[Marxism] CWA-SEIU-IBT proposals; WBAI transcript

["acpollack2@xxxxxxxx" <acpollack2@xxxxxxxx>]

Below two items. The first a comment I posted at the unitetowin.org blog. Below 
that a transcript of a debate on WBAI's Democracy Now! between CWA and SEIU 
reps over the NUP proposal.
My comment:
---------
As several have pointed out, elements of all three proposals [SEIU, CWA and 
IBT] can fit with the others.  Andy Stern's approving comments of the IBT 
proposal are encouraging and hopefully point to the beginning of a dialogue 
which could lead to an action plan reflecting the best of each proposal.

However, given the bureaucratic interests at stake, and the attachment of many 
concerned to "friendly" corporations and politicians, waiting for that to 
happen isn't sufficient.

Therefore active local officials, stewards and members need to find places NOW 
where we can begin showing that change is possible.

There's no need to wait to develop solidarity campaigns on behalf of hotel, 
grocery, airline and other workers currently in struggle.  There's no need to 
wait to develop a campaign in defense of Social Security and for single-payer 
healthcare.

And I would suggest that while sisters and brothers are raising these in their 
locals that we talk about how to convene a congress of the labor movement which 
would take the discussion held last week at the labor forum in New York and put 
it before the ranks of our entire movement.

Andrew Pollack

-----------------------
from Democracy Now!
Will the AFL-CIO Split? A Debate on the Future of Organized Labor
Thursday, December 9th, 2004

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/09/1516234
A handful of top national labor union leaders have threatened to split away 
from the powerful AFL-CIO and set up a new labor alliance unless the parent 
body adopts new policies to stem decades of decline in union membership. We 
host a debate with spokespeople from the Communications Workers of America and 
Unite Here. [includes rush transcript]
--------
A major review of the organization and direction of the labor movement is 
currently underway following President Bush"s reelection. A meeting of major 
union leaders last month was called by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney to debate 
the future of the movement.
While all sides agreed something must be done to stem decades of decline in 
union membership, there are sharp disagreements over what strategy should be 
taken.

In an unprecedented move, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), 
Unite Here and others have banded together into a group called the New Unity 
Partnership. They claim that organized labor's current crisis is so profound 
that the union movement can be saved only by a total overhaul of the AFL-CIO 
and have threatened to split from the federation unless new policies are 
adopted.

Andrew Stern, the president of SEIU, has promoted a 10-point plan for change 
with a brochure, a sophisticated Web site and a blog. Key to the plan is a 
proposal to consolidate the AFL-CIO's 60 unions into fewer than 20 and for 
using the $25 million in yearly profits from its credit card program to mount a 
nationwide campaign to unionize Wal-Mart to improve workers" wages and benefits.

Today we host a debate on the future of organized labor.


Chris Chafe, Chief of Staff and Political Director at Unite Here.
Bob Master, Political Director of Communications Workers of America in District 
1 and co-chair of the Working Families Party.
Bill Fletcher, President of TransAfrica. He formally served as Education 
Director and Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide 
closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank 
you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

JUAN GONZALEZ: Today, we host a debate on the future of organized labor.

AMY GOODMAN: We are joined by Chris Chafe, Chief of Staff and Political 
Director at Unite Here, and Bob Master, Political Director of Communications 
Workers of America and district one co-chair of the Working Family's Party. We 
are joined in Washington, DC, by the president of TransAfrica, Bill Fletcher, 
formerly served as Education Director and assistant to the president of the 
AFL-CIO.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to start with Chris. Obviously, it's been 
unprecedented, the opening up of a major debate, publicly within the AFL-CIO. 
Things are usually decided by consensus by all of the union presidents behind 
closed doors. Your union spearheaded this. Why did you feel that you needed to 
do this at this time? What are the key parts of Andy Stern's ten-point plan?

