining details, never got the attention it still requires.

Before authorizing the walkout, members of Transit Workers Union Local 100 knew that they would be violating state law; they knew that the strike would cost them at least two days pay for each day out, that they each risked heavy additional fines imposed by a judge, that their union’s treasury and all its assets could be rapidly wiped out by murderous fines, that their leaders faced jail sentences. With all this at stake, the strike decision was no off-the-cuff action. It had been a long time brewing. Or festering. At AUD we could tell, because the prospect had been revealed in the bitter internal union battles over the years.

There had to be a transit strike, if not now, then not much later. It had to come because so many transit workers viewed the Metropolitan Transportation Authority as a mean, heartless employer, contemptuous of their human needs. As so many put it: we want dignity! That basic aspiration was a powerful undercurrent during negotiations in 2002 when it was reported that the MTA had averaged around 10,000 disciplinary citations a year against its 33,700 employees. As a decisive factor in reaching an agreement without a strike that year, the MTA agreed to be a little more understanding, a little less strict, by cutting the citations by 25%. Even then, 40% voted to reject the contract that year. Forward to 2004. Last year, according to the N. Y. Times, the MTA filed 15,200 disciplinary citations against its 33,700 employers, almost one for every two workers.

Years ago at AUD, we became acquainted with the human face of that arithmetic.

My former landlord, John LoPinto Sr., drove the No. 68 bus along Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn until he finally retired. He was a peaceable, responsible, intelligent citizen, easy to get along with, not looking for confrontation with anyone. He was the first to tell me about the nitpicking MTA that kept a disciplinary dossier on its workers, as long as your arm and much older; he showed me one copy (not his own.) As I remember, it was he who told me about the time a driver saw an elderly man trip and fall to the street as he was getting off the bus. The driver left his seat to help the man only to end up with a demerit for leaving his bus without proper authorization.

Larry Labrocca, a Staten Island bus driver, came to AUD with his story: One evening, while driving along the streets of Staten Island, he was attacked by six young thugs, one armed with a knife, knocked unconscious, and landed in the hospital with a fractured skull. While out of work, he faced charges from the MTA for being absent without authority. “Failure to report will result in action being taken to have you dismissed from the Authority.” He needed a lawyer to beat off summary discipline and ended with an eight-day suspension.

These incidents are years old but nothing much seems to have changed. When police officers and firefighters are injured or killed on the job, city notables rush consolingly to pay their respects. When transit workers are killed or injured, the MTA seems more concerned with proving that the victims themselves may have been at fault. I have not yet heard of any transit worker, who got disciplinary citations for getting themselves killed without permission, but there always could be a first time. Especially if compensation money is involved.

All that explains why, at one point or another, transit workers would strike. There had to be some way to release the pent up fury, to express their outrage against a thoughtless employer. From that standpoint, the precise details of the technical contractual issues were almost irrelevant to that broad section of the Local 100 membership who wanted action. There was little that Local President Roger Toussaint could have done to stop them, even had he wanted to.

MTA negotiators made a chronically tense situation even worse. They demanded that the retirement age be lifted from 55 to 62; that workers begin paying part of their medical insurance; that wage increases be paid for by assorted workplace givebacks in the name of productivity. It seemed as though the MTA hoped to humiliate the union or even to provoke a strike that could undermine the union’s public credibility. And then on the edge of a deadline, when an agreement seemed possible, the MTA unexpectedly inserted a new demand: that all new hires, but not current employees, be required to pay 6% of their pay into the pension fund. It was the demand for the introduction of a two-tier system, a poisoned bait that offers an advantage to older union members at the expense of those who would come later.

For TWU Local 100, President Toussaint rejected the MTA demand. The union, he declared, would not sacrifice “the unborn” as the price of reaching an agreement. (And in the end, the union succeeded in warding off this demand.)

The strike lasted three days. The press, like the mayor and governor, were unanimously hostile. Despite all the inconveniences, the response of the public was surprisingly mixed; there was the expected flurry of denunciation against the workers as irresponsible and selfish; but there were perhaps as many expressions of sympathy for the strikers and of suspicion of the MTA

The most damaging moral blow to the embattled strikers came from the international office of their own Transport Workers Union, the parent body of Local 100. The TWU international president publicly denounced Toussaint and the calling of the strike as irresponsible. That kind of obvious stab in the back is mercifully rare in the labor movement. In this case, it is explained by the bitter, years-long, faction fight between Toussaint and the TWU international administration. Factionalism spilled over into a treachery bordering on overt strikebreaking.

