Solidarity Divided
The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward
Social Justice
By
Bill Fletcher and Fernando Gapasin
(Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2008) 320 pp, $24.95
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The Crisis in Organized Labor
As Viewed from the Inside and Out
A Review by Steve
Early
Although he looks old and tired
today, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney was once hailed as
a dynamic reformer, with a sharp eye for new talent. One
of the first things he did, after getting elected in
1995, was appoint former Sixties’ radicals to be
federation field reps and department heads. In
Washington, D.C. and around the country, Sweeney’s "New
Voice" administration quickly filled up with energetic
ex-staffers of the Service Employees International Union
(SEIU), his own union. Among them were veterans of campus and community organizing,
the civil rights and black power movements, feminism,
and Vietnam-era anti- war activity. On the labor left,
no single personnel decision by Sweeney raised higher
hopes and expectations than
Bill Fletcher being named
education director (a job he had held, under Sweeney, at SEIU previously).
Bay Area labor journalist David
Bacon was still in awe of Fletcher’s "key decision
maker" role as Sweeney’s assistant when he interviewed
him for The Progressive in 2000. Bacon recounted
Fletcher’s background as an African-American activist
and "self-described socialist," with ties to the Black
Radical Congress and Marxist journal Monthly Review.
Drawing on his own history as "a left-wing organizer,"
Bacon recalled the political hostility of AFL-CIO
operatives during the era of George Meany and Lane
Kirkland, Sweeney’s conservative predecessors. "With
Fletcher," he wrote," I felt as though I was talking to
someone from the same movement and history I’ve lived
myself." Concluded Bacon: "Times have changed."
Not long after this interview
appeared, times changed again. Fletcher was purged from
his post and exiled to Silver Spring, Maryland, where he
toiled briefly at the AFL’s George Meany Center. Then,
he left organized labor altogether, for half a decade,
to replace anti-apartheid campaigner Randall Robinson as
president of TransAfrica Forum. After that, Fletcher
taught labor studies in New York City and began work
with co-author Fernando Gapasin, a well-known West Coast
Chicano labor activist, on a critique of organized labor
during the Sweeney era and earlier periods, which has
now been published by University of
California Press. Their collaborative effort—Solidarity Divided—is quite unlike the usual
"tell-all" tome by a presidential appointee who has quit
the White House staff or been dropped from the Cabinet.
In fact, we never do learn what personal falling out
with Sweeney—or political conflicts with his real
inner circle—led Fletcher to be pushed out the door
of the "House of Labor." (In 2007, he was finally able
to return, as a headquarters staffer for the American
Federation of Government Employees.) Instead, we get a
thoughtful, analytical overview of recent developments
in American labor, and much of its earlier history as
well. But, as a practical "guide for those seeking to
reconstitute [a labor-based] Left and build a globally
conscious social justice unionism in the U.S," the book
contains many curious omissions. In fact,
Solidarity Divided is far more detached (and lacking in
specificity) than one might expect from authors long
engaged in day-to-day trade union work and left-wing
politics.
The book’s report card on Sweeney
is, in contrast, quite detailed and displays little of
Fletcher’s previous bullishness about his boss (before
he left his employ). In a Monthly Review article
published in the summer of 2000—while Fletcher was still
at the AFL—he chided other labor radicals for their
skepticism about "New Voice reforms." He accused "this
grousing element" of being deficient in both theory and
practice" because they were prone to "simply criticizing
whatever initiatives come from labor’s leadership."
Instead, Fletcher argued, the labor left should "examine
and organize around the inner dynamics of the trade
union movement." He urged leftists to "interact with the
New Voice leadership on the basis of a united front, "
offering ‘critical support’ for Sweeney and guarding
against the AFL-CIO’s "staunchly right-wing elements who
would like nothing getter than to regain their power."
Eight years later, those "staunchly
right wing elements" no longer seem to be lurking in the
wings, plotting a comeback. Rather, it’s Sweeney
himself, now in his mid-70s, who has become part of the
problem. By hanging on to his job long past his once
promised retirement age—surrounded by the same
tight-knit circle of former SEIU staffers who gave
Fletcher the heave ho—Sweeney helped create a new status
quo at the AFL-CIO, which led some unions to question
why they still needed to be part of it. In 2005, the
frustration and/or complaints of seven disgruntled
affiliates reached the boiling point. The result was
Change To Win (CTW), a rival labor federation
spearheaded by Sweeney’s own alma mater, SEIU.
In
Solidarity Divided, Fletcher and Gapasin express equal dissatisfaction with "the inner
dynamics" of both CTW and the AFL-CIO. The authors first
compile a stinging critique of the latter under Sweeney.
We learn now, for example, that his "reform efforts
seemed to be running out of steam" as early as 1998.
