It’s Game Time For the AFA’s Sara Nelson

Nationalize the airlines, redesign the transportation industry

 

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

8-7-20

The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO, the main national body of organized labor in the US, held it first contested election in its history in 1995 when John Sweeney defeated Tom Donahue for the president’s spot. Sweeney was president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) at the time and Donahue was the former Secretary Treasurer under the moribund Lane Kirkland who retired. Joining Sweeney at the top was Richard Trumka, the present president of the AFL-CIO and formerly the leader of the United Mineworkers.

 

There was much fanfare at the result. A New Voice for labor was the rallying call and Sweeney created a new position to be filled by Afscme’s Linda Chavez Thompson, a Latina who would become the first non-white in a senior AFL-CIO post. This is revolutionary stuff in the world of identity politics. The Sweeney, Trumka Chavez slate were swept to power on a program of reform claiming that Labor could not continue to fight, "...only defensive battles." and promising to make the AFL-CIO the , "....fulcrum of a vibrant movement, not simply a Federation of constituent organizations."  The reformers made it clear, "...we cannot wait for change in the political climate to provide us with the opportunities to grow.  We must first organize despite the law if we are ever to organize with the law."

 

“AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney has encouraged new thinking about the way labor unions operate and organize, and he has placed a number of progressive leaders in positions of power.”, wrote Steve Proffitt in the LA Times (October 10, 1999), “These young Turks are redefining the role of labor unions in today's service and knowledge economy……” my added emphasis.

 

Sweeney went on to talk about blocking bridges in the Martin Luther King tradition but in a very short time ended up building them, not with the rank and file of organized labor and the working class as a whole, but with the employers through the Team Concept. So the “New Voice” for labor turned out to be the same old voice singing the same old tune.

 

When the Battle in Seattle at the WTO meeting broke out in December 1999 there was a permitted union march alongside some 40,000 others protesting globalization. The radicalized youth had some influence on the younger union rank and file and eventually the meeting was cancelled. It was a great shock at the time and the police responded with extreme violence. When the younger workers were battling cops Sweeney was busy praying at a candlelight vigil. New Labor indeed.

 

The Young Turks turned out to be anything but. I was still active in the unions at the time. I would assume the liberal writer Bill Fletcher was among them as he held a position in the SEIU hierarchy and was an advisor to Sweeney when he became president of the AFL-CIO. But there were others and one I recall in particular was Amy Dean. Dean was the head of the South Bay Labor Council based in Silicon Valley, a “…5-foot, 3-inch fireball…” wrote Steve Proffitt in the LA Times article.  The liberals loved her and she would have been popular with the Labor Notes leadership who gave her a platform as one of the experts the uneducated rank and file member could speak to about how to organize and build our unions. Dean co-authored a book called The New New Deal so she must be an expert on workers and workplace struggles right.

 

Anyway that bright star went in to a black hole. I don’t know what Ms. Dean is doing now. She formed some non-profits and as far as I know from her website, as of 2014 she was a Senior Consultant, of a Management Assistance Group describing herself as a, “…leadership development and organizational transformation consultant…”. Her husband, Randy Menna, was the founder of some software development company.

 

Another firebrand began to burn bright around this time and that was Andrew (Andy Stern. Stern became president of SEIU in 1996 after Sweeney won the AFL-CIO election. The capitalist media loved him and lauded him with praise, Business Week, Time, CNN, CBS, he had it all; they weren’t afraid of him, he was their new shining star, a visionary. "We like to say: We use the power of persuasion first. If it doesn't work, we try the persuasion of power" he told the WSJ in 2008. He’s big in the hedge fund industry these days.

Sara Nelson AFA President

 

I am reminded of this thread in the organized workers’ movement as there is a new savior now, President of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA/CWA) Sara Nelson. If you have no history with this trend I can understand why an idealistic young DSA’er interested in unions or a student who correctly sees the 14 million members in unions as relevant, would be attracted to Sister Nelson. She has spoken out against big business and speaks out strongly in defense of all workers.

 

Admittedly, capitalism is in the midst of its worst crisis since World War Two and in some ways greater given the global reach of the pandemic. And Sister Nelson’s rhetoric is welcome. She points out correctly that workers have learned a great deal during this crisis. It has brought from our gut in to our consciousness what we already knew, whose labor is essential in society and whose is parasitic. In an interview with The Nation in March, Nelson stresses, “I have never seen the airlines work with us more closely than they have during this time to put in place mitigation factors and equipment on the planes.”. The airline industry investors are aware that they need the organized workers on their side and their industry as Nelson points out is 80% organized.

 

Nelson tells the Nation that this is not going to be like 2008. “It is a crisis that working people are simply not going to allow to be put, once again, on our backs. In fact, we are coming for blood this time. No more stock buybacks. This is about putting in place a system that actually cares for people, that actually works for people.”

 

The AFA has joined with other unions in calling for direct payments to workers to keep them at work. In a video she made on March 16^th Nelson said: "No taxpayer money for CEO bonuses, stock buybacks, or dividends; no breaking contracts through bankruptcy; and no federal funds for airlines that are fighting their workers' efforts to join a union." There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these reforms but if she is counting on the Democratic Party to guarantee rules and regulations are upheld, and that this party will put in “…place a system that actually cares for people, that actually works for people.”, she is misleading workers and her position as a leader seriously trying to make changes is in jeopardy.

"Today we will save our industry and our jobs, tomorrow, our neighbors," Nelson said. "And in the weeks and months to come, our future."

 

This is not new, it’s been said by labor leaders before Sister Nelson. As activists and labor activists serious about changing the unions and wanting to build a just world, an alternative strategy and tactics has to be laid out. We have no political party of our own and this Nelson ignores as far as I can see which can only mean she has no intention of breaking with the marriage of death the trade union hierarchy has with the Democratic Party. She has even been suggested as a running mate for Biden. One fan is Doug Parker, the CEO of American Airlines who likes it when unions and corporations “work together”. Parker said of SaraNelson, “I think Sara would be a great choice.  She’s smart, she’s tough, she’s forward thinking and she cares about people.  She’s very good at bringing together people who have diverse interests in order to get transactions done, and she makes sure she gets work done on behalf of the people she represents.”

 

One would hope Sara Nelson rejected such praise from an enemy of working people and instead engage in an open struggle within organized labor to break the present leadership’s grip, to break from the Team Concept, the passive protests that strikes have become and to link all struggles together including those outside of organized labor in the communities and so forth

Instead of working with the billionaires that own the Airline industry to get “their” industry back on track and save it from the effects of the market driven pandemic, the call for taking these essential industries, and the dominant industries in society in to public ownership has to be raised. This pandemic has strengthened the confidence of the working class, it has had a huge effect on consciousness and as an important nationally recognized labor official, Nelson, like any of us, is involved in the struggle for the consciousness of the working class. Arguing that we are all in this together is not a good start.

 

We have seen numerous work stoppages and strikes during this pandemic. There will be many more battles over the horizon as the younger, mostly unorganized workers in particular continue the struggle in the face of the bosses’ efforts to make them pay for this crisis. It is not going to be easy for them to raise taxes, cut services and so on after this; but they are forced by the system to make workers pay. Sara Nelson and any of those like her will either be dragged along with this movement or get left behind or even worse, move to suppress it in order to save capitalism from itself.

 

And this is the problem, in fact there are two problems that lead many genuine socialists and anti-capitalists in the unions along this dangerous path. It is the position of the present union hierarchy that whenever capitalism goes in to crisis they move to bail it out. Having no alternative to capitalism, seeing the market as the answer to all things, this is the only road out. To mobilize the immense potential power of their own members can only lead to chaos, so concessions have to be made.  The members have to be “realistic”. This will be a hard sell after Covid-19.

 

This refusal to fight as I always argue, is not just due to corrupt individuals or character flaws although these things exist. It is a political question, it is how they see the world. Facts For Working People explained it this way some time ago:

 

“As the last century drew to a close, the Wall Street Journal produced a centennial edition. This included a segment titled - "Events that Helped Shape the Country". It explained that in 1893 there was an economic slump that left half the membership of what was then the main union federation, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), unemployed. The AFL was composed overwhelmingly of craft unions (skilled trades).  Samuel Gompers was the leader of that federation. Under his leadership, and against the background of that economic slump, the AFL made a decision as to what its general policy should be towards U.S. capitalism.

Here is how the wall street journal reported this decision. "The AFL led by Samuel Gompers votes against adopting socialist reform programs....Gompers believes that U.S. labor should work with capitalism, not against it, and that the AFL’s  proper concerns are wages and hours and better working conditions".

 

This view remains the dominant ideology of the labor hierarchy today and any serious reformer must address and oppose it.

 

The other important flaw alongside the view that capitalism can be made human and environmentally friendly is not seeing that the working class is the force and the only force that can change society and can govern society. The vast majority of us are workers whether we are employed or not. Within this class there are many sections and marginalized forces that make up the whole. Nelson talks of solidarity, this is the solidarity we need not a solidarity with our bosses, with the US ruling elite.

 

And we cannot build that world she alludes to without international solidarity and international organizations. Our problems cannot be solved within the confines of the nation state.

 

Great social shocks and crises put all individuals and groups to the test. Sara Nelson is facing the most important one of her political life. She’s off to a bumpy start.

 

Further reading on this subject:

Book Review: Jane McAlvey's A Collective Bargain
A Fighting Union Leadership Will be Built by Rank and File Activists

 

See more under the labels on the right side of this blog.
Labor Notes, DSA, Unions