CHRIS CHAFE: Unite Here, along with SEIU, the laborers and carpenters, 
initiated this debate essentially because we feel that the crisis facing 
American workers is so significant that we have to engage it at every level: in 
our workplaces and the union halls, central labor bodies, state federations and 
at the national level. We're now down to probably less than 8% of the private 
sector being organized in this country, and from our point of view, we have 
been taking serious measures within our own unions to try to retool, rebuild 
and reorganize our capacity, so we can do more to organize and grow. At the 
same time, we're seeing the legitimacy and the power of workers in this country 
fade into irrelevance, the labor movement losing ground. We are at a moment in 
history, when we have inherited this incredible institution across this country 
that has created the standards for workers even in non-union facilities, but 
that's less and less relevant. So, we believe major change needs to happen. It 
needs to be publicly discussed, as our president has said, the labor movement 
is not the Kremlin, we have to have as much creative input from as many 
different people as possible. That's why we believe this should be as fully 
discussed as possible.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, a key part of the program, as has been explained by several 
of the key proponents is that bigger is better. That the AFL-CIO with 60 
unions, many of them very small, does not have the capacity to battle 
multinational corporations that keep consolidating themselves, and that a 
politics of consolidating these unions would make labor's ability to fight even 
stronger. But how would you accomplish this kind of merger given the fact there 
will be so much resistance of individual union presidents wanting to maintain 
their own control and given the AFL's history of autonomy of the various unions.

CHRIS CHAFE: Sure. I think that a fundamental issue here is that this is about 
globalization. This is about what can the labor movement do to structure itself 
is so that a worker in any facility who is now no longer working for the local 
owner, no longer even working for somebody who is based in this country, but in 
many cases is working for a multinational conglomerate where decisions are made 
far beyond the reaches of your average worker. This is the $100 million 
question. $100 million is essentially the budget of the AFL-CIO is. We have to 
make sure that the money is being directed, as much as possible, both at the 
AFL-CIO level, but also within affiliates, to make sure that they are doing 
everything possible to accomplish two things: one, create standards for 
workers, to create real standards for collective bargaining agreements to 
create real standards for mobilization and political action, and most of all, 
real standards for the ability to take on these multinationals through 
organizing. Two, we need leverage. American workers need greater leverage to 
take on these massive battles. We have seen through the merger created Unite 
Here ?

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what unite here is.

CHRIS CHAFE: Unite here is a new union, established in July, 440,000 workers, 
who represent traditional industrial workers in textiles and apparel.

AMY GOODMAN: That's Unite.

CHRIS CHAFE: That's the Unite side.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Which itself is the a merger of the old ILGWU and the 
Amalgamated Coal Workers.

CHRIS CHAFE: That?s right. We are a blueprint of mergers and their 
effectiveness. HERE is formerly the Hotel Employee and Restaurant Employee 
Union. They represent hundreds of thousands of folks in gaming, restaurants and 
hotels. They're a hospitality union. We're essentially bringing together 
manufacturing and hospitality. Old economy and new economy. We have found ways 
to create much greater leverage with the right allocation of resources. 40% of 
all of our dues go directly into organizing. And that has given us the 
opportunity to take on employers and defensive battles like the Atlantic City 
strike, where we just bon 10,000 workers won a 25% wage increase. That never 
would have been possible had the merger not taken place.

AMY GOODMAN: You're basically talking about succeeding from the AFL-CIO, 
dividing the AFL-CIO?

CHRIS CHAFE: No, I wouldn't say that at all. I would say that what we're trying 
to do is drive a debate about how it should be structured. These unions in the 
new unity partnership, but Unite Here in particular, I?ll only speak for Unite 
Here, we are putting a great deal of work into trying to save the AFL-CIO and 
rebuild it so it takes the relevance and power that it deserves and that 
American workers deserve.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Bob master, you're with the CWA. Your union has 600,000 members?

BOB MASTER: 700,000 members.

JUAN GONZALEZ: 700,000 members in the communications industry and also in 
government as well. Everyone agrees that there?s a crisis within the American 
labor movement. What are your problems with the proposal that Andy Stern, the 
new unity partnership put forward?

