California Conservative

Democrats are very concerned.

The future for union political support is uncertain. How could this happen?

Weighing in on yesterday’s headline news of the breakup between the AFL-CIO, the Wall Street Journal offers some salient commentary:

“The AFL-CIO, the giant union consortium formed in 1955 by George Meany and Walter Reuther, is breaking apart this week in a dispute over how to revive labor’s lagging fortunes. The tragedy is that neither faction is offering an agenda that will make workers more prosperous in our increasingly competitive global economy.”

That would require more work than they’re used to.

Instead, we are witnessing a fight over who gets to preside over a declining labor movement. Two of the largest and more successful unions, the Service Employees International and the Teamsters, are rebelling against the leadership of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. The irony is that it wasn’t all that long ago, in 1995, that Mr. Sweeney won his job with his own coup against Lane Kirkland, the Cold War hero and more moderate labor voice.

In the wake of the GOP takeover of Congress the year before, Mr. Sweeney promised to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into electoral politics to stop the Gingrich revolution. He staffed AFL-CIO headquarters with activists from the political left–environmental groups, culturally liberal outfits–and made the union consortium a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.

A decade later we can see how that turned out. Democrats remain in the House and Senate minority, and union membership continues to decline across the American economy. The unionized share of the total U.S. work force has been sliding steadily for years, and was down again last year to 12.5% from 12.9% in 2003. In the more dynamic private sector, only 7.9% of employees now carry the union label. (More here)

Just like Democrats, the unions have made a business of only criticizing change and defending the status quo, but never offering new solutions. Perhaps the DNC will take the hint. (But we hope they don’t)

UPDATE:
Divided Labor Movement Worries Democrats
Labor split could hurt Democrats’ campaigns

RELATED:
Special Report: Dem Bill to Block Union
Walkout from AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO: “Proud Union Queers”
Arnold: Live to Fight Another Day
Unions - 1, Arnold - 0

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 26th, 2005 at 8:10 am and is filed under DNC, Economy, Elections, Liberals, Special Interests, Washington, DC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.