Top 10 Problems within the Labor Movement
by Ralph Nader
From Commondreams.org
Rose Ann
DeMoro is the Executive Director of the California Nurses Association
(CNA) – the country's fastest growing union. Since 1992, union
membership has grown from 13,000 to the present 63,000. And it was
since 1992 that the nurses became more prominent in participating in
and running their own unions. No coincidence.
Whether
it is CNA getting patient protection bills through the state
legislature or exposing the gouging pricing of health care while the
HMO bosses each take away millions in executive pay every year, this is
the standard-bearer for larger stagnant unions to look up to and
emulate.
With
Arnold Schwarzenegger riding high last year in the polls as Governor,
the nurses took umbrage at his selective cuts for people programs while
performing as a corporate cyborg for corporate greed and tax escapism.
When he called them a “special interest”, the nurses swung into action
and Arnold's polls have not stopped dropping.
Now Rose
Ann DeMoro has weighed in on the clash of large labor unions coming at
the AFL-CIO's convention in Chicago that starts July 25, 2005. The
“Change to Win” group of dissident unions led by SEIU and UNITE are
making breakaway noises from the large labor federation if their
demands about succession to AFL-CIO leader John Sweeney and budgets for
organizing are not met. Ms. DeMoro thinks this is a power struggle with
much ado about nothing very substantive.
Here is her succinct critique labeled “Top 10 Problems with the Current Debate in the Labor Movement”.
There
are no real ideological disputes, in part because the current AFL-CIO
leadership and programs were, mostly, put in place by those now
challenging them. It appears to be more about egos and an effort by
specific unions to anoint themselves as the group who should control
the AFL-CIO.
No
workers or rank and file union members are involved, and it is their
labor movement. Much of the discussion is based on recommendations of
consultants and Madison Avenue approaches such as branding, polling and
focus groups, and scripted blogs, rather than engaging the membership
and the public on helping shape the future of the labor movement.
No
issues affecting the majority of working Americans are being debated –
declining real wages, the health care crisis, the continued erosion of
democracy in the workplace, outsourcing of jobs across the skill and
pay spectrum, a deteriorating social safety net, declining support for
public education, environmental degradation, social justice and ongoing
racial and gender inequality, alienation and disaffection from the
political process.
No real
solutions to these problems are being proposed – curbing corporate
control of the political and economic system, single payer-universal
health care, a progressive tax system that restores fair share taxes on
corporations and wealthy individuals, taking corporate money out of
politics, a new industrial trade policy, a peace, not war economy as
well as a strategy for reforming repressive/crippling labor laws and
enforcement bodies.
The
specific proposals by the Change to Win group are structural and
bureaucratic, not programmatic – rebating union dues, forcing unions to
merge, limiting the executive council to the largest unions, and
claiming sovereignty for unions by industry or sector based on a
union's density in that area. There is no evidence any of these changes
would solve labor's problems.
To read the rest of this article, click here.
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