story by Mike Blain
photos by Neal Herbert
The Free Press
Organized labor and the Democratic Party. They're the Archie and Edith of U.S. politics. The Marge and Homer of electoral antics. They fight, they quarrel, they lay awake at night and brood about whether the other still cares about them. But in the end they've always kissed and made up and reassured each other that, yes, they're still in love and nothing will tear them apart.
But one of these marriages is on the rocks. Although it might seem like a re-run, it's not one of the sitcoms. Organized labor is launching so many accusations of infidelity at the Democrats it makes Bill Clinton's woman troubles seem like scoldings for coloring on the walls. What once was marital bliss has become an abusive, adulterous and dysfunctional relationship. The Democrats have been sleeping around with big business for years, cheating on their working class faithful and coming home smelling like cheap corporate perfume. When they get caught in the sack they say "Hey, it was just political sex. They don't mean anything to me. Come on, who loves ya?"
Well the excuses are running out and organized labor has been talking to divorce lawyers. They're tired of being there year after faithful year, providing support and giving of themselves only to be cheated on relentlessly. They're sick of being the doormat for Democrats to wipe their feet on after a lustful night on the town.
This marriage has been crumbling for years, but the deterioration has accelerated recently. "Liberal Democrats" now ignore organized labor. "New Democrat" Bill Clinton viciously and publicly attacks labor during the NAFTA debate, turning the tide on legislation that had appeared doomed just prior to his bitter assault. It is very telling that many union leaders say that on the NAFTA debate, at least, they probably would have been better off with George Bush as president because his attacks on labor could have been foreseen and he wouldn't have swayed many Democrats.
But the NAFTA free-trade debate is only the most significant in a long series of battles in which organized labor says its so-called friends among the Democrats have often sold them down the river. On the issues of family leave, health care, minimum wage standards and striker replacement legislation, many Democrats have repeatedly abandoned labor. Democrats join hands with Republicans to fight reforms of U.S. labor laws so skewed against union organizing and in favor of union busters it's a surprise unions haven't completely evaporated in this country.
According to many union leaders, the Democratic party - once the reliable ally of working people and defender of the defenseless - has abandoned its roots and is now just the flip side of a big business coin. Toss it in the air, call it if you want, but either way it lands the American working class will lose.
Gettin' Kicked in the ass
While organized labor is still a pillar of support for the Democratic party, many union leaders say they increasingly feel that all of the time they spend staffing campaigns, getting out the vote and funneling money to Democratic candidates is going for naught. At election time, they say, the Democrats court them and kiss union babies and thank them for their endorsements. Once the vote is over they're off carousing again until the next election.
"They look at the labor movement as a bunch of fools," says Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union. He spoke about the need for a Labor Party in the U.S. to a standing-room-only crowd of more than 150 at the Labor Temple in Seattle last month .
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He characterized the current relationship between labor and the Democrats as this: "We give them money. They kick us in the ass. We go back and give them money again."
Mazzocchi is one of the key figures in an effort, begun in 1991, to create a U.S Labor Party. He cites survey after survey indicating that more than half of all trade union members believe that neither the Democratic nor the Republican parties represent working class Americans, and that a similar percentage believe it is time for the labor movement to organize it's own party.
And while Mazzocchi has written that many within organized labor think advocating a Labor Party is "a formula for wandering in the political wilderness," he says unions are already stumbling in that wilderness. He says it has come to the point where labor has nothing left to lose by telling Democrats they can no longer automatically rely on their support. "Our backs are to the wall," he told the Labor Temple audience. "The political process has not been receptive to the needs of working people. No matter who's been elected, we've been hurt."
Ross Perot's presidential bid certainly highlighted the growing dissatisfaction with the two-party system, and the possibility of a third party alternative. However questionable his character, credentials, and populist rhetoric, Perot demonstrated the potential for a charismatic billionaire to tap into this working class dissatisfaction and run a top-down effort to buy the U.S. presidency.
The absence of any progressive political alternative truly supportive of working people has created a tremendous vacuum in U.S. politics, according to Mazzocchi. "The Perot phenomenon demonstrated that in this vacuum, the right is prepared to fill it and be very effective."
Labor Party Advocates (LPA) is the name of the organization seeking to drum up support for a U.S. Labor Party and that name has strategic implications. Mazzocchi says that LPA is a non-electoral organization, for now at least. There are no candidates, there is no platform. They are not yet a Labor Party seeking members, they are advocating a Labor Party and are seeking people who want to support a grassroots effort to create such a party. He says LPA organizers are looking to bring together people who are fed up with politics as usual and want to push for a new economic, political and social agenda that represents the needs and interests of working people.
LPA is not necessarily at odds with the Democrats, Mazzocchi says, and there is no contradiction in people joining LPA and still working within the Democratic Party. He compared it to someone who is active with environmental or civil rights groups and also is a Democrat. He says that LPA can operate on a parallel track, working to hold Democrats more accountable and to influence the national political debate. Once LPA achieves some critical mass - around 100,000 members according to LPA newsletters - they will call for a national convention. Organizers say they have been getting tremendous response and expect to be able to have a convention to formulate a Labor Party in late 1995.
