"Breaking Big Labor in Order to Fix It"

[GreenPartyVoter]

TO NOBODY'S great surprise, the Service Employees and Teamsters have left the AFL-CIO, and at least two other unions may soon follow. What's really going on here? Is the split a setback or a gain for working people and progressive politics?

In part, this schism reflects rivalries of turf, personality, and money. Had the AFL-CIO president, John Sweeney, taken a final bow and stepped down, the federation might have kept the insurgents. Some future reconciliation may yet occur.

But, as my friend Marshall Ganz, former organizing director of the farmworkers union, observes, it's also about principled differences of how to rebuild a struggling movement. Organize by trade, industry, or community? Build a centralized movement or a popular, democratic one? These differences have echoes in the history of the labor movement, going back to the 19th century Knights of Labor, the ''Wobblies," and the CIO.

Ironically, Sweeney himself is a militant at heart. As the antiestablishment candidate in 1995, he made some of the same demands as today's insurgents, and he implemented many. But his spiritual children have now raised the bar.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0727-20.htm

[wurzel]

1. There seems to be a difference between workers

whose jobs can be outsourced and those whose can't. But they should realize they are really all in the same boat. If jobs are outsourced who will be able to but the services of those who have jobs that cannot?

[lvx35]

2. AFL-CIO is totally changing their approach.

They are all about grassroots stuff now. I think it has the power to push them into the mainstream, ut also to break them. They need to be able to learn from the mistakes they are going to make.

[whistle]

3. AFL-CIO has become politically ineffective and have actually

....caused the labor movement to stall in the U.S. over the past 30 years. This move may actually revitalize workers to again join labor unions. I think it is a good move for workers.

[kevsand]

4. This won't help in the short term, and may be catastrophic

in the long term. The main reason that new workers don't join labor unions is because they don't see any benefit to it. Neither the remaining AFL-CIO nor the renegade SEIU or Teamsters are doing anything to effectively address this problem. In fact, the rebels may actually be making it worse by emphasizing turf wars over member services, and by promoting an entirely undemocratic top-down, centralized model for union control.

None of this will get better until existing union members get upset enough to throw out the jerks at the top in both camps. I'm not convinced that will ever happen, but if the split ultimately triggers that change in leadership on both sides, it may be the only way anything good can come of this.