BOB MASTER: I agree, really, with just about everything Chris said. I think his 
analysis of the crisis is accurate. His call for thoroughgoing debate in the 
AFL-CIO is necessary. We feel very positive about the fact that the debate is 
kicked off. What we are concerned about is the question of the revival of the 
labor movement being reduced to a question of structure and reorganization. And 
our -- and I say ?our? loosely, because in the CWA, we are only at the 
beginning of the debate. We need to have a broader debate inside our own 
organization. We don't have a unified consensus position at this point. I think 
we're trying to achieve that. A lot of us look at the history of the labor 
movement. We say reviving the labor movement is activating rank and file 
workers at the base from below. If you look at the greatest split in the labor 
movement between the AFL-and CIO, it was driven by mass activity in the years 
leading up to it. It was not a bureaucratic restructuring from the top down, it 
was driven by the demand of workers for organization and economic justice. 
Having said that, I don't think that Chris would necessarily disagree with 
that. So, I think that the question here is do we have before us the basis for 
a split. I would argue very strenuously, no, that we need to have a 
thoroughgoing discussion, and an exploration of a lot of strategies, some of 
which have worked for Unite Here, some of which we have pioneered. I think some 
of the things they have done work in their industries but don't work in the 
telecommunication industry. We need different approaches. We don't have a 
problem necessarily with competition with other unions. That's not our issue. 
If you put the IBW telecommunication division inside the CWA, that's not going 
to make it easier to organize Verizon Wireless. That's not the problem. By 
focusing exclusively on the question of structure, which seems overwhelmingly 
the point of the SEIU program as posted on Unite to Win, you miss a lot of the 
broader questions.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the issue of how the mergers would occur, given the 
fact that, again, the AFL has historically been a federation of autonomous 
unions. How can the AFL-dictate mergers of its various member organizations.

BOB MASTER: Bluntly, I don't think they can. If you look at the Unite to Win 
program, it says the AFL-CIO should have the authority to require coordinated 
bargaining, and to merge or revoke union charters. I don't think the members of 
the AFL-CIO are going to vote to give the AFL-CIO Executive Committee that 
power, and by spending our time to focus on that, we miss some of these bigger 
questions. What is the political strategy to revive collective bargaining? How 
do we get affiliates to make more effective plans to build power in their 
industry? I went to the AFL-CIO website last night and I printed out a list of 
the affiliates, this long list of 65. What will merging the glass molders, 
pottery plastics and allied workers international union do to build power for 
any of us in the most important industries. No disrespect to that union. It's a 
small group of people historically created because of that particular union. I 
don't think they're the impediment. I don't think they're the problem. I don't 
think that the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and 
Asbestos Workers? independent existence is holding us back. We need a different 
kind of discussion that doesn't focus on forced mergers and restructuring.

AMY GOODMAN: But, ultimately, there's the question of if you have many small 
unions, versus the huge multinational corporations, do you have the strength 
that you need? Maybe the answer is the decline of the union movement. And I 
wanted to bring Bill Fletcher in, to bring a third perspective to this. We most 
recently talked to Bill, I think, about the Sudan, but today we're talking to 
you not as president of TransAfrica, but really as formerly one of the top 
people, Education Director and assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO. What 
do you make of this debate?

BILL FLETCHER: Thank you, Amy and Juan. I agree and disagree with both of the 
guests. The first thing is that form has to follow content. That is, we have 
got to figure out what do trade unions stand for in the 21st century, and in 
that sense, it's not even just about mobilizing members. At the high points of 
trade unionism in this country, the trade union movement is looked at as a 
visionary movement, as a movement that's spearheading larger change than just 
organizing members. The issue of restructuring, I mean, I agree with what was 
just said. I mean, if you look at Australia for example, in Australia, they 
have restructured their movement they have reduced the number of unions, and 
the movement is still not growing. I think that the issue is not just whether 
bigger is better. We have to really be looking at strategy and coordination. We 
can have bigger unions, and still get our rear ends kicked because we're not 
coordinating here in the United States or coordinating overseas.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris Chafe.

CHRIS CHAFE: I would agree in part with that. I think that the fundamental 
issue is we're not organizing, and we're not even trying across most of 
affiliates of AFL-CIO. We are seeing the globalization restructure the 
corporate reality and the workplace reality for millions and millions of 
workers. The 90% of the American workforce that's not organizing needs to see 
this movement restructure itself, and rebuild itself so that we have the 
ability to take on these fights. We're not even trying.