The AFL-CIO president was already unable or unwilling to
"replicate the exciting first months of his tenure" and
"fell back into the consensus-building mode with which
he seemed most comfortable." What Fletcher and Gapasin
describe as "the essential conservatism of the Sweeney
approach toward change" had negative consequences in a
number of areas. Even in the early days of his
presidency—when Sweeney inherited the challenge of
providing stronger strike support—the "new" AFL-CIO
reneged on commitments made to locked-out members of
United Paper Workers Union Local 7837 at A.E. Staley
Co., in Decatur, Illinois, scene of a long-running
community-wide conflict.
As the authors note, the Decatur
workers and their supporters "expected the New Voice
team to champion their cause," but "they were to be
disappointed" instead. Due to UPIU leadership pressure
for a contract settlement—on almost any terms—"no
significant support came from the national AFL-CIO,
despite promises, implied and explicit." The Staley
dispute "ended in defeat," as did the Detroit newspaper
strike, a multi-union fight that also "overlapped
Sweeney’s assumption of office" and became another
"missed opportunity" for "mobilizing the union movement"
around key "mass struggles."
Even in the areas of education and
organizing—where Sweeney initially got high marks from
most observers—the authors find deeper commitment
lacking. One of Fletcher’s first projects was creating
"a member focused economics education program."Common
Sense Economics was conceived as a means of speaking
about capitalism, class, and ultimately, the importance
of new organizing and new trade unionism. Piloted in
1997, it received rave reviews; since then, insufficient
usage and engagement by the national AFL-CIO and its
affiliates have undermined the achievement of the
[program’s] original objectives."
On the organizing front, Fletcher
and Gapasin recount the AFL’s short-lived rallying of
its staff on behalf of the United Farm Workers. By 1997,
this once vibrant union "was a shadow of what it had
been in the 1970s." Its weak infrastructure was,
according to the authors, a legacy of internal purges
conducted when union founder Cesar Chavez turned
dictatorial and "eliminated many of his Left-leaning
supporters, leaders, and staff, including numerous
veteranos who had led previous UFW campaigns."
Nevertheless, Sweeney’s Washington
brain trust decided that "mobilizing major support" for
California strawberry worker organizing would
demonstrate the AFL-CIO’s commitment to low-wage
immigrant workers—and serve as a much-publicized
"coming-out party" for its revived Organizing and Field
Mobilization Departments. Despite initial enthusiasm,
this heavily-funded effort "unraveled" within a few
months, as the UFW drive "seemed to disintegrate."
According to the authors, the cause of farm workers—as
re-marketed by New Voicers in the late 1990s—"did not
gel as a social movement." Lacking an effective strategy
and "the long-term commitment necessary to organize
strawberry workers in a campaign that was essentially a
major rebuilding effort," AFL staffers soon moved on to
other projects. (In 2005, an ungrateful and/or resentful
UFW quit the federation to join Change to Win.)
Reflecting their own political
orientation (and organizational ties), the authors fault
the AFL for not tackling the larger challenge of
organizing the Sunbelt. They note that, "during its
first five years in office, the Sweeney administration
put forth rhetoric about organizing the South, but it
accomplished little overall." Even an effort to just
study the problem and begin outreach to potentially
supportive "community-based organizations…failed and
simply disappeared into the wind." Meanwhile, on another
(and related) issue of concern to the
authors—racism—Solidarity Divided accuses Sweeney of
dropping the ball when the federation was asked to
participate in a presidential Commission on Race. "The
AFL-CIO took no initiative to support the Commission,"
created in 1997 to promote a "national dialogue" about
race relations. The authors argue that the panel could
have "advanced working people’s interests" by holding
"hearings around the U.S. in union halls and community
centers" about discrimination in jobs, housing, and
health care.
Solidarity Divided also describes,
in some detail, how the "new" AFL-CIO maintained "a
nearly uncritical relationship with the Democratic
Party." Bill Clinton’s 1996 repeal of welfare was, the
authors say, "a defacto Republican initiative and should
have been attacked for what it represents." Instead, "
the AFL-CIO took a pass" and did nothing to defend "the
poorest sections of the working class." Two years later,
"in keeping with its alliance with Clinton, the AFL-CIO
took the position that the World Trade Organization (WTO)
could and should be reformed"—on the eve of anti-
globalization protests in Seattle where demonstrators
were seeking to "sink or shrink" the WTO.
Across the board, Fletcher and
Gapasin find, the federation failed "to offer badly
needed criticisms of the economic policies of the
[Clinton] administration."