On the whole, the labor movement in New York was sympathetic to the strikers. Sympathetic, but without enthusiasm. There were mild expressions of support for Local 100’s aims but no resounding declarations of support for the strike. There was no suggestion that transit workers might be carrying the ball for the whole labor movement. How could it? Local 100 was resisting the demands for givebacks by current workers and sacrifices by future workers as costs of a new contract. But many unions, especially in the public sector, had already abandoned the cause and had agreed to those conditions in their own bargaining sessions. Still, New York unions did not desert the strikers; many had supported New York Mayor Bloomberg or Governor Pataki for reelection; and they seem to have used their influence to end the strike on terms acceptable to the union. Through the intervention of mediators, the strike was settled without either side proclaiming victory over the other. But the union still faces fines of $3,000,000 and the strikers a loss of at least six days pay. The agreement now goes to the workers for a ratification vote.

Because the transit strike violated the law, immediately affected millions riders, subjected thousands of workers to legal penalties, and inflicted outrageous judicially imposed crippling fines upon the union, all the issues involved were raised to a height of emotional intensity. The dispute over the “unborn,” highlighted by Toussaint, focuses attention on a mounting conflict over the future standard of living of American people.

This issue has been slurred over by a growing concern over the needs of those millions of super exploited workers living and working at the edge of poverty, the racial minorities, the immigrants, the low-paid service workers of every nationality and color. One encouraging feature of American life today, is the growing consensus among decent people of every walk of life, conservative and liberal, religious and secular, an ecumenical agreement that something must be done to lift the poor out of their poverty so that they can enjoy our “American dream.”

However, transit workers fall outside that familiar circle of current interest. True, many NYC transit workers --perhaps most-- are members of racial minorities: blacks, Latinos. And, true, many others are foreign-born, like Toussaint himself. But they are not super-exploited victims, candidates for clucking sympathy. To an important degree they fought their way up, joined mainstream American, and share in that American dream. And more, they are determined to stay there, and defend what they have, and perhaps even improve it. And so, as part of mainstream America, they too face an acute problem: how to make that dream a reality and keep it so.

Ironically, as social forces gather on behalf of the poor, equally powerful forces pull in the opposite direction. There is a growing consensus that those who may once have achieved the dream, or even have lifted themselves substantially above the poverty line, must now reduce their expectations and reconcile themselves to a desiccated version of that dream. That is what is involved in all that talk about the unborn.

Workers in manufacturing and on the airlines are forced to submit to slashing wage cuts. Workers must pay for their own increases in wage rates by givebacks, that is, by accepting a decline in other working conditions. Future workers –already born and yet unborn!— face the diminished standards explicit in two tiers in wages, pensions, and insurance benefits. When these cuts are imposed on weakened unions in private industry, it can be viewed as part of the age-old conflict between capital and labor. But when the same disabilities are accepted, copied, and imposed by government upon public employees, we are faced with a newly emerging consensus on public policy: American workers, starting now and accelerating with the next generation, are supposed to submit to a downward pressure on the American standard of living.

The MTA demand that future workers pay more for their pensions was only a minor element in the final settlement, but it was reminder of larger social issues. In forthrightly rejecting that demand, New York transit workers made an important statement on behalf of others.

The Blue Eagle: reviving an old legal weapon to open a new road for labor

The Blue Eagle at Work; democratic rights in the American work place, by Charles J. Morris. Cornell ILR Press. 310 pp. 2005.

Reviewed by Herman Benson

Law professor Clyde W. Summers inspired this book. Theodore J. St. Antoine, who writes the foreword, calls Summers “that imaginative legal thinker and doughty champion of workers’ rights.” In 1990, Summers wrote a short piece in the Chicago-Kent Law Review entitled, “Unions Without a Majority –a Black Hole.” His theme was taken up briefly and unobtrusively by a few legal scholars, notably Alan Hyde, apparently without making much of an impact at the time. But now, with this book-length treatment by law professor Charles Morris, Summers’s 15-year old law review piece commands attention.

