Don’t Blame the Rank and File Union Member For Trump’s Rise

2017: Some Top union officials ingratiate themselves with Trump

 

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

There was an article in Politico September 22^nd that detailed the difficulty top union officials were having trying to get their members to break from Trump and vote for Biden on November 5^th.  Rank-and-file union members snub Biden for Trump was the title. “To rank-and-file members in some unions, especially the building trades, it doesn’t matter…..” the authors explained, “……they’re still firmly in Donald Trump’s camp.”.

The article points out that according to a union poll, in six swing states there is a dead heat between Trump and Biden with Biden at 48% of the vote and Trump with 47%

“We haven’t moved the needle here,” says Mike Knisely an official with the Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s anybody changing their minds,”, says Don Furko, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1557 in Clairton, Pennsylvania, and tells Politico that the, “majority of his membership is backing Trump

One official, James Williams, a VP in of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades admits that Trump, “… has a very, very, very solid foundation of our members. Williams makes an attempt at analysis and adds:

 “They connect with his messaging and a lot of the fear-mongering going all the way back to when he was first elected with, ‘Be afraid of the immigrant. The immigrant’s here to take your job.’ That resonated with our membership. They feel like their way of life and their way of living is under attack and without really understanding the dynamics at play. I mean, the immigrant worker is being abused by employers.”

The heads of organized labor at the highest levels are as disconnected from the average dues paying union-member as the Pope of Rome. Does Williams think his members don’t understand that the immigrant worker is abused? Of course they do. But it is not an unreal fear that immigrants might take our jobs and may place downward pressure on wages. After the meatpacking bosses smashed the Hormel strike in 1986 with more than a little help from the heads of the UFCW and the AFL-CIO, meatpacking became the most dangerous industry to work in by 1996 with some 36% of all workers injured according to US News and World Report (1)  It was so bad there was an 83% a year turnover rate  and companies in Iowa and Nebraska recruited desperate undocumented workers from Mexican villages and “brought them north.”. (2)

What Politico fails to point out is that it is the disastrous policies of the heads of organized labor, representing 14 million members, that has created this situation. Their narrow pro-market approach and class collaborationist policies have hastened the decline of wages, benefits and conditions that took decades to win. Look at the state of the auto worker today. In the 16 years I have been retired from a public sector job, it’s obvious the younger young workforce will not have the benefits or retirement I had.

Strike after strike has been defeated due to these policies and the relationship the union hierarchy has built with the bosses based on labor peace. Whenever capitalism goes in to crisis and the bosses cry about profits or terrorize workers and our communities with threats of layoffs or moving abroad in some cases, the officialdom moves to bail them out, at their members expense of course.

It has not been the lack of sacrifice, solidarity or heroism on the part of the rank and file worker that has led to these decades of defeats or the decline in our living standards. Picket lines and strikes have become nothing but 24-hour protests that are not intended in the least to shut down production. It is demoralizing.

The teachers and educators strikes in 2018-19 broke the mold and a major reason they were successful is that the established pro-management leadership was weak or non-existent and not able to block them. The approach of these rank and file led strikes was totally different, they included all workers in education and were not obsessed with obeying the law. These strikes frightened the established bureaucracy and there has been no attempt by the AFL-CIO or many on the left to take the reins of that horse and ride with it. We have article about those strikes on Facts For Working People. Search under teachers,  education or Strikes

The same in the political arena. The union hierarchy pushes on their members and the working class as a whole a political party that they abandoned long ago. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that almost 100 million never voted in 2016 they are so disgusted with both political parties and the whole process.

Politico: “Pat Eiding, president of the Philadelphia AFL-CIO, said trades leaders need to talk with their members more often about Biden to be effective.”, this in itself is insulting. Workers are not stupid. We built unions to improve our material conditions when dues go up, wages go down and conditions deteriorate then workers lose trust and faith in these organizations. They know Biden is not a union man and is not for the working class. In many ways, voting for Trump was an act of desperation and in some cases just sticking their finger up at the whole phony process.

It is the union hierarchy that is responsible for the apathy in the electoral arena by refusing to build an alternative working class political party and failing to protect workers’ wages, conditions and our living standards in general.