AMY GOODMAN: What about dealing with the corporation like Wal-Mart?

CHRIS CHAFE: Perfect example. So, Wal-Mart is going to open a store every 
single day in 2005 somewhere in America. And we are not ready in the American 
labor movement to take them on at any level. We're not ready, and we're not 
focused enough in seeing them at the table when they come to the county zoning 
board or city is zoning board. We don't have the structure in place to fight 
them at the local level. We don't have a corporate campaign taking place right 
now to make sure there's enough education, both in the workplace and in our 
communities, about the impact that Wal-Mart is having on the retail world, but 
for us, incredibly relevant, in the industrial world. We don't have the 
capacity to run a media message that takes on this company. And most 
importantly, we have no effort right now, to organize the workers. 65% of 
Wal-Mart workers have no capacity to pay for their own health insurance. And 
everyday citizens, their tax dollars are subsidizing the health care that 
Wal-Mart workers are getting. This could be the signature campaign that gives 
workers across this country a clear reason to feel like the labor movement, and 
the AFL-CIO, is actually standing up for the standards of all workers. So, we 
believe that we should take $25 million a year out of the royalties from the 
union privilege credit card and put it directly into a firewalled account 
that's just about organizing Wal-Mart. That's a good use of that money. Forget 
about the other pieces of the puzzle here, if we are not doing that, then we 
are squandering this institution we inherited.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, where do we go from here on this? The AFL-CIO Executive 
Committee will meet in February. John Sweeney has basically given the go-ahead 
to have this debate. But there are also questions as to whether the decisions 
into the debate will be reflected and changes in the AFL-CIO leadership, 
whether this will mean that pressure for John Sweeney to step down and whether 
if the AFL doesn't agree to some of the changes, whether the Unity Partnership 
will decide that it must itself go its own way. Where do you see this going in 
the next few months, Bob and Chris?

BOB MASTER: Let me say before I get to that, if we have just a moment, the 
question of Wal-Mart, I think it's an interesting question. Here you have in 
New Jersey an effort by the state AFL-CIO to pass legislation which would make 
it hard for Wal-Mart to locate in the state of New Jersey and create all kinds 
of restrictions. A member of the new Unity Partnership, one of the major 
unions, the Laborers, blocked that legislation, thwarted the wishes of the 
entire AFL-CIO, trying to build some sense of social movement around Wal-Mart, 
because they wanted to cut a deal to enable them to build the Wal-Mart union. 
These are not easy questions to resolve. Dropping $25 million on Wal-Mart is 
like a drop in the bucket, candidly, right? So, I think it's a complicated 
question. I think where do we go from here? The first thing we need to do is 
step back and say, this is the beginning of a debate. Our labor movement has 
gotten into crisis over a long period of time. It's not going to be resolved by 
next July. It?s not going to be resolved simply by electing new leadership. One 
of the biggest problems in the labor movement is our own members, and many of 
our leaders don't understand the depth of the crisis. We need a massive 
education program so people understand what needs to be done. Without training 
literally tens of thousands of members to be part of a social movement to take 
on Wal-Mart, we cannot win with an unlimited number of parachuted-in organizers 
and media campaigns. We need people to be talking to their friends and 
neighbors who work at Wal-Mart about the benefits of the union day-to-day in 
the community. It's a much longer and broader debate, and I hope it doesn't 
lead to a split because we don't want to squander our resources fighting over 
each other in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: We?re going to have to leave it there. Thank you all very much for 
being with us. We have been joined by Bob Master, Political Director of the 
Communications Workers of America. District 1, that?s CWA, co-chair of the 
Working Families Party. Bill Fletcher, formerly, assistant to the president of 
the AFL-CIO, and Chris Chafe, Chief of Staff and Political Director at Unite 
Here.


www.democracynow.org


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
$4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/nwKplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->


Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laborstandard_discussion/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    laborstandard_discussion-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism