Unions Plan Political Work Despite Obama

[Communist]

_________________

Unions Plan Political Work Despite Strained Relations With Obama (http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5647/unions_plan_political_work_espite_strained_relatio ns_with_obama/)

By David Moberg
In These Times
March 2010

After Obama earlier this week supported the
mass firing of 93 teachers and other staff at the
troubled Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, the
AFL-CIO executive council, already meeting in Orlando,
fired off an unusually harsh resolution.

Labor leaders said they were "appalled" by the
"unacceptable" and "disappointing" presidential
statements, especially since the local superintendent
fired the teachers rather than negotiate over how to
continue the recent academic improvement at the working-
class community's school.

It was a mini-PATCO moment-echoing faintly President
Reagan's decision to fire striking air traffic
controllers-in the increasingly frayed relations between
organized labor and a president who has at times seemed
distant from the labor movement, yet at other times
seemed more pro-union than any president in many
decades.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said Obama's comment
was "a bad call" based on "wrong facts," but that it
happened at all caused him "concern, deep concern."

Union reaction to the administration is increasingly
ambivalent. Partly it reflects frustration-mainly in not
getting adequate legislation passed to deal with the
multiple crises of working Americans (jobs, incomes,
health care, worker rights and more).

But that unease is tempered by satisfaction-mainly in
administrative actions.

This complex relationship was on display with two
speeches to the executive council-both somewhat
defensive, if not apologetic. Vice-president Joe Biden
was received lukewarmly with pointed questions about
broad administration policy afterwards. Labor Secretary

Hilda Solis received a much more enthusiastic reception,
partly as a result of her efforts to enforce existing
laws better and to develop more pro-worker regulations
(such as on occupational safety and health).

Labor leaders know their frustration primarily stems
from Republican obstruction, right-wing demagoguery, and
the anti-democratic rules of the Senate. (Asked if the
theoretically bipartisan labor movement would endorse
any Republicans this year, Trumka said, "We're hoping.
None come to mind at this point.")

But the unreliability of a significant bloc of
conservative Democrats slowed or stopped progress even
when the Democrats could claim the magic number-60-in
the Senate. In a plan first hatched by a group of big
unions from the AFL-CIO and Change to Win several weeks
ago, organized labor-from the state federation to the
AFL-CIO threw its support behind Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill
Halter in a primary challenge against Sen. Blanche
Lincoln, a Democratic nemesis of unions. Communications
Workers, Service Employees (SEIU), AFSCME (public
workers), and the Steelworkers each pledged $1 million
for his campaign.

Lincoln, known as the Senator from Wal-Mart, rejected
labor law reform, opposed the public option in health
care reform, and refused to vote for cloture on the
appointment of labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National
Labor Relations Board. Halter is no labor tribune: he
says he doesn't support the original labor law reform
involving majority sign-up, but leans to a compromise
that would hold NLRB representation elections more
quickly.

But "maybe something like this will send a message" to
other Democrats, says AFSCME president Gerald McEntee.
"I think it does represent a new strategy. We're going
to take into consideration records on issues facing the
people. There's always the danger [of losing a
Democratic seat]-we do want to support Democrats-but
when people are as recalcitrant as this, you have to do
something or you're not a labor movement."

There are other ways to deliver the same message.
McEntee says the AFL-CIO coordinated political program
will be even bigger this year than in the 2008
presidential election (partly because it will be
necessary to spend heavily in some normally blue states
like California and Illinois to erect a firewall
protecting vulnerable Democratic seats). But AFL-CIO
political director Karen Ackerman says that despite that
effort many Democrats may not get a labor endorsement or
get an endorsement with no money. "Those who've not
proven themselves will not get our support," she says.

Union leaders-and likely many members and other workers-
are upset with a variety of Obama policy choices, such
as dropping the public option and imposing an excise tax
on high-cost health insurance policies (and were
disappointed even with the improvements Trumka and other
negotiated) or going easy on the big banks. (As blogger
Michael Whitney noted, there were no mass firings of
bankers.)

But people's biggest frustration, especially among the
broader base of Obama voters, is that so little is
getting accomplished and that-even if Republicans and
blue dogs and filibusters are largely at fault-that
Obama doesn't seem to be fighting hard enough. "People
get demoralized when they don't have a vehicle to fight
back," Ackerman says. Or when their representatives
don't fight, adds UNITE HERE (hotel and restaurant
workers) president John Wilhelm . "There's no fight
visible to the average worker," he says.

