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Working Poor & Life Chances
Nationally, the “Change To Win Coalition” has big plans and new ideas to save American unions, but locally, union members have scarcely noticed.
On July 25, five labor unions split from the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations to form the breakaway coalition. The split marks the first since 1968 when the United Auto Workers walked out of the AFL-CIO.
The Change to Win Coalition includes the Service Employees International Union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE, which is a combination of hotel, restaurant and textile workers.
Change To Win charged the AFL-CIO with failing to properly use union dues. Union dues and fees amount to an estimated $7 billion, according to an analysis of U.S. Department of Labor financial disclosure forms by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, a pro-corporate think tank based in Springfield, VA. The dissidents claim that the labor federation spends too much on Democratic politicians who have taken labor for granted and spends too little on labor organization.
Change to Win points to the steep decrease in union membership. The percent of union workers in the United States has dropped to 12.5 percent in 2004 from 31.8 percent 1948 to 12.5 percent in 2004. The rebels blame the decline to the lack of attention to organizing.
“Organizing and politics go hand in hand,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
But the breakaway unions say that organizing has been utterly neglected and that financial support for politicians isn’t enough. The dissidents point out that, despite the $61 million spent by organized labor for campaign support in 2004, the AFL-CIO has not been aggressive in holding the Democrats accountable.
“The AFL-CIO doesn’t organize anyone, even the national AFL-CIO does not organize anyone,” said Dale Wortham, president of the Harris County AFL-CIO Council. “We are a body of labor unions. Each individual union is responsible for [its] own organizing. So, if you were to call me and say, 'I’m an electrician and I want to join a union,' I couldn’t sign you up. I would call the electricians’ union. All my affiliates are responsible for their own organizing. We just kind of coordinate everything.”
Annika Gorhman, a local SEIU organizer with The Justice For Janitors Campaign, says. “Putting money into the AFL-CIO hinders us. What other incredible things can we be doing? The AFL-CIO isn’t putting their priorities into organizing workers. The point of what we’re doing is organizing workers.”
“I think they’ve been very passive,” says Bob Buzzanco, a member of the Texas State Employee Union and a history professor specializing in labor relations at the University of Houston. “There has been no aggressive campaign.”
SEIU, Local 100, field director in Houston, Orel Fitzsimmons says union dues could be better spent. “The split is because they were spending our $25 million [in SEIU dues], and if they were successful, we would not have said nothing. But they weren’t being successful.”
Workers in Texas find is harder to unionize than in the industrial Northeast because Texas is a “right-to-work” state, as are the other states in the South. Workers in the state have the right to not join a union even if the rest of the workplace is already unionized. New workers get union-negotiated wages and benefits but can’t be forced to join or pay dues. So, new workers are less inclined to join the union, leaving the union smaller and in effect weaker. When companies consider relocating, they favor states with anti-union “right-to-work” laws.
Leo Correa, secretary treasurer and business manager of the Teamsters, Local 968, says the split has had no effect on a local level.
On Sept. 6, at the Harris County AFL-CIO building, a mixture of AFL-CIO affiliates and one dissident union, the UFCW, met to discuss the upcoming HISD board elections. The two groups spoke with candidates about their political agenda, trying to decide who to endorse as a “union friendly” candidate.
A few doors down in the same hall, Unite Here is housed. They have just achieved a landmark victory for the Hilton Americas Hotel, the first union to gain federal certification for hotel workers in Houston. AFL-CIO worked in conjunction with Unite Here throughout the campaign is process, despite what has gone on nationally.
AFL-CIO also participated in Justice for Janitors campaign even though the dissident group was launched by SEIU.
Aside from their fundamental differences in strategy, the two labor tendencies agree that locally they will not be affected. Most of the major unions appear to be run efficiently and to focus on the same goals.
“We have to stick together, especially in the South,” says Gorham, who was originally trained in the AFL-CIO organizing institute.
Wortham, president of AFL-CIO Harris County, says, “We’re all family.”
The Change To Win Coalition shares the same goal as the AFL-CIO. The question is whether the breakaway unions can stop the decline in union membership and grow from the current low point.
Buzzanco, the labor historian at UH, says, “I think it’s symbolic more than anything. Without membership, unions can’t survive. This is do or die. If this doesn’t work. This is it. Unions are going to be trivial.”
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
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