Before writing this book, the author set out “to determine the accuracy of Professors Summers’s thesis.” After prodigious research, Morris was so convinced that he came up with a persuasive, closely reasoned work that is essentially a 230-page legal, moral, and practical brief in support of Summers, accompanied by 60 pages of bolstering citations and references in the form of notes.

The National Labor Relations Act, in section 9(a), provides that “representatives selected by a majority of employees in a bargaining unit shall be the exclusive representative for the purposes of collective bargaining of all employees in the bargaining unit.” But what about those situations where no majority union has been selected, or even where a majority of the employees have voted to reject any union representation? Where there is no majority representative, Summers insisted, the law clearly protects the right of unions which represent a minority to act on behalf of its own members, not to represent the majority but its own members. The “black hole,” he argued, was the failure of the labor movement to demand that right and to exercise it, and the failure of the National Labor Relations Board, in practice, to defend that right.

Summers wrote that in 1935 “Congress proclaimed basic rights of American workers in the sweeping words of section 7 of the Wagner Act” which reads:

“Employees shall have the right to self organization, to form join and assist labor organizations, to bargaining collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.”

This provision is reinforced by Section 8(1) which declares, “It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by section 7.”

In the absence of a majority union with exclusive bargaining rights for all employees, Summers argued, the law gives a union representing a minority the right to act for its members and to seek bargaining rights to represent its members, not the majority but only its own members. And he listed a whole series of practical measures that such a minority union could legally undertake to enforce its rights, including a strike, so long as it seeks to represent only its own members, not the majority.

What are the obligations of the employer? Summers wrote, “We have probably proceeded too long on the questionable assumption that the employer has no affirmative duty to bargaining with a non-majority union to now recognize that duty short of a statutory amendment.”

In at least one respect, however, author Morris exudes a conviction, even an enthusiasm, that goes beyond Summers. Morris agrees that new remedial legislation to impose upon employers the obligation of bargaining with minority unions is not likely. But he is convinced that the law’s requirements are already textually so clear, and the arguments for them so persuasive, that new legislation is unnecessary. He concedes that it will not be easy to overcome employer hostility or to reverse the NLRB’s presumption against minority union bargaining. But what he presents is no mere intellectual exercise. In his own words he offers what “is in effect, a procedural manual on how workers and unions can more efficiently reach the goal….”

In the early confrontations between unions and employers, Morris notes, it was common practice for unions to represent only their own members, especially when employers, resisting the union shop, sought to limit union power. In the early days of the New Deal, before the adoption of the Wagner Act, minority union bargaining was an accepted fact. Even after the adoption of the Wagner Act, the first union agreements with U.S. Steel and General Motors recognized the Auto Workers and the Steel Workers as representatives only of their members and no others. It was only later that the unions won the exclusive right to represent all employees. Morris emphasizes that today, just as the in the thirties, wining the right to minority representation can be the first step toward wining the majority.

He piles up the evidence: from the plain text of the law, from the record of Congressional intent, from U.S. obligations under international law. And even from the constitutional right to assembly.

It has taken years of neglect, he argues, for the experiences of the past to be forgotten and for the assumption to prevail that only majority unions are entitled to collective bargaining rights, an assumption that is not backed, he says, by any case law. To reestablish minority rights he maps out a multi- pronged practical program of action:

He proposes that a union representing only a minority demand recognition by an employer as representative only for it own members. When the employer refuses, as is likely, the union files an unfair labor practice with the NLRB.

If the NLRB rejects the complaint, as is also likely, the union pickets the employer demanding recognition, always only for its own members. If the NLRB, at the behest of the employer, finds the union guilty of an unfair labor practice, the union can raise the issue in federal court by challenging the NLRB ruling.

To bring pressure on the NLRB and to help bring the whole issue to public attention, the labor movement, he suggests, can file a petition with the NLRB, backed by a public campaign, asking it to adopt a rule, substantially as follows:

Where employees in an appropriate bargaining unit are not currently represented by a certified or recognized section 9(a) exclusive/majority labor organization, the employer, upon request, has a duty to bargain with a minority labor organization on behalf of the employees who are its members, but not on behalf of any other employees.