In 2000, lack of popular enthusiasm
for Clinton heir Al Gore—as evidenced by some small
labor defections to the Nader camp—led to the disastrous
reign of George W. Bush. Further union woes ensued after
9/11. Soon, "the strategic and policy paralysis of the
AFL-CIO had become so clear that the ties binding the
union movement started to unravel." Writing two years
after the 2005 organizational split which followed,
Fletcher and Gapasin "can identify very little
significant change in organized labor"— notwithstanding
the many PR claims of CTW (which lead some to call it
"Change To Spin"). Initially, one of the biggest fears
of the authors (and others) was that feuding national
federations might disrupt promising new work by the CLCs—state
and local central labor councils.
Solidarity Divided
cites "research by Gapasin for the AFL-CIO" showing that
some CLCs "have transformed the labor movement in their
communities" (while others have just displayed
continuing "lethargy"). Never very excited about any
Sweeney-era initiatives—as they view them today—the
authors argue that "most ideas for reforming these
central bodies" didn’t "stray far from the existing
paradigm of U.S. trade unionism" (with the exception of
Gapasin’s own proposals for the AFL’s Union Cities
program).
Solidarity Divided is much
preoccupied with the labor left’s failure to "analyze"
and "debate" this old "paradigm" properly, or wage
"comprehensive struggle" against it. That’s an
understandable complaint from activist/intellectuals who
find themselves stranded in a labor movement without the
organized radical presence it had in the 1970s. Back
then, many unionized workplaces were flush with
60s-inspired agitators who devoted almost as much time
to Marxist "study groups" (and related political sects)
as they did to shop floor militancy. In contrast, most
surviving members of this same generational cohort
function today merely as trade unionists—whose politics
long ago contracted into a semi-private creed. Their
day-to-day work is very competent, even creative— but it
lacks the collectivity and broader agenda of thirty
years ago.
Meanwhile, the frenetic activity of
younger activists—who missed out on the big radicalizing
upsurges of the 1960s or 70s, on campus or off—suffers
from the same absence of a shared political framework.
Many former New Leftists, as well as more recent
recruits to the cause, realize they’d have greater
impact if they were acting together on a cross-union
basis regardless of what "business union" they’re stuck
in (and, hopefully, still trying to change). Most labor
leftists favor a stronger voice for workers—on the job
and in their unions. They also want to unite workers and
community activists in common struggles because these,
in turn, create expanded opportunities for rank-and-file
education and leadership development.
Reform movements like Teamsters for
a Democratic Union (TDU) and the fledgling SMART—SEIU
Member Activists For Reform Today—remain a fertile
ground for left-wing labor work. (See
www.reformSEIU.org or www.seiuvoice.org for more info
on long-overdue, TDU-style activity within SEIU.) Other
radicals continue to function in less oppositional
fashion, by building the durable, 20-year old network of
community-labor coalitions known as Jobs with Justice (JWJ).
They also devote themselves to the scores of immigrant
"workers’ centers" that fight for the foreign born and
immigration reform. Some lefties wield influence in
fighting unions like the California Nurses Associations
(CNA) -- recently affiliated with the AFL-CIO—and the
still independent United Electrical Workers (UE), always
a beacon of rank-and-file unionism. Veterans of
"anti-imperialist" organizing
during the Vietnam era launched US Labor Against The War
to rally workers against the U.S. invasion of Iraq in
2003. USLAW has steadily gained official backing,
while labor radicals active on other foreign policy
fronts have developed strong cross-border ties with
union organizers and free trade foes in South and
Central America. Last but not least, indigenous
militants and leftists of varying hues have kept Labor
Notes afloat for nearly three decades. The Detroit-based
monthly newsletter (and related labor education project)
has been a vital source of alternative union news and
views, plus a key catalyst for rank-and-file organizing
and strike support. In April of this year, 1,100 Labor
Notes backers had one of their largest, liveliest, and
most diverse gatherings ever. This two-day solidarity
conference in Dearborn, Michigan attracted hundreds of
local officers or stewards from SEIU, CNA, AFSCME, the
Teamsters, CWA, IBEW, UAW, ILA, and other unions, here
and abroad. Many left the meeting with a copy of
"Troublemaker’s Handbook," a thick Labor Notes guide to
workplace activism and "social movement unionism" that
(in two editions) has sold more than 32,000
copies—reaching an audience of working class readers far
larger than Fletcher and Gapasin are likely to find with
a university press book like
Solidarity Divided.
Strangely enough, their book fails
to acknowledge the existence of Labor Notes anywhere in
its 288 pages—even though they favor a "more open
approach to [union] education." In the authors’
account of events in the 1990s, TDU gets a passing pat
on the head (for being a surviving 70s "caucus"); but
its central role in making Ron Carey president of the
Teamsters in 1991—and Carey’s subsequent critical
support for Sweeney’s election in 1995—is barely noted.
