A New Labor Federation Claims Its Space

If Enthusiasm on Display Were Substance, CtW Could Claim a Good Start

by Jerry Tucker

The founding convention of the Change-to-Win labor
federation held in St. Louis on September 27, 2005 was,
if nothing else, filled with enthusiasm and efficiently
managed. The founding unions’ top leaders put forward a
lean and specifically organizing-focused agenda, and it
was adopted without even a hint of dissent. The
longer-term question is whether this self-described new
direction in unionism will help reverse the growing
inequity and inequality of theU.S. working class, who
are now experiencing the most economically and
politically destructive period in decades.

The event was well managed. Timetables were kept. The
principal leaders’ speeches throughout the day
introduced themes and calls to action in a well-charted
sequence. Several were punctuated by the introduction
of rank-and-file workers invited to tell their stories
in ways that highlighted either the CtW’s immediate
impact or scenarios where CtW action would likely
produce victories. The some 460 convention delegates
and over 200 additional observers — overwhelmingly
made up of local officers and staff — gave rousing
approval to every resolution and initiative put before
them. The high energy of a well-coached contender was
on display.

Also on display was the absence of profound differences
between the seven defecting unions and the AFL-CIO they
leave behind. However historic the CtW’s formation will
ultimately be deemed, on launch day it offered little
to distinguish it from the abiding traditions and
utilitarian culture of its former mothership. However,
the dominant theme which the CtW unions hammered at
throughout the long, pre-split "debate period," a
renewed organizing focus and complimentary
restructuring initiative, was very much still the
center of the CtW’s agenda.

Mantra-like, the theme that "organizing is power" was
repeated throughout the day’s proceedings. There were a
few rhetorical nods to such questions as poverty (to be
reduced by creating full-time work for anyone who wants
it), "revolutionizing our failing health care system,"
creating a new political movement (often described as
finding "good" Democrats and Republicans to support),
championing diversity (something scarcely seen on the
floor at this founding event), and "globalization," a
faintly noted threat with little elaboration. The
centrality of "organizing" underpins the entire new CtW
structure and constitution and virtually all
resolutions adopted at the inaugural convention.

Three-quarters of all the CtW funds will be devoted to
organizing, starting with the $16 million initial
budget and continuingly derived from the dues-based .25
per capita per affiliate member which is estimated to
total $750 million annually. These funds are the CtW
federation’s own organizing monies, separate from the
even greater amounts expected to be spent by affiliates
on organizing as well. The organizational structure, as
described, includes "three basic components": Executive
Office; Strategic Organizing Center; and Organizing
Fund.

These functioning components are under the direction of
a CtW Leadership Council (LC), which meets every two
months; the Leadership Council selects the CtW Chair
(currently SEIU’s Anna Burger) and a Treasurer (Edgar
Romney, Unite-HERE Executive Vice President). Named CtW
Executive Director is Greg Tarpinian, of Labor Research
Association. Picked to head the all-important Strategic
Organizing Center is SEIU Executive Vice President, Tom
Woodruff. (I am unaware, as of this posting, who will
head the Organizing Fund component).

Tom Woodruff gave the presentation which outlined the
general organizing goals and objectives of the new
federation. He indicated that, in the 14 occupational
sectors where the CtW affiliates were currently
representing 6 million workers, there were 44 million
unorganized workers. He defined them as the CtW’s
target population. Explicit in the assumption about the
CtW’s organizing target — the assumption common to the
unions making up the CtW — is the fact that the
targeted sectors are largely unaffected by
globalization or, as Woodruff put it, "off-shoring."

Here — on the question of claimed jurisdiction — lies
the fault line of the U.S. labor movement, which has
been widening for years. The CtW carves out most,
though not all, of the "landlocked" employment sectors,
leaving the AFL-CIO with the sectors most damaged by
capital’s ever increasing mobility and neoliberal
motives (i.e., industrial and digitalized sectors),
as-yet-unprivatized blocks of the public sector, and a
loose collection of other unions. Among those remaining
in the old federation’s fold are the centerpiece unions
(auto, steel, electrical, and chemical) of the great
CIO upsurge of the 1930s and —s — along with the UMW
and the IAM, most public employee unions, and the
high-profile Communications Workers who have retained a
somewhat aggressive organizing and collective
bargaining reputation but, like many others, suffer
from global capital’s bare-knuckle agenda. Still in the
AFL camp are also a cluster of building & construction
trades unions. These "left-behind" unions are not
linked in ways that the CtW affiliates are structurally
linked — the only point of unity being their
membership in the AFL-CIO. (It was clear in the
confident CtW leaders’ side conversations that they
expected more defectors from the AFL-CIO to align with
them in time.)