Demoralization will make it harder to mobilize the Obama
voters this fall, even though the union political
operation is much more effective than in 1994, when
union member and working class disillusionment with Bill
Clinton's NAFTA deal and his health insurance reform
failure helped Republicans take control of the House.

Yet Wilhelm says, "It will be extremely tough. Our folks
are seriously disappointed not to see significant
changes since the Democrats took control. That was the
promise. Especially the response to the job problem has
been so anemic....Our members may not vote for
reactionaries, but they may not vote."

"I think Rich Trumka is right," Wilhelm continues. "The
conversation has to be about jobs." And the plan this
year, far more than ever, McEntee says, is to lead into
the election battle with an issues fight over job
creation, including taxing the financial services
industry both to pay for reconstructing the jobs and
economy its executives destroyed and to discourage
speculation over investment in the future.

Winning that fight means pushing the president and many
Democratic lawmakers and officials beyond where they
want to go as well as defeating Republicans. At a time
when even many union members are disillusioned, and
right-wing scare tactics are powerful, the political
challenge for organized labor this year is extraordinary.

.

[RED DAVE]

Some people still insist on putting ketchup on shit and calling it hamburger.

RED DAVE

[Communist]

The GOP pulls this garbage and the screaming can be heard a continent away - as it should. The Democrats do it, and it's a five-minute whimper.
Disgraceful all around.

[Axle]

This is why unions need to make a break with the Democrats and DC as a whole.

No more lobbying, no more bargains, no more political endorsements. The entire American labor movement seriously needs to go completely wild cat and just steamroll anything that gets in the way of worker's rights.

[Red Commissar]

I have observed that the mainstream unions tend to be divided between Democratic and Republican ideology, but they've lost more to Republicans because of their attempts to paint themselves as "working" for the common man, and the Democrats for being too elitist.

The case is even worse in the working-class as a whole. It seems that despite this capitalist crisis, they've been pushed to embrace even more right-wing concepts and the "shrine" of the free-market, since they've by and large associated socialism with taxation and control of their lives.

The lack of agitation against fundamentally anti-worker laws like the "Right-to-Work" provisions in many states indicates to me they have become apathetic towards the concepts of unions (and understandably due to the corruption and inaction of the larger ones), and have become more self-centered.

And workers seem to tie into the same problem that the electorate as a large has, they tend to forget that these are the same politicians just repackaging themselves. There are plenty of Republicans still around they voted for thinking they would repeal NAFTA, but that certainly didn't happen...

[hammer&sickle]

This is why unions need to make a break with the Democrats and DC as a whole.

No more lobbying, no more bargains, no more political endorsements. The entire American labor movement seriously needs to go completely wild cat and just steamroll anything that gets in the way of worker's rights.

I agree but that is going to be very difficult to do. How do we accomplish this break? I suggest that eveyone look at the platform of the Labor Party..I can't link to cause I don'thave the required number of posts so Google" Labor Party Press"

[Red Rebel]

Unions shouldn't be begging politicans to do good.. politicans should be going to workers begging them to stop raising hell in the workplace and streets..

[Communist]

I agree but that is going to be very difficult to do. How do we accomplish this break? I suggest that eveyone look at the platform of the Labor Party..I can't link to cause I don'thave the required number of posts so Google" Labor Party Press"

From what I understand, this party was started with good intentions but very quickly dissolved back into the Democrat party.
I thought they were defunct and had been for years, but I guess 'moribund' is a better word.

[Red Rebel]

The UE union has a much more realistic plan than attempting to re start another labor party (again).
http://www.ueunion.org/ueaction2.html
If independent political action could start up then the formation of a labor party isn't unrealistic.

[RED DAVE]

The UE union has a much more realistic plan than attempting to re start another labor party (again).
http://www.ueunion.org/ueaction2.html
If independent political action could start up then the formation of a labor party isn't unrealistic.The UE is a hell of a lot better than most unions (they had Communist leadership into the 1050s), but it still supports DP candidates. Their rhetoric is a lot more radical, but, unfortunately, at this point that haven't made a break with the same old shit.

