What Do Unions Get for Helping Dems?
By Robert Fitch. Robert Fitch, an adjunct professor at LaGuardia College, is author of "The Assassination of New York." He is working on a book about unions.
'EVERY FOUR years," complained one of the two main candidates excluded from the presidential debates, "both of these parties are going to get worse, more corporatized, more homogenized." Ralph Nader's assessment is hard to dispute.
What's happened to American beer does seem to have happened to American politics.
First, the Clinton Democrats morphed into Wall Street Republicans-balanced budgets, paying down the debt, free trade, welfare reform. Then George W. Bush turned Bill Clinton's "ah feel yer pain" into "compassionate conservativism." The two parties now are as close as Miller Lite and Bud Light.
Nader is steamed that the Democrats have betrayed the unions. "They're no longer the party of the working family as FDR used to call the Democratic Party," he observes. "They don't even mention strengthening the labor laws." And yet, Nader notes, the unions still pour their money into Democratic Party coffers.
Of course, more corporate money goes to the Republican Party because it's the party of the bosses, but the Democratic Party seems to be the party of the big labor bosses. So what do the rank and file get for their estimated $54 million in contributions to the Democrats? Not much, but, given the way so many of their leaders have been investigated by the Clinton administration's Justice Department, it seems to be protection money.
What's astounding is that unions are competitive at all given the prodigious disparity of resources. Organized labor takes in about $6 billion yearly from its 13 million members. American business rakes in something on the order of $6 trillion. The AFL-CIO bigs claim they're being outspent by the corporations 15 to 1. That's true but wildly misleading. In some categories the spending is almost even: In Democratic Party PACs, the ratio is 5 to 4.
In the soft-money race, AT&T is tops. But the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is second and the Service Employees International Union is third. And if you just look at soft-money contributors to the Democrats, the top five are all unions.
It's easy to explain how union bosses are able to contribute so much to the Democrats.The members aren't asked how they want their dues spent. It's not clear how much of their money could have gone to George W. or Ralph Nader. But the Democratic Party has not done much in return. The last major piece of pro-worker legislation in a generation was the Occupational Safety and Health Administration -and that was passed under Richard Nixon.
Certainly, Nader's on to something. How come the less union leaders get, the more they give? Passing progressive legislation may not be the union bosses' highest priority. A more pressing concern may be avoiding indictment.
It's something the leaders of America's three largest unions have all had to worry about.
Take AFSCME's president, Gerald McEntee. If Al Gore wins, he'll owe McEntee big time. Not just because AFSCME is the No. 1 soft-money giver to the Democratic Party but also because McEntee led the fight within the AFL-CIO for Gore's early endorsement. Was Gore that much better than Bill Bradley? Certainly not for public-sector workers. Gore's big schtick has been "reinventing government," in other words, "cutting government down to size." Probably a bigger worry for Gerald McEntee than whether public jobs will be contracted out is avoiding indictment. A federal official, former Judge Kenneth Conboy, accused McEntee of illegally contributing $50,000 to the campaign of Teamster President Ron Carey. McEntee admitted that he got $20,000 of the money by shaking down a union vendor. U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White said she was investigating McEntee. But so far she hasn't brought down the hammer.
The president of the AFL-CIO's second largest union, SEIU's Andy Stern, has similar problems with the Justice Department growing out of his role in the Teamster money-laundering scandal. One union leader can't legally contribute to the campaign of another, but Stern has been accused of promising to raise $50,000 for Carey. He never delivered. But SEIU's attorney promised to make up for Stern's default and actually came up with $16,000. Stern has given $3.5 million to the Democrats.
Then there's AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer, Rich Trumka. Although he's under federal investigation by a Manhattan grand jury for alleged participation in two Teamster money-laundering schemes involving $200,000, Gore let him address the Democratic Party convention.
The United Auto Workers long resisted Al Gore. Maybe it was a coincidence, but this summer, shortly after word leaked out of a federal investigation into $200,000 in alleged bribes given to UAW officials for ending the 1997 General Motors strike, union president Stephen Yokich announced he, too, was for the vice president. Maybe this is what they mean by "divided government": One branch threatens to indict you. The other collects cash to keep you from being indicted.
Nader supports everything union bosses say they care about-right to organize, living wage, universal health insurance-but hasn't gotten a single major AFL-CIO endorsement. Labor issues don't seem to be the point. Not when you can use union members' money to buy get-out-of-jail-free cards.