During Tuesday’s convention, several floor speakers
referred to the rise of the CIO, and some reporters in
the press section speculated on comparisons between
today’s CtW breakaway and that of industrial labor’s
1930s juggernaut. I’m among those who see little to
compare between the two to date. The CIO was home to a
significant number of left worker activists who led
many of the organizing and direct action struggles
which empowered the country’s working class,
particularly in mass production industries. Many of
those rising leaders were "big picture" activists and
collectively offered a vision that could, in their
view, fundamentally transform the whole society.

Local unions emerging at the thousands of workplaces in
the initial CIO era were generally horizontally
organized, robustly democratic, and built in part by
workers’ self-activity. The CtW’s operational
perspective is unapologetically vertical, and internal
democracy, outside of its current limited application
in its respective affiliates, didn’t make its talking
points at its founding convention.

Also notably absent from the spoken and written
proceedings of the CtW convention were words usually
associated with union conventions. For example, the
word "solidarity" was strangely missing from virtually
all major leaders’ speeches and does not appear
anywhere in the five resolutions approved by the
convention. Similarly, none of the resolutions
contained the word "justice." The language of the
convention, instead, favored techno-futurist phrases
and corporate focus-group jargon like "growing the
labor movement" through "value-added integration," a
phrase that appears to be designed to replace the word
"solidarity."

This is not to suggest that revitalizing the labor
movement is dependent on old language rather than new
initiatives, an overriding social vision, and the
ability to win the allegiance of millions of workers.
But words like solidarity and justice don’t scare
workers or our working-class community allies. What
they embody does, however, make our corporate
adversaries uncomfortable. We can only speculate on why
today’s labor movement leaders feel the need to so
readily replace them.

CtW leaders and staff were generally open to reporters,
and there were several press briefings by principals
during the otherwise busy day. Mostly they "stayed on
message," trying to amplify themes of building "new
worker power" and "devoting resources to growth"
through their new commitment to organizing. They tended
to avoid direct criticisms of, or comparisons to, the
senior federation. But the question of how CtW
affiliates would interact with AFL-CIO affiliates at
the state and local level (a topic receiving a lot of
attention at the AFL-CIO convention in Chicago and
since) was also on the minds of the CtW founders and a
majority of the delegates. It was the CtW position that
local CtW affiliates continue to stay connected to the
local and state bodies. That, Chairperson Anna Burger
explained, was a matter still in negotiations with the
AFL-CIO.

Spokespersons focused on the CtW’s organizing
objectives, and deflected inquiries of the
organization’s position on such questions as the war in
Iraq (Anna Burger’s response in the noon press
conference was "that affiliates can take their own
positions and some have"). She indicated that action on
that question may be taken at a later time. The
question of whether the CtW would support the striking
AMFA mechanics at Northwest Airlines received the same
reply: "it was up to the individual affiliates."

The convention did address the Hurricane Katrina and
Gulf states situation. A resolution was passed to
"rebuild new hope and new communities in the gulf
coast." The resolution noted how "the disproportionate
impact of Hurricane Katrina on minority and low-income
communities exposes the need to address persisting
economic and racial inequality in the Gulf Coast and
across this country." On this question, the old
federation and the new one have put forward very
similar programs involving large dollar commitments to
retrain workers in the affected region. The CtW also
announced that it would be "partnering with the
Reverend Jesse Jackson and Rainbow/PUSH in its
comprehensive rebuilding effort."

In mid afternoon, the press pool was alerted to an
impromptu briefing opportunity with SEIU President Andy
Stern who, more than any other CtW leader, had forced
the debate that had led to the split. He was seated on
a couch in the area immediately in front of the
convention entrance, alongside several of the
rank-and-file janitors from Houston whose organizing
victory had been touted earlier in the convention. With
the press tightly knotted around him, Stern answered
questions about the hopes for the new organization.
"The change process has ended," he stated, "and now
that we’ve changed, we can win."

