Home > Both Labor Federations Fail Test of Strike Solidarity
Un/Employment Trade unions USA
By Steve Early
Having two labor federations, instead of
one, is not a new idea in America—or necessarily a
negative development.
Prior to the 1955 merger of the American Federation of
Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO), union competition was more often the norm in the
U.S. than not. As a result, workers often had a wider
range of options when they decided to organize or
became dissatisfied with their existing union
representation.
In the 1880s and ’90s, for example, fledgling AFL
building trades unions wooed members away from the more
loosely-organized and less practical-minded Knights of
Labor. During the first two decades of the 20th
century, the radical Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) challenged the then-dominant AFL by recruiting
unskilled factory workers ignored by the building
trades.
Between 1935 and 1955, craft and industrial unions were
again bitter foes. But their political and workplace
conflict provided millions of workers with a clear
choice between the continuing conservatism of the AFL
and the left-leaning militancy of the CIO.
Unfortunately, the current split between the AFL-CIO
and its new rival, the Change To Win Coalition (CTWC),
did not emerge from any transformative grassroots
movement—of the kind that has made unions a more
progressive force in the past.
The CTWC’s break with the AFL-CIO developed out of
inside-the-Beltway bureaucratic squabbles that union
members have little interest in and no say about. The
AFL-CIO and its defectors don’t have radically
different workplace organizing or political agendas.
Unlike the Knights of Labor, IWW, or early CIO, no
labor grouping today is projecting an alternative
vision of how the economy should be re-structured to
aid and empower America workers.
Most revealing of all, both the AFL-CIO and its former
affiliates in the CTWC are currently failing a
fundamental test of labor solidarity. At Northwest
Airlines and other carriers, thousands of mechanics
have formed an independent union, the Aircraft
Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA). AMFA is now
striking against massive job cuts and contract
concessions at Northwest.
Rather than recognizing everyone’s stake in the outcome
of this fight, many labor officials are either
denouncing AMFA or ignoring its pleas for
help—because the workers it represents at North West
and other airlines have, for good reason, voted out
unions affiliated with either the AFL-CIO and CTWC.
(Some national unions have at least discouraged members
and staffers from flying on the airline during the
strike—and the UAW, to its enormous credit, has made
an $800,000 strike fund contribution to AMFA.) But, at
the national level, organized labor in general is just
repeating its terrible mistake in 1981 when air traffic
controllers walked out and were similarly
ostracized—in that case, because of their prior
support for Ronald Reagan (the president who then fired
and replaced them!).
Fortunately, union members in many cities—like
Boston, Minneapolis, Detroit, and San Franciso—are
rallying behind AMFA, just as they did around PATCO. If
the future of unions is going to be any less bleak than
their recent past, we need many more such examples of
bottom-up solidarity and rank-and-file initiative. What
makes labor a real movement is not the machinations of
its national bureaucracies or officials—whether
they’re merging or splitting up. Effective unionism is
rooted in the collective activity of workers on the job
and in their communities. Now, as in the past, that’s
the only reliable source of mutual aid and protection
for all working people.
(Steve Early has been active in the labor movement
since 1972. He works for CWA District 1 in Boston and
is part of the Solidarity Committee of Massachusetts
Jobs With Justice, which is aiding Northwest strikers.)