October 4, 1996
INTRODUCTION
An activist labor movement may be the most significant new force in American politics, but the agenda of labor's new leaders is radically different from that of the traditional labor movement. Curiously, much of this new agenda is unconnected with workplace issues, not generally supported among rank-and-file union members, and clearly outside the mainstream of American politics. In recent decades, organized labor has been transformed from a relatively centrist political force into a powerful lobby for liberal special interests and big government. Organized labor has decided to use its billions of dollars in dues revenue to defeat conservative Members of Congress, while also encouraging the Boy Scouts to admit homosexuals and atheists, offering financial contributions to political groups that promote abortion, and opposing welfare reform and a balanced budget.
While political parties have moved to the center and right, union activism has shifted decisively to the left. This transformation has occurred in tandem with a historic change in union membership from private-sector, largely industrial workers toward government and service employees. Unions began organizing the public sector in the 1960s and 1970s to offset a continuing decline in membership, particularly in manufacturing. New AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, the first federation leader from a government employee-dominated union, came to power when his coalition of service and public-sector unions toppled former president Lane Kirkland and his industry-based allies.
The desires of government employees, however, have proven to be in conflict with the interests of blue-collar workers, who now get billed twice for big government: Thanks to their unions' lobbying efforts, private-sector workers pay high taxes to support bloated bureaucracies in Washington and state capitals around the country.
Meanwhile, union dues are used to support political causes that are irrelevant to the bread-and-butter interests of the average worker. There is no evidence that the new union leadership's radical political campaign will do anything but accelerate the exit of union members, especially in the private sector. Workers who once formed the backbone of the American labor movement now find themselves paying higher and higher fees to unions that are paying less and less attention to the real interests of their members.
In fairness, it should be easier than it now is for union members to opt out of radical politicking by obtaining a refund of the significant portion of their dues that is used to support such efforts. In view of organized labor's growing politicization, policymakers should re-examine the unique privileges that have been granted to unions.
THE POLITICAL TRADITION OF AMERICAN LABOR
Writing over a decade ago in Policy Review, labor analyst Max Green decried the full-scale embrace of Walter Mondale's presidential candidacy by Lane Kirkland, the AFL-CIO's president from 1979-1995.2
Green argued that Kirkland's actions, taken at the behest of public employee unions, represented the ultimate rejection of the ideas of American Federation of Labor founder Samuel Gompers. Gompers made sure that labor kept "its distance both from socialism and from partisan politics," focusing instead on organizing and winning concessions from business through collective bargaining. In the first half of this century, the AFL even refused to support minimum-wage legislation. In those days, labor was committed to the market economy and "opted for what Gompers and his associates called 'trade unionism pure and simple,' the collective-bargaining strategy on which workers of every political stripe could agree."3
If labor unions did take a political stand, it was generally centrist, especially on social issues. In 1968, when the United Auto Workers threatened to leave the AFL-CIO because of AFL-CIO founder George Meany's opposition to an alliance with activist left intellectuals and students, Meany bid the UAW good riddance. In 1972, labor unions joined with the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a group established to move the Democratic Party to the center, but abandoned the effort in 1974 in order to concentrate once again on economic issues. The colorful Alan Barkan, AFL-CIO political director in 1972, denounced the McGovernites for turning the Democratic Party into the "party of acid, amnesty, and abortion."4
DECLINING MEMBERSHIP AND THE TURN TO GOVERNMENT
For all the media focus on upheaval in the AFL-CIO, the federation's political aggressiveness and renewed emphasis on organizing have neither stemmed declines in union membership nor markedly improved working conditions; "wage growth is at historically sluggish levels, and labor's share of the growing national income is currently at its lowest level in two decades."5 In spite of these trends, workers apparently do not see joining unions as a remedy. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of America's workers were unionized; today, fewer than 15 percent belong to unions. Leo Troy, a labor economist at Rutgers University, notes that unions have lost 7.5 million members since 1970, largely in the shrinking industrial sector.6 In response to these declining numbers, unions have attempted to bring more public employees into the fold. Of the 16.4 million union members in America, 6.9 million work directly for federal, state, and local governments.7 Despite the aggressive efforts of numerous AFL-CIO affiliates to recruit government workers, however, Sweeney has been forced to admit failure: "We are still losing members as an absolute number, and as a percentage of the workforce."8 In fact, the number of union members fell from 16.7 million in 1994 to 16.4 million last year.9
The AFL-CIO altered its moderate political stance as it moved beyond the shrinking manufacturing sector. As the union movement has grown more dependent on the public sector, it has moved squarely into the liberal camp, forging the very alliances that Gompers and Meany had shunned.
In October 1995, public employee unions such as the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) spearheaded a successful rebellion to depose Lane Kirkland as president of the AFL-CIO. John Sweeney, head of the SEIU, became the first AFL-CIO president from a largely public-sector union, completing the federation's transformation from a voice for workers in negotiating with management into one of the nation's principal defenders of big government.
The labor movement's efforts to organize public employees may do more for big government than for private-sector union members, who would benefit from balanced budgets, lower taxes, and less intrusive government. Although bloated bureaucracies might be in the interest of a federal employee in Washington, D.C., or a municipal employee in Cleveland, Ohio, the man or woman on the automobile assembly line in Hamtramck, Michigan, benefits directly from lower taxes. Deficit spending comes out of their paychecks. By siding disproportionately with the interests of government employees, the AFL-CIO is neglecting the millions in its ranks who work in the private sector.
LURCHING LEFTWARD
More significant than its defense of big government is organized labor's continuing leftward lurch on a broad array of issues. Liberal activists have captured the union movement and are using its influence to move the Democratic Party to the left by "controlling the debate," as AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka puts it.10 Trumka and other AFL-CIO officials, for example, regularly denounce the so-called New Democrats who have sought to move the party away from its traditional big-government agenda. Trumka has decried the agenda of the Democratic Leadership Council, the leading organization of centrist Democrats, as "immoral ... anti-worker [and] a blueprint for political disaster."11
The AFL-CIO's "Union Summer" project, originally designed to train 1,000 young people to become union organizers, also is being used for "voter education and registration" as well as to fight the California Civil Rights Initiative.12 This shift epitomizes the transformation from recruitment to politicking. It is not surprising, however, considering that Union Summer's director, Andrew Levin, boasts of having made a career of "apartheid, anti-nuclear, environment, civil rights, community organizing, union organizing, and student protest" activism....read more>>