As for the immigrant threat, Trump and the right wing wouldn’t be able to use it so successfully if it were a fantasy, it wouldn’t “resonate” so easily. The trade union leadership has no answer to it and no answer to why our brothers and sisters, why workers from Mexico and Central America come north.  They never explain what causes it and what the answer is from a worker’s perspective. All the quote says above is the members “feel” this way or that and then basically criticizes the members from a moral standpoint because they are too ignorant to recognize that immigrant workers are abused. This from an official whose job is in no way threated by immigrant labor and are often lifetime positions. 

Immigrant Freedom Ride

Look at the so-called AFL-CIO supported ''Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride,'' in 2003. In conjunction with various immigrant and civil rights groups the plan was to fill 18 buses with 800 immigrants and travel across the US stopping in some 100 communities in 42 states to have rallies and speeches with local politicians about the plight of immigrant workers and the importance of immigrant rights. It would end in Washington DC and encourage other to join the caravan.

The project was supposed to cost around $1 million and AFL-CIO staffers were visiting union halls around the country looking for some financial support. We had heard our local was getting a visit. As we walked in, we saw these two guys that looked like lawyers and approached them as such even though we knew they were from the AFL-CIO. We had never in decades of activity ever seen someone from the AFL-CIO so we figured they were after money.

They gave a presentation and made a point of linking this so-called “freedom Ride” with the Freedom Rides of the Black Revolt and the Civil Rights Movement. This was a disgraceful attempt to portray the leadership of the AFL-CIO, that has refused to lead a real fightback against the capitalist offensive, as following in the footsteps of Martin Luther King and the heroes of the Black Revolt.

A couple of us spoke against donating money for this farce that would divide and weaken workers, including immigrant workers, and explained why. Our opposition had nothing to do with being anti-immigrant, undocumented or otherwise. We explained that after years of cooperating with the employers in driving down union wages, benefits and conditions, taking busloads of immigrants through communities savaged by these policies under the banner of defending “immigrant rights” alone and not linking this to local and domestic concerns , like jobs losses, wages and so on, would be a disaster.

Many of these communities had suffered job losses as industry moved to places like Mexico and Asia in search of cheaper labor. In a letter we wrote to the AFL-CIO after we sent them packing we wrote:

“……we are very skeptical of what this "Freedom Ride" is really all about. The original Freedom Rides were part of a mass mobilization of hundreds of thousands of young people and others to fight against a vicious racism in the South. They openly defied the law and they had no real support from the Democrats or Republicans. We must say that the present "Freedom Ride" does not do justice to that name or the heritage of that struggle.”

This all occurred after the passage of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement when Bill Clinton, Robert Reich (apparently a raving leftist now) and others opened up the Mexican market to US agribusiness hurting both US and Mexican workers. By some accounts, NAFTA drove 15 to 20 million Mexican subsistence farmers off the land separating them from their means of subsistence forcing many to risk the dangerous journey north to feed their families. For US workers, many jobs were lost as US capitalism sought more lucrative and cheaper labor across the border. Rallies for immigrant’s rights in communities where good union jobs were sent abroad might not be the most popular rallying cry one would think. We believed as it was organized it would strengthen antiimmigrant sentiment and the right-wing anti-union forces like this response.

The bosses will always seek the cheapest labor in search of profits. When I was still at work and there were attacks on the undocumented workers here in California I wrote about why immigrant workers are not our enemies and what approach workers and organized labor should take and distributed at work. It was a while ago and would probably redo it somewhat but it’s basically how I see things. You can find that article at this link.

The letter we had our local union, Afscme 444, send to the AFL-CIO explaining our decision not to support the so-called “freedom Rides” can be read in total at this link

I do. not condone a vote for Trump. But the reason for many union members voting for him, becoming apathetic, opting out of the union or electoral politics or being drawn to right wing and at times ant-union views falls squarely on the shoulders of the labor officialdom atop the AFL-CIO. 

The leadership or organized labor has almost no credibility.

(1)  Quoted in Sharing the Pie 1998, Steve Brauwer

(2) ibid

 

Further reading:

On the stifling picket line rules for workers on strike.

 

"Work With Capitalism, Not Against It". Why the Labor Leadership Surrenders to the Bosses

 

A Fighting Union Leadership Will be Built by Rank and File Activists