The Great Disappearing Act

No, I'm not referring to Candidate Obama, or Medicare under Paul Ryan's budget.

I'm referring to the phenomenon that occurs with the staff of labor organizations every time there is an election.  If you are a union member, have you ever noticed that your union representation becomes as hard to find as a unicorn during election season?  The local office is as empty as a church on Sunday morning - unless it is being used as a campaign office.

 

The reason for this is one of the worst kept secrets in the world of organized labor.  Every election cycle, in direct conflict with FEC law, union staff are forced to "volunteer" for whoever the Democratic candidate happens to be.  In presidential election cycles, this can start as early as September, and in mid-term or special elections, it can start in October.

I experienced this firsthand during my time with a certain purple entity during the Senate Bill 5/Issue 2 election.  Instead of representing our members as we should have, we were required to work exclusively out of a campaign office.  Everything else became secondary, unless you had an actual arbitration hearing.  In full disclosure, the S.B. 5 recall was somewhat justified, as it directly affected almost a third of the members of our local who were state employees.  However this is commonplace in presidential and statewide races where this is not the case. So, if you happen to have a contract that might be coming up for negotiation, it might be a little concerning if all of the sudden, everyone is off doing political work instead of representing members. 

This is not limited to SEIU.  This is standard procedure with virtually every major labor union, with the exception of the United Electrical Workers(UE) and the National Union of HealthCare Workers(NUHW),  who prefer direct action to wasting its time with PACs.

I'm not saying the unions should not be involved in the political realm.  It is necessary and important, as elected officials have direct influence on the livelihood of union members.  What I am saying is that a union's involvement in politics should not come at the expense of member representation, which is almost always the case.

In Solidarity,

Joseph

Deja Vu In Wisconsin

I feel like I've already written this entry before...

My autopsy of the failed attempt to recall Scott Walker in Wisconsin is very similar to my autopsy of the legislative recalls in Wisconsin last year. 

1.  As was the case last year, Big Labor allowed the Democratic Party to run the show.  This is somewhat understandable because unlike Senate Bill 5 in Ohio, this was an election with candidates, not an issue election.  But with so much at stake for labor in Wisconsin - AFSCME has just lost the right to represent workers in the state in which it was founded - one would think that labor would have taken the reins from the DNC.

2.  Labor and the Democrats relied on the same outdated ground game that fell short last year.  I wrote about this at length in the entry linked above. 

3.  President Obama's lack of involvement will undoubtedly be scrutinized, and for good reason.  Labor is still waiting for Candidate Obama who promised to walk the picket line with us to make good on his promise.  This is one of the main reasons The Virtual Picket Line has endorsed Stewart Alexander for President in 2012.

While Big Labor will attempt to deflect criticisms such as the ones I mentioned earlier by pointing the finger to the Citizens United decision rendered by the Supreme Court, I reject this argument as a cheap cop-out.  While Citizens United makes a mockery of our democracy, it is hardly the reason Labor and the Democrats fell short yesterday. 

Yes, Barrett was outspent by a 7-to-1 margin by Walker.  In any other case, I would probably agree that the disparate spending levels heavily influenced the outcome.  I don't believe that to be the case in this election.  When I was on the ground in Wisconsin for last year's round of recalls, it became very clear to me that the the level of undecided voters was virtually zero.  People had not only made up their minds about the candidates up for recall at the time, but on Scott Walker as well. 

Now if Scott Walker had been up for recall last summer, he likely would have lost by a wide margin.  But as we know in politics, timing is everything.  Huffington Post had a very good post explaining that exit polls showed that the Walker campaign simply did a better job turning out its vote than Labor and the Democrats did.  This goes back to explanation of the outdated ground game of Labor and the Democrats on Number 2.

If Labor does not learn from this lesson, things could start to get really rough in other states, especially states that are not as moderate as Wisconsin.

In Solidarity,

Joseph

2010 Elections: Was Labor's Effort Worth It?

Well, if you were looking for suspense and unpredictability this election cycle, you probably woke up Wednesday morning as disappointed as the DNC leadership team.  This mid-term went just as we all knew it would, despite Big Labor's strong effort to mobilize its membership. Perhaps without Labor's contribution, the Democrats might have lost a few more seats in the House, and Harry Reid owes SEIU his soul for sparing him eternal Tom Daschle icon status, but aside from these situations, what did we get for the millions of dollars in membership dues spent on this election?

As is often the case, we will probably never know exactly how much money was spent by Big Labor during the 2010 election cycle.  However, we do know that it was a LOT.  AFSCME, along with SEIU, likely spent upwards of $100 million each.  UFCW, CWA, and the other larger unions probably spent around $50 million as well.  These rough estimates do not even count the amount of money donated in the form of paid union staff sent to battleground states working as de facto volunteers for the DNC.

I can't help but think that this massive amount of money could be better spent on some wild idea like, say, addressing the direct needs of our membership.  Think of what we could do if we invested the several million dollars into organizing and member education and mobilization.  Hell, we could start a program to give high school graduates full scholarships to the National Labor College.  Any of the aforementioned possibilities sounds better to me than the flushing noise that is still ringing in our ears from Tuesday.

The Democrats received this shellacking, as Obama properly phrased it, not because the Democratic base wasn't mobilized enough, or because rank-and-file union members didn't do enough labor walks in October.  The Democrats lost because they lost their memory of the last decade and decided it would be nice to try bipartisanship.  They lost because they sucked at governing over the last two years.  The lack of a unified strategy exacerbated their situation.

I hope I live long enough for the labor movement to come out of this comatose state in which we hand over large amounts of cash every two years to an entity that hasn't reciprocated since FDR was still alive.  Now's as good a time as any.

In Solidarity,

Joseph

Election Season 2010

The mid-term season is upon us once again, and like a lot of labor activists out there, I find myself trying to make up my mind whether or not to get actively involved this fall. I have often found myself in this position in the past. It's not very often that a candidate comes along on whose behalf I actually want to go out and canvass. I can actually count them on one hand:

Ann Richards

Barack Obama(candidate Obama was a hell of a lot more liberal than the centrist President Obama)

Andrew Duck

That's pretty much it. Not a long list. What this means is that because of the lack of any viable leftist political party in the United States, I am almost always forced to choose between holding my nose and voting for the Democratic candidate, or voting 3rd party or write-in.

The 1st question I have to ask myself this time around is, "What have the Democrats done to inspire me to hit the pavement for them?" I have to say, not a damn thing. They sold us out on the Health Care Bill, which did not include single-payer or a public option. They have all but abandoned the Employee Free Choice Act, and they attacked labor unions who backed a pro-labor candidate against an establishment Democrat who has screwed us in the past.

I've heard pleas from big labor leadership that we have to get out and support Democrats because the Republicans are worse, and that staying home will be cutting off our nose to spite our face. I don't buy that argument because in the end, a Republican who doesn't support EFCA and Public Option Health Care and a Democrat who doesn't support EFCA and the Public Option produce the exact same result.

I will support Andrew Duck this fall in the MD 6th District because of his strong support of labor, but the DNC will have one less activist this fall. They can have Blanche Lincoln.