This book can be heavy stuff for the general reader. Much of it seems designed to persuade union leaders, labor lawyers, judges, and NLRB personnel. But it is an important book; these days, it can be a very important book. The labor movement is looking for new ways, new weapons to organize the unorganized. The SEIU has formed a Wal-Mart Workers Association to bring workers together in a hostile anti-union environment. The Communications Workers of America has organized groups of workers in non-union GE shops. Author Morris shows one way to break through the anti-union wall. He seems so committed to the aim that he might even be available to help.

(The above is an advance copy of a review to be published in “Religious Socialism.” For a sample copy of the periodical, write to One Maolis Street, Nahant, MA .01908)

A fine feud with no fighting!

Seven unions, united in the Change to Win coalition, have finally formed their new federation to rival the AFL-CIO. The Carpenters had left the AFL-CIO long before; it is now a model of bureaucratic, non-democratic centralism. The Teamsters, Laborers, Service Employees, UNITE/HERE, and the Food Workers have just seceded. The United Farm Workers remains affiliated to both rival federations. Even before any battle has been engaged, the two camps already seem to have arrived at an unspoken armistice. Many on both sides, forced by their international affiliations to become partisans, seem shaken and dismayed by the split. Their reaction suggests what is the probable reality: that the new federation is on a fast track to nowhere.

Bob Proto, president of UNITE Local 35 and head of the New Haven, CT. Central Labor Council, told the New Haven Register, "What does the AFL-CIO split mean for New Haven? It means that the Central Labor Council and the Connecticut State Federation of Labor will form the glue to keep everyone together. We cannot allow national divisions to infect our local and state federations."

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers remains loyal to the AFL-CIO. Frank Halloran, president of its Connecticut Local 90 told the Meriden Record Journal that the split would not lead to dissension in the state. "Collectively in Connecticut," he said, "all affiliated unions of the building trades will continue to work together."

AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) seems saddened but not angry at the split. Gerald McEntee, AFSCME national president: "We are sorry to see SEIU and the Teamsters leave." Lillian Roberts, head of AFSCME's District Council 37 in New York: "There is always the possibility that we will eventually get back together." True, of course, but not quite a stirring call to a defensive battle.

The New York Times reported on September 20 that Stern’s Service Employees and AFSCME (hot for the AFL-CIO) signed a two-year no-raiding pact and agreed to a joint campaign to organize 25,000 homecare workers in California.

Edgar Romney, who is executive vice president of UNITE (another hot anti-AFL-CIO union) and who is also on the board of the NYC and NYS AFL-CIO federations, told the Times, “We hope that we will continue to find ways to work together." Brian McLaughlin, president of the NYC Central Labor Council, said that he met with the Teamsters, SEIU, UNITE, and Food Workers to discuss continued cooperation. Mike Fishman, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, told the Times, “We want to continue our relationship with everyone who wants to cooperate with us."

Brian Sabourin, conflicted as a member of the SEIU and president of the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council in Worcester MA, told the Wall Street Journal, "I wish I didn't have to leave, because most of the work is done at the local level." Sal Rosselli, president of SEIU's United Healthcare Workers, which the Journal says represents 140,000 in California, said, "We fully intend to continue working together with unions both in and outside of the AFL-CIO."

John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president, the very man who Change to Win tried to drive from office, proposes to issue special "solidarity charters" to locals of the seceding unions to allow them to remain in AFL-CIO state and city federations. The move was promptly endorsed by Dennis Hughes, president of the NYS Federation of Labor, as a means of preserving a "united front" of labor.

Compared to the bitter battles between the AFL and the CIO in the raucous thirties, this is a fine feud with no fighting.

On organizing

Change to Win zealots argue that they had to leave the AFL-CIO to organize those masses of poor underpaid workers. But the American Federation of Teachers, still in the AFL-CIO, is deep into a campaign to organize 52,000 family providers in New York State. No need to secede or to dump Sweeney!

The SEIU, free of Sweeney, announces a "new" approach in organizing Wal-Mart workers. It has formed a Wal-Mart Workers Association to campaign for employee rights even before seeking collective bargaining status. As a method of battling against a resolutely anti-union employer, it is a great idea. But it is not new. The Communications Workers of America instituted precisely such a campaign many months ago in non-union shops. No need to secede or dump Sweeney. The CWA has been outspoken in its rejection of the Change to Win line.

(Both the Teachers union in its drive to organize family care workers and the SEIU in organizing Wal-Mart workers have joined with ACORN, the national community organizing group.)

On political action

The Change to Win people insist on a change in political action policy. They argue that the AFL-CIO policy of clinging to the Democratic Party has won nothing for labor, that the Democrats simply take labor for granted and give nothing in return. And they intend to change all that. It is a criticism that might make sense if the critics were threatening a genuinely new independent policy, like supporting the Working Families Party of New York, or a New Party nationally, or Naderite Greens, or a Labor Party, or even a massive shift to liberal pro-labor Republicans. But so far, nothing like that. Quite the opposite.

In 2004, Stern's SEIU donated $500,000 to the Republican Governor’s' Association, not a hotbed of pro-union sentiment. Three Republican governors, by executive decree, illegalized collective bargaining for public employees in their states: Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri. A fourth, in Maryland, voided a pay increase that the union had won under his predecessor. The donation obviously went to the Republican Party's right wing. If that $500,000 political investment is a harbinger of what is to come from the Change Coalition, it indicates that they may hope to make union organizing more palatable to the Republican right by buying it off with contributions. No question. That, at least, would be a change, but not necessarily a change to win.

Why?

It is hard to know where the new federation is going and why it had to split off from the AFL-CIO to get there.

However, the course of at least one of the participants, James Hoffa, makes sense. Hoffa was propelled into the presidency of the Teamsters union mainly by the support of those who had tolerated the heavy infiltration of the union by organized crime figures who would not rest until they got rid of the reformer, Ron Carey. In recent month's, Ed Stier, who had been retained by the union, presumably to help keep it clean, accused Hoffa of blocking efforts to get rid of racketeers where they may still be ensconced in the union. By coming forward as a man who calls for the reform of the labor movement, Hoffa may succeed in shucking off the image of a man who could not or would not reform his own union.

AFL-CIO split poses the question: Must labor bureaucratize to organize?

A discussion piece by Herman Benson from Union Democracy Review #157

Five unions may be on their way out of the AFL-CIO. Led by Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees, they promise —-or threaten—- to form a new federation that will seek to reorganize the labor movement and revive its dwindling strength. At this writing, the SEIU and the Teamsters, after boycotting the July AFL-CIO convention, have already announced their departure.

When John Sweeney took over as AFL-CIO president in 1995, he proposed to arrest labor’s decline by a massive program to organize the unorganized. He failed. Now, ten years later, Stern promises to arrest labor’s decline by a massive program to organize the unorganized, but under the aegis of his new federation.

What has Stern got that Sweeney lacked?

Sweeney hoped to inspire the labor movement to come forward as a force for social justice in America. Stern, in a kind of corporate spirit of mergers and consolidation in quest of a labor “market density,” would abolish unions he feels are too small and force them all into a few big unions, each guaranteed against competition by being assigned a monopoly grant in its “core” industry. Other unions might have to give way; but Stern’s SEIU and those that now support him would, apparently, be among the exempt lucky few to survive the major surgery. These remaining Leviathans would confront the corporate enemy in a mighty campaign to rebuild the labor movement. Stern calls for the drastic reorganization of the whole labor movement because without it, he insists, the labor movement is doomed to oblivion.

On the face of it, something is wrong here. The acute symptom of labor’s ailment is that only 8% of workers in private industry are organized. How can the fate of that 92% without unions depend upon rearranging the tiny band of 8% with unions? Doesn’t ring true! Actually, the kind of reorganization that the Stern forces demand suffers from two fatal flaws: For one thing, it will never take place. For another, it is irrelevant to the main difficulties that face the labor movement, difficulties that will not respond to technical rearrangement.

The partners in Stern’s Change to Win coalition don’t take their own professed principle of “core” reorganization seriously. Take the Laborers Union [LIUNA],which enjoys the affiliation of 50,000 (non-core!) postal workers. Because these are federal employees, some kind of crazy arrangement allows LIUNA to enroll some 400,000 other federal employees as “associates” in a federal health insurance plan. The LIUNA postal affiliate gets fees of some $16,000,000 a year of which $3,000,000 goes to the international. No sign of reorganizing that $16,000,000 out of LIUNA.