Despite very successful political work in California—and
a distinctive critique of labor-management partnerships—CNA
gets no mention in a chapter titled, "Putting The Left
Foot Forward." Also missing from the book is any sense
of the rank-and-file backlash that’s been developing
within SEIU against its top-down, anti-democratic
methods. (The authors do agree that "the SEIU model" of
forced membership consolidation into locals with little
opportunity for "worker control" is "not the only
solution to problems of competitive markets and
aggressive employers." ) While touting "internal
democracy" and "membership votes" throughout
labor, Fletcher and Gapasin manage
to ignore the singular contribution of the Association
for Union Democracy (AUD), another left-initiated
project which has, for forty years, fostered a more
"democratic union culture." Even the huge immigrant work
stoppages that occurred during the spring of 2006 get
less attention, in the book’s concluding chapter (on
"Strategies for Transformation"), than "central labor
councils" and "non-majority unionism."
Jobs with Justice does get the F &
G seal of approval (sort of). But, at the same time,
Solidarity Divided makes the factually-challenged
assertion that JWJ is not really a "union-community
coalition" after all—at least compared to the authors’
preferred model, which is the Black Workers for Justice
(BWFJ) in North Carolina. According to Fletcher and
Gapasin, BWFJ "is open to both union and non-union
workers [and] plays an active role in both
workplace-based and community-based struggles." (It’s
also small and limited to one state.) Meanwhile, JWJ—with
active multi-racial affiliates in 40 cities and 25
states—doesn’t fit this description? In reality, it
does—in far more places, on a much larger scale. To add
insult to injury, the authors have the chutzpah to
highlight—in my own state of Massachusetts—a recently
launched, union-bureaucrat dominated competitor to JWJ
known as Community Labor United (CLU). With little
supporting evidence—because not much is
available—Fletcher and Gapasin theorize that the CLU
could become a "working people’s assembly" in Boston—"a
joint concentration of progressive forces" based on
"real (rather than symbolic) solidarity."
Such a development would certainly
surprise Massachusetts JWJ supporters. Since that’s
exactly the kind of solidarity that JWJ has long
promoted by working—in feisty and independent
fashion—with or without the cooperation of the Boston
Central Labor Council and state AFL-CIO. In contrast,
the CLU has been, from birth, an appendage of the CLC—even
housed in its offices. As such, it’s far less likely to
become a local reincarnation of the Knights of Labor!
To this reader, therefore, the
Fletcher/Gapasin road map to "social justice unionism"
seems sketchy and incomplete. It doesn’t do justice to
some of the most valiant efforts to move the ball down
the field in the direction of that goal. And it’s little
consolation to learn that "no existing union or formal
labor body"—anywhere in the country—"is practicing
social justice unionism" or "social justice solidarity,"
as the authors define and describe these organizational
holy grails. Appended to the book, we do find a 20-page
account of "local union transformation"—written by
Gapasin and focusing, in the authors’ approved fashion,
on the intersection of race, class, and gender.
Unfortunately, this takes the form of an academic-style
"blind study"—quite unlike all the "how-to" sections of
Troublemaker’s Handbook. Gapasin disguises the name,
location, and other details about the local involved—so
forget about contacting anyone there for further
information and advice about overhauling your own local.
The authors conclude with an
indisputable point: "If the union movement is to shift
further left, the left-wing forces within it must
achieve organizational coherence." But here again,
Solidarity Divided is strangely silent about the efforts
made, just several years ago, to hold a series of
"Labor Left Meetings" at which, it was hoped, radical
trade unionists would finally cohere into a more
formalized network. Various groups on the left --
Solidarity, the Committees of Correspondence for
Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), the Freedom Road
Socialist Organization (FRSO), Democratic Socialists of
America (DSA) and other "political tendencies"—were
represented in that process. (FRSO later came to a fork
in the "road"— and split, so there are now two of them.)
This reviewer was one of the meeting participants;
Gapasin and Fletcher were among the original convenors
or organizers. Yet, in
Solidarity Divided, the whole
two-year labor left
"regroupment" attempt, involving
several hundred people, has disappeared down the
Orwellian "memory hole"—along with any useful lessons to
be derived from it. In addition, none of the "real
existing" socialist groups involved are even mentioned
in the book, nor do we learn anything about their
respective "trade union practice."
Perhaps such blind spots are
inevitable in any work of history produced by
participant/observers writing about recent events or
institutions in which they are still involved. But
Solidarity Divided would have been a stronger, more
useful guide to labor left activism—now and in the
future— if it was less theoretical and generally
prescriptive and, instead, more accurately described the
actual struggles, setbacks, and accomplishments of union
radicals.
Steve Early worked for 27 years as
a Boston-based international union representative and
organizer for the Communications Workers of America. He
is a longtime contributor to Labor Notes and a supporter
of Massachusetts Jobs With Justice. He is currently
working on a book for Cornell ILR Press on the role of
Sixties’ radicals in American unions. He can be reached
at
Lsupport@aol.com)
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posted 13 June 2008 |
