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

Opportunity Missed: How The Tea Party Beat Big Labor To The Punch

Big Labor has once again missed a major opportunity to further its cause. While Rahm Emmanuel's "Never let a crisis go to waste" quote made most of us cringe, there is a grain of truth to be found in his statement.

With the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression ravaging our country coupled with high unemployment and corporations laying off employees and gutting their benefits, there is an unrivaled amount of anger in the American population. Who would channel this anger towards corporate greed and lukewarm politicians?

Not the Labor Movement.

As we have all seen over the past year, this populist anger has been hijacked by the tea party, and used for the political gain of it's mainstream political leaders(Dick Armey, anyone?). Instead of seeing labor unions mobilize their members at town halls, and in the halls of Congress, we've seen the populist high ground purposely misdirected into no man's land by the extreme fringes of the right wing.

How did this happen?

I am in the crowd that believes that spending money on PACs is a complete waste of resources. If the labor movement were more involved with actually mobilizing its membership and the working public to take action instead of relying on lobbyists in failed attempts to enact political change, it might have been able to direct this anger in the right direction: the corporate plutocracy that enslaves the working class.

We have to do better.

Disconnected: Why Rank and File Union Members Don’t Trust Their Leadership

This is a hot button issue among rank-and-file union members from nearly ever mainstream labor organization in the United States. It matters little whether the union is public or private sector, trade union or white collar. Ask your random dues paying member if the International Office staff understands what they are going through on a day to day basis, and the answer is almost always no. This presents a serious problem for a labor community in the Unites States that is already suffering from declining membership and growing apathy within their ranks.

What is the cause of this dilemma?

I believe there are two main factors that have led to the disconnect between the international and the local levels of the labor movement:

1. Over the last decade or two, labor unions have all but abandoned the practice of identifying potential leaders from their rank-and-file members and then training them into leaders at the international level. It has become far too common for labor organizations to recruit kids right out of college to become staff members at the national office. Hiring them as organizers is even more common. The problem with this is that your average Yalie has no clue what it's like to work in a steel factory, or to be a housekeeper at a hotel. Chances are, the closest they have ever come to real work is the federal work-study program. I don't mean to disparage education. It is very valuable and important, but it is not more important than real life experience. Members of the working class resent some ivy league kid who's never had his hands dirty insinuating that he feels their pain.
2. Labor unions have wasted an obscene amount of money on Political Action Committees that frankly have not yielded results even remotely close to being on par with what has been spent. The fact that has somehow managed to escape the leaders of the labor movement is that the biggest successes that were achieved were not the result of political action funds. They were the result of forcing our will on management(sit-down strikes ring a bell?).
   

How do we fix the problem?

We need to step up our efforts to recognize rank-and-file members who, given the necessary training, could be effective leaders. I don't think we need to stop hiring recent graduates, but there has to be a healthy balance.

The time for unions to take the fight to the streets is long past due. We need to build another public movement to mobilize our members in real actions that produce real results. In case you were wondering, I'm not talking about canvassing and labor walks here. What I'm talking about is taking large groups of workers to town halls and the halls of congressional office buildings, and corporate offices. We don't need several million dollars to win this fight.

We just have to find the heart to win again.