The New Unity Partnership -- A Manifest Destiny for Labor

[Khephra]

The New Unity Partnership
A Manifest Destiny for Labor



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The document, curious in that it lays out on an agenda specific to these unions and simultaneously foresees a new federation streamlined in their image, places all its bets on the concept of power through density. That is, the greater the percentage of workers unionized in a given sector of the economy (health care, construction, tourism, etc.), the greater the union's market share, hence its power to set wages and conditions. It's meant to be a model, and the four presidents still in the federation say they are not pulling out, not yet. The idea, as Stern told Business Week, is "build it and they will come", though just where the United Mine Workers, say, or public sector workers faced with private outsourcing and government repression would have to go is unclear.

From its first page the NUP plan discloses the corporatist bent of its creators:

Multi-Union Growth Partnership

1. Private Sector--The Partnership will be for private sector growth only
2. Sector Designation(s)--Each union will be assigned a unique occupation and/or and industry sector(s) to concentrate its growth efforts.
3. Capacity--Unions will demonstrate the capacity to organize through historical efforts and current resource allocation.
4. Strategic Growth Plans--Each union will have an approved strategic growth plan.
5. Unite Effort Common Employer --Unions will establish plans, to unite its bargaining and/or growth efforts for common employers or common industry sectors.
6. Capital Strategies--Create a joint capital strategies program for growth
7. Politics--Develop common political efforts for growth--meet jointly with Congressional leadership to discuss growth goals--meet jointly with moderate Republicans--meet with Karl Rove--?

That final question mark leaves room for much speculation, but the rest of item No. 7 is redolent with the politics of the deal. And the deal, as history shows, is a dead end--for progressive change, for the prospects of labor in a larger social movement, for the long-term interests of the working class and of unions. Typically the deal was made between union bureaucrats and Democratic leaders, goodies thrown to unions in return for not upsetting the racist balance within the party, for not striking in war time, for not meddling in fundamental questions of the economy, for helping to prosecute the cold war and so on. The radical innovation here is to kowtow to Republicans, specifically to the most antiunion administration in memory. There's something desperate about the idea, something left too long to boil in an overheated imagination, oblivious to real-world dynamics. One imagines the five hastening to the longed-for meeting with Karl Rove. What might they get, these petitioners in a position of weakness and disunity? Labor law reform? An end to right-to-work laws? Immigration reform with protection of civil liberties? A ratcheting of wages and conditions up, not down? In the grand far-away, George Meany had power, and still he leveraged it against the needs and interests of all those groups with whom organized labor has finally, slowly started making alliances: blacks, Latinos, women, poor people, gay people, environmentalists, community organizations, international unionists.

This section bears the hoofprint of the Carpenters' McCarron, who pulled out of the AFL in 2001and has feted George W. at two Labor Day picnics. A cheap date, he got a visit on Air Force One. Along with the Teamsters' president, James Hoffa, whom the NUPsters are heavily courting, he is the Republicans' favorite labor leader. At a recent fundraising dinner for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, McCarron and Hoffa both purchased tables. So did the other NUPsters, except UNITE's Raynor. In the midst of Clinton's betrayals, all of these unions had vowed to steer a more independent course in politics. "Independent" has turned out to mean "Republican-friendly". So far in the scramble for the Democratic presidential nomination, the Teamsters and Laborers have endorsed that towering party nonconformist, Richard Gephardt.

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