IBT organizes everything

Take the biggest Stern partner, the Teamsters union [IBT]. (The very notion that its president, James Hoffa, will be leading the charge for a brave new world of labor is mind-boggling. While admonishing other unions to stay at their core, he has just absorbed two railroad unions into the IBT (rails compete with trucking!) He has just taken in the Graphic Communications International Union, a printing union. Meanwhile, he holds on to the 20,000-member Local 237, the union of NYC housing authority workers, lawyers, and other public employees and to assorted factory and miscellaneous workers. Hoffa makes no bones about it: the Teamsters union is already a general union of disparate sectors; and he has no intention of changing it. In an interview with the Nation he was asked, “You organize in every industry. Are you going to stop doing that?” No equivocation in his blunt reply: “Absolutely not. We would not give up members….We have from A to Z in our union, airline pilots to zookeepers….We will always be a general union, and we are not giving up our right.”

HERE/UNITE, an enthusiastic Stern ally, is an amalgam of hotel-restaurant workers with remnants of a clothing union. Its merger has nothing to do with core organizational values and market shares; it is a marriage of convenience between actual members and the ample treasury of a sick union.

And finally the SEIU, the banner bearer of the move to strip, consolidate, and eliminate others, is itself a minor miscellaneous federation of labor with a self-selected range of jurisdiction that stretches from anywhere to everywhere. A good part of its growth consists of absorbing workers already organized, like Hospital Local 1199.

Physician, heal thyself! The notion that this motley collection could ever convince other unions to do precisely what they themselves will not and cannot do is ludicrous. It will never happen.

But in any event, even hypothetically, the Stern scheme is mostly irrelevant to the big, sometimes intractable, problems facing unions in today’s climate. An important and growing sector of American unionism is among federal and local government employees. President Bush by a stroke of the presidential pen wipes out unionism for tens of thousands of Homeland Security workers. By executive order, the governors of Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri eliminate collective bargaining for thousand of public employees. The NLRB destroys unions of graduate students. The labor movement can reorganize, organize, and reorganize again, dizzyingly enough to mollify even Stern, without noticeable dent on government unionism. Irrelevant! The issue here is obviously political.

Unionism is under intense pressure everywhere in mass manufacturing: auto, aircraft, steel, rubber, etc. weighed down by awesome international forces. Can anyone seriously suggest that their solution lies in internal union reorganization? For this sector of unionism the Stern camp is irrelevant.

Competing unions among the airlines? The Stern group seems to think they can remedy that divergence by fiat. It won’t work as long as workers still retain some freedom of choice. A more effective remedy might be to find out why workers are so dissatisfied with one union that they seek another. But in any event, that too is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Can anyone seriously contend that the solution to union problems in the airlines lies in re-organizational manipulation?

Stern and company keep hammering away at the need to organize that unorganized 92% outside union ranks; and in this, of course, they receive credit for focusing attention on what everyone knows. But how? All their talk about reorganizing is not simply irrelevant; it clouds over something at the heart of this one-sided discussion. (One-sided, because the Sweeney folks have had nothing consequential to say.) In the guise of a case for technical reorganization, the Stern forces are popularizing the concept of a super centralized, bureaucratized labor movement in which leaders at the top wield new authoritarian powers. They would bureaucratize to organize.

The reorganized carpenters union

The process is already completed and on full display in the Carpenters union which has already reorganized itself in the new spirit. The Carpenters union, which had left the AFL-CIO, is an important force in the new Stern coalition.

That vision of a highly centralized labor movement which restrains membership initiative in an authoritarian straightjacket is no mere bad dream, no reverse utopia. Carpenter locals have been reduced to impotent units. Merged into sprawling regional councils, locals are not permitted to pay any officers or staff members; their main source of income, the work tax, is taken over by the councils. Locals have lost all control over collective bargaining. Business agents are appointed from above. No member can hold any paid staff position in the council or any local without the permission of an all-powerful executive secretary treasurer. Local delegates, who elect the EST, cannot hold a paid union job without his or her endorsement. If that system were to be applied to public government no member of Congress or staff employee could be paid out of government funds, without permission of the President. It is reorganization carried out to the point of parody. The Stern camp validates that trend and encourages it. What the labor movement needs today is, not a further intensification of its bureaucratic tendencies, but democratization.