RED DAVE

[Communist]

.
Obama to close International Labor
Comparisons Office
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR2010030201568.html)
Washington Post
2010


Like a scorekeeper for the world, a tiny unit within the
Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks globalization's winners
and losers, and the results are not always pretty for the
United States. Manufacturing jobs here, for example, have
fallen faster since 1979 than in Canada, Germany or Japan.
Compensation for those jobs dropped here in 2008 but jumped
in South Korea and Australia.

Soon, however, Americans may be spared the demoralization in
these numbers: The White House wants to shutter the unit
that produces them.

The White House says the cut, estimated to save $2
million, is one of many decisions the president
decided to make to control spending.

"This budget had to make some tough choices and prioritize
the nation's most pressing needs during a challenging
economic and fiscal climate," said Office of Management and
Budget spokesman Tom Gavin. But the proposed cut has
triggered an outcry from an eclectic group of academics,
business leaders and union officials -- a reminder that, in
the sprawl of the federal government, some seemingly obscure
offices have built a loyal following around their discrete
missions.

"If you were going to cut this five years after they
implemented it 50 years ago, that would be one thing -- who
cared then about what's going on in Asia?" said Georgetown
University economist Robert Bednarzik, who spent 10 years at
the BLS and has started a petition drive to save the unit.
"But they've picked the worst possible time to try and get
rid of it -- when we're all in this together."

The International Labor Comparisons office dates to the
1960s, when President John F. Kennedy demanded to know
whether Western European countries, which were reporting
remarkably low unemployment rates, were using a different
standard of accounting. The office later expanded to include
Asia's emerging economies.

The biggest challenge was China, where reliable statistics
are particularly hard to come by. But in 2004, the office
contracted with Judith Banister, a former Census Bureau
demographer then living in Beijing, who dug up statistical
books in local bookstores that helped produce solid data on
the Chinese economy. The unit added Brazil to the mix, and
in the near future it plans to release its first reports on
India.

Skeptics of free-trade policies criticize the closure for
good reasons -- the unit's data shows just how
harsh globalization is for the American worker, a reality
that may be inconvenient for an administration generally
more trade-oriented than the populist rhetoric of Obama's
campaign suggested. They question if the unit is being
closed solely for the budget savings, noting that $2 million
is a relative pittance, less than 1 percent of the BLS
budget.

"The type of documentation [the unit] is putting out could
be detrimental to their efforts" on trade, said John Russo
of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State
University.

Gavin, the OMB spokesman, denied that motivation, saying the
closure "wasn't a reflection of the quality of the work or a
reflection of its usefulness so much as a reflection of
priorities."

The budget proposal says the unit's statistics are "not
widely used." But supporters point out that the unit's Web
site got 1.5 million page views in 2009 -- about 4,000 a
day.

Congress could yet decide to retain the program. Sen.
Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), for one, is concerned about the
closure, said his spokeswoman Meghan Dubyak. "He plans on
working with the administration and [congressional]
leadership to ensure that we still have data to address
offshoring and competitiveness issues," she said.

Meanwhile, the unit's close-knit group of workers is waiting
to learn their fate. Its director, Connie Sorrentino, who
has worked in the unit since the 1960s, said her colleagues
were "devastated" when they heard the news but have since
been heartened by their supporters.

"What helps us keep our chins up are the people who don't
want to see it go under," she said. "You find out who your
friends are when you're on the chopping block. Though that's
a heck of a way to do a customer survey."

.

[Barry Lyndon]

This issue with American unions seems to go all the way back to the late 1940's, when the AFL-CIO(known by the better left-wing trade unionists as the 'AFL-CIA'), caving to McCarthyist hysteria, purged itself of all the unions that had communists in their leadership, ejecting unions with about 1.7 million members(of a total membership of about 7 million) and some of the most dedicated and effiecient organizers, effectively crippling itself. Many unions did the same thing. All this in the belief that that the labor movement could be more 'respectable' and 'get things done' if it got rid of those Reds and worked with the political establishment. Of course the subsequent decades have been a steady downhill slide since them, especially accelarating into the abyss of almost total impotence beggining with the Reagan years.

Of course, unions are organs of the working class, and so we should still support them, regardless of the reformist or even reactionary leadership heading them, as Lenin himself said. The struggle is to work within union politics and mobilize the workers to throw out the Quisling union leadership.

