Doug Henwood wrote:
> [anyone know more about this?]
> Wall Street Journal - October 6, 1999
>
> AFL-CIO PLANS RESTRUCTURING, LOOKS TO REBUILD LOCAL GROUPS
>
A little. Most CLCs have no staff, are dominated by one or a few locals,
typically from the building trades, and have no mission in life other
than supporting Democrats in local elections (and providing second
salaries
to local officials.) Consolidating them sounds like a good idea to me; if
Tom
Lehman thinks otherwise, I'd be curious why..
A more interesting aspect of this restructuring not mentioned in the article is a change in the rules around organizing. In the past, the Article 21 procedure for establishing jurisdictions was just based on who got to a workplace first--it encouraged the "hot shop," low hanging fruit approach to organizing that's often been criticized. Under the new system, affiliates with a dominant presence in a certain region or industry will have the exclusive right to organize there (with exceptions
for some crafts, companies where another affiliate already has a presence, and a few other things.) Part of the point of this seems to be to force affiliates in declining industries to merge rather than opportunistically organizing outside of their core.
Apparently Andy Stern wanted to go farther, and have a formal table indicating exactly which industries were reserved for which affiliates, but some other International heads, especially Doug Dougherty of UFCW, refused to give up their right, in principle, to organize wherever they chose. More broadly, any attempt to organize more strategically faces three problems: Some unions, like UFCW and UAW ("The Union of All Workers") are built around being amalgamated; organizing is often driven by the locals; and most unions in declining industries don't want to merge, and don't want to be stuck in them.
Personally I think this could be important, though whether it will happen is another story--I'm told something similar was tried under Kirkland and never got off the ground. And before Jeff St. Clair writes another article attacking me for saying labor is too decentralized, consider this: historically and conceptually, the dominant place of the local in American unions arguably is closely connected to their craft basis. So why are people who are so quick to denounce the one kind of particularism so ready to defend the other? Whatever happened to One Big Union?
One other thing: At the same Executive Council meeting where this stuff was approved, the AFL-CIO also voted to support lifting the embargo on Cuba for food and medicine and closing the the School of the Americas. Not earthshaking news, but worth noting.
Josh