Any comparison, or identification, of the position of labor in 2005 with the state of the CIO in 1935 is completely off the mark. The CIO arose in a period of hope, of rising expectations, under the impulse of the New Deal coalition. Some workers flocked to the CIO in a spontaneous wave of strikes and sit-ins. Today in a defensive period of gloom and doom, the balance of political power in America is anti-union, blocking the way to a more just society.

With some 16,000,000 members, most in the AFL-CIO, who with their families make up perhaps 25% of America, the labor movement still constitutes a formidable social and political force capable of changing that balance of power. The trouble is that the AFL-CIO cannot convince almost half of its own membership, above all its white working class membership, to follow its political lead. They couldn’t get them to follow their lead in the 2004 Democratic primaries, or to defeat Schwarzenegger in California, or Bush in 2004. And it was not for lack of trying. The AFL-CIO campaign in the 2004 elections was one of the greatest outpourings of electoral activity ever, that’s the problem. How can you solve this problem by recruiting more members, when you can’t convince half of those you already have?

The stalemate in America

Despite the potential people power still at their disposal and despite the apparent attractiveness of their formal stance on issues, the leaders of our labor movement have not been able to break the stalemate in America. One reason, one very important reason, the decisive reason, is that they have been unable to bring to bear the power of that army of 16,000,000. They can activate their staff cadres; they can sometimes bring an impressive portion of their already-convinced membership to the polls. But they have been unable to inspire the overwhelming bulk of their membership and mobilize them as a force for social justice, because they have failed to imbue them with a deep conviction that this movement belongs to them.

Too many leaders on top run the works with contempt for the members below. As a citizen of the United States, you can freely, and without fear, criticize the president all you want. But in wide sections of the labor movement, especially in the building trades, if you criticize your business manager, your family suffers because you can’t work.

It is time to give union democracy a chance. Defend a member’s right to work in dignity and self-respect, not only at the job site, but in the union hall. Encourage them to run for office. The labor movement has no poll tax but it does impose niggling restrictions on the right to run. Let them know their legal rights. Guarantee fair elections, the right to elect stewards and vote on contracts in honest referendums. Democratize the labor movement and it can win the respect of its membership and the moral right to lead them in politics. As Walter Reuther put it: It is not enough to organize the unorganized; we must unionize the organized. Convince members of the justice of the cause, and they will convince the nation.

Despite their professions of good intentions, their apparent determination to devote time and money to organize the unorganized, the Stern followers, by bureaucratizing the labor movement, lead it precisely in the wrong directions and undercut their own efforts.

The unions in Stern’s Change to Win are an odd coupling. Of the four unions identified over the years as most heavily infiltrated by organized crime, three found their way into the new movement: Teamsters, Laborers, and Hotel. (The fourth, the International Longshoremen’s Association, not involved these events, faces a federal RICO suit.)

Total collapse of self-reform

The Teamsters union can report the total collapse of its touted self-reform program. Ed Stier, who IBT President Hoffa retained to devise an anti-corruption program, now charges that Hoffa is part of the problem, and that the union is unwilling or unable to investigate suspicions of organized crime infiltration in Chicago. The IBT, a museum of swollen multiple salaries, supported Stern’s demand that the AFL-CIO give massive per capita tax relief to its affiliates. Will the IBT use the windfall for organizing? To ask is to wonder.

Terrence O’Sullivan, who took over as Laborers president; and John Wilhelm who became Hotel union president, both have personal reputations as clean progressive union leaders. But their rise to power was not the outcome of any organized reform movement in their unions. They came out of the old union regimes; their accession to power was made possible only by the action of law enforcement authorities and by federal monitorship over their affairs. Cleansing at the top does not automatically bring change below. (The Laborers, although part of the Stern coalition, says it will not split off from the AFL-CIO. After years of government oversight, it still faces organized crime problems in New York-New Jersey.) Before its partners deserved credence as a “Change to Win” coalition, they would have to change themselves; some simply to reorganize; others would have to reorganize and reform.

One legitimate difference separates what the two camps say. (What they actually will do remains to be seen.) Stern says that labor must organize in order to strengthen its political power. Sweeney says that labor must strengthen its political power in order to organize. Which comes first the chicken or the egg? The answer can hardly justify splitting the federation.