[Proletarian Ultra]

This issue with American unions seems to go all the way back to the late 1940's, when the AFL-CIO(known by the better left-wing trade unionists as the 'AFL-CIA'), caving to McCarthyist hysteria, purged itself of all the unions that had communists in their leadership,

The CIO purge was utterly, utterly horrific. Liberals get all weepy about a few state department swells or Hollywood screenwriters, but this was massive.

Back before WWII, the Republican head of the United Mineworkers, John L. Lewis, used to avoid taking anti-Soviet positions because all his best organizers were Communists.

[Crux]

From what I understand, this party was started with good intentions but very quickly dissolved back into the Democrat party.
I thought they were defunct and had been for years, but I guess 'moribund' is a better word.Sadly, yes. Can they be revived? Maybe, but the lesson here is that the break with the Democrats must be decisive win over progressive democrats if you can, don't tail them.
On a related issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6oYpHzM88o

[redasheville]

This issue with American unions seems to go all the way back to the late 1940's, when the AFL-CIO(known by the better left-wing trade unionists as the 'AFL-CIA'), caving to McCarthyist hysteria, purged itself of all the unions that had communists in their leadership, ejecting unions with about 1.7 million members(of a total membership of about 7 million) and some of the most dedicated and effiecient organizers, effectively crippling itself. Many unions did the same thing. All this in the belief that that the labor movement could be more 'respectable' and 'get things done' if it got rid of those Reds and worked with the political establishment. Of course the subsequent decades have been a steady downhill slide since them, especially accelarating into the abyss of almost total impotence beggining with the Reagan years.

Of course, unions are organs of the working class, and so we should still still support them, regardless of the reformist or even reactionary leadership heading them, as Lenin himself said. The struggle is to work within union politics and mobilize the workers to throw out the Quisling union leadership.

I'd argue that the problem with US unions actually goes back much further. At every critical juncture, the US working class has failed to create a political party of its own which is the result of a myriad of objective (racism, nativism, the fact that feudalism never existed in the US) and subjective factors (conservative leadership going back to the 19th century). In short, there was never a generalized labor subculture in the US that could pull American workers, as a whole, away from these countervailing factors.

Particularly, the upsurge of the 1930s, despite the gains made with the formation of the CIO also represented a POLITICAL defeat for the working class because the CIO leadership allied with the Democratic party and shifted emphasis from shop floor activity to collective bargaining (which has a whole host of negative implications for workers organized into unions) a independent political party.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Back before WWII, the Republican head of the United Mineworkers, John L. Lewis, used to avoid taking anti-Soviet positions because all his best organizers were Communists.

More important behind that pre-McCarthy accommodation was that the Deep Southern conservative shift from the Democrats to the Republicans hadn't occurred yet. The latter was still seen as the Party of Lincoln, the big bad party.

[Uppercut]

Sadly, yes. Can they be revived? Maybe, but the lesson here is that the break with the Democrats must be decisive

Amen to that, comrade. It'd be a real shame to see a militant workers' party start up, only to be absorbed in the Democratic Party. Of course, if the party is militant in the first place, I guess we wouldn't need to worry too much about that happening.
Even still, with the low level of class consciousness here in the U.S., outside pressure could be an issue if the lumpen see this a workers' party as a bad thing. With all the working class republicans, there's a chance that American workers will still refuse to wake up from their haze and they will continue to vote conservative.

[Communist]

.
This is an intensely large problem.

No matter what happens, the people who would normally go with us are told that there's no point, that we can't achieve anything - only the Democratic party can. The fact they never do notwithstanding, it works.
Think about Florida in 2000. I am NOT trying to bring up that tired old debate but offer an observation I haven't seen elsewhere.
The Democrats successfully pinned their loss on a third party candidate, did they not? The mantra: Don't vote for anyone but us! Only we can stop the GOP! A vote for anyone else results in disaster!
And it worked. Again, the more radical types were given another reason to stick with the Democrats.
That, more than anything else, I would guess, hastened the demise of the Labor Party, but that's merely speculation on my part.

.

[Charles Xavier]

blank

[cyu]

This thread reminds me of these (in)famous words from Gerald MacGuire, bond salesman for one of Wall Street's richest bankers and stockbrokers:

We need a fascist government in this country... to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America...

We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everyone can tell that by looking at him.