When asked about how to talk with the union membership,
Brother Stern said, "Blogs and the internet. Union
halls and small groups aren’t working." At one point in
the interview, he made the assertion that engaging in
"class struggle unionism was outdated" and that "a new
partnership with employers was necessary to build
unions and America."

But, when asked why workers weren’t joining unions
today, he responded firmly that "employers are why
workers don’t join unions." Later, he stated that "we
need global unions to compete with global companies."
And on the subject of politics he said, "Democrats
don’t have a clue. When they figure out how to solve
working families’ problems, then they’ll get
somewhere."

As the one-day convention came to a close, the
delegates, many of whom as noted were long-time local
officials and business agents in their respective
unions, were still conveying an uncustomary degree of
collective enthusiasm and perhaps even some
"value-added integration" to apply to the work ahead. A
reception to close out the long day helped the
delegates celebrate their new Federation’s founding
convention.

A Brief Side Trip to Add Perspective

Before offering any concluding commentary on the
Change-to-Win convention, I would like to briefly
mention another event which was coincidentally held in
St. Louis the weekend immediately preceding the CtW
event. That event was the Jobs with Justice National
Annual Meeting.

Jobs with Justice, or JwJ for short, is an
organizations founded by labor and community activists
some years ago to serve as a broader coalition to
mobilize workers and communities to actively resist
injustice.

There are a number of JwJ chapters in major cities and
communities around the country. In many locations, they
have provided local labor with critical "shock troops"
and given a more progressive face to workplace and
community struggles. JwJ has a small national staff and
a national board of directors made up of activist
community and religious leaders, as well as a number of
labor leaders. Today, those labor representatives, both
at the national and local JwJ board level, are on both
sides of the recent split in the labor movement. That’s
a reality that most of the 1000 some JwJ conferees were
well aware of as they met.

The JwJ national meeting represented a marked contrast
with the CtW convention in several ways, the contrast
that is still remarkable after their different origins
and stated purposes are taken into account. Unlike the
CtW’s convention, JwJ participants were very diverse —
racially, ethnically, and by gender and sexual
orientation. They were on average much younger, and
many were union organizers, local leaders, and
rank-and-filers. They listened to speeches and
participated in workshops which explored a wide range
of current working-class challenges. They were also
very enthusiastic as their meeting ended, and hundreds
of them delayed leaving to join an anti-war march in a
heavy rain storm on Sunday.

Just as the current labor split is causing uncertainty
within the existing State and local labor bodies, a
similar tension affects labor support elements like
JwJ. This is not the time for organizations fighting
for justice to take spectator seats, waiting for labor
to sort out its less-than-epic differences. If
anything, those frontline organizations should surge
forward, using all the innovation and militancy their
coalition of the class can muster, to help point the
way to a new social justice agenda for our
working-class communities.

Where — from Here?

We now have two "competing" labor centers in America.
Yet neither represents a conscious break with the
cultures, traditions, and failures of the past which
have pushed us so deeply into the crisis they have both
acknowledged. The primary emphasis of each labor
federation may differ, but their competition is still
within the realm of business, or "partnership,"
unionism.

CtW, with still the most to prove, will more
effectively deploy its resources to organizing within
the targeted sectors it claims. And some successes are
likely. The AFL-CIO bureaucracy will counter with its
own relative structural and tactical modifications.
Partisans in both camps will hype their respective
achievements — and yet the sustained and relentless
attacks on workers by capital will continue.

Missing throughout those many long months of in-house
debate, and still missing today, is an overarching
vision of what a just society should look like: how to
break with the economic elitists who are waging the
one-sided class warfare against workers in this
country, and around the world; and how to build the
solidarity to promote and sustain such a vision.

Today in the U.S., there is no influential center, or
"third voice," to provide an alternative space for
discussion of class-struggle strategies and creation of
a new paradigm to replace the failed "partnership
unionism" of the past. What is now needed is for
workers, social activists, intellectuals, and other
persons with the enthusiasm for such a center to come
together. Then, the real debate can begin.

Jerry Tucker is a long-time U.S. union
activist and former Executive Board Member of the
United Auto Workers union. He was a founder of the UAW
New Directions Movement.