LPA supporters counter arguments that a Labor Party would be too narrowly based to ever have a real influence on U.S. politics by saying that unions will just provide the initial impetus and organizational structure to get things off the ground. They say that LPA is open to anyone, union or non-union, and that they will be actively recruiting unorganized workers.
Despite the weakened state of unions around the country, says Dave Schmitz, an organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1001 in Bellevue, organized labor is still the single largest organization representing working men and women in the U.S.
"Any worker, organized or not," says Schmitz, "has a stake in an independent Labor Party that would really represent the interests of workers."
The Rank And File Is Rankled
In their organizing efforts around the country, LPA organizers have found that local union leadership is often reluctant to endorse the effort and see it as some sort of well-intentioned but naive and misguided scheme. But once they survey their membership, says Mazzocchi, and find that the majority often backs the idea of supporting third-party alternatives, local union leaders become much more responsive.
According to Michael Laslett, the director of organizing for Teamsters Local 174 in Seattle, many union members who have supported the Democrats for as long as they can remember now feel that party can no longer be trusted. "Neither of the two parties represent our interests," he says. "Both parties are in the pockets of big business."
Laslett said that after the NAFTA vote, leadership of the Teamsters International issued a statement encouraging local unions to strengthen the coalitions of labor, environmental and women's groups that were galvanized by the NAFTA fight. The International also encouraged local unions to develop political alternatives and support third-party and independent candidates that were supportive of labor.
"NAFTA was clearly a shift for the Teamsters," says Laslett. "No one was talking about independent political candidates before that."
Patricia Augostino is the President of the Puget Sound chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women. She says she sees an enormous number of issues that are not being addressed at all by the Democratic Party. If Labor Party Advocates were to become a political force, electoral or not, she says that would be a "real advantage for women and minorities."
Given Seattle's long and colorful history of labor activism, and the fact that Seattle still has one of the highest rates of unionization in the country, Augostino says the Puget Sound region could be a real catalyst in getting LPA off the ground nationally.
One LPA supporter and long-time union member, who preferred to remain anonymous because of his ongoing lobbying efforts with the Democratic Party, says that one of the things Labor Party Advocates would do in Washington state would be to withdraw union support from Democratic candidates who waffled one too many times on labor issues, and funnel that extra energy and money into assuring that truly pro-labor candidates won.
That, in fact, is already happening without LPA. The June 1994 newsletter of the Washington State Labor Council says of that group's endorsements for upcoming elections: "Delegates voted in race after race to either take no action to support incumbent Democrats or to actually oppose some of the seated Democratic representatives." Speaker Brian Ebersole, Majority Leader Kim Perry and Democratic Caucus Chair Bill Grant (among others) all did not win endorsement. The delegates not only failed to endorse Majority Whip Tim Sheldon, they voted to oppose his re-election.
"For too long we've been willing to accept whatever shit they've thrown at us just because it wasn't Republican," says the union lobbyist. "We should be willing to sacrifice some Democrats."
Just a Union Pipe Dream?
Not all supporters of labor believe that this sort of approach, or even a Labor Party, is the way to solve the alienation of many working-class Americans from electoral politics.
"I think labor's dead as an issue right now," says Tom Geoghegan, a Chicago labor attorney and author of Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When it's Flat on its Back." He says he feels very "glum" about the prospects for a revitalized U.S. labor movement, whatever its form.
He questions some of the strategies of LPA. "If they want to be a force, they've got to be an electoral organization," he says. "They need a candidate." He says Ross Perot's campaign achieved some success partly because it addressed people's wages being cut, people being squeezed out of jobs, and companies not paying workers decently (very similar to the issues LPA is addressing), but it wouldn't have been anything without Perot's persona behind it.
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No one was talking about independent political candidates before that." -- Michael Laslett, director of organizing for Teamsters Local 174 |
Geoghegan also questioned the name or the organization. "I wouldn't call myself a Labor Party," he says. "I don't think most people know what that means or necessarily identify with organized labor. They should call themselves the 'Stop the Falling Wage Party.' "
And, not surprisingly, Democrats who still actually vote pro-labor think organized labor should put its energy into pressuring the Democrats to be more accountable. "I still believe that the Democratic Party offers the best hope for addressing the concerns of working people," says Rep. Cal Anderson (D - Seattle). Anderson's 1994 state senate bid was endorsed by the Washington State Labor Council.
Anderson thinks a Labor Party would be divisive and just help the Republicans divide and conquer. "The bottom line is if you get split up into all these little groups, you're just going to get George Bush and Ronald Reagan and those types of people elected."
Anyway you slice it, LPA supporters know they have an enormous uphill battle before them. Mazzocchi repeatedly emphasized to his Seattle audience that they needed to take things one step at a time and build things from the grassroots up. While many are clamoring for an immediate political alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans, he says they cannot just announce a party without a popular base anymore than you can build a house without a foundation. But he says LPA's supporters have good reason to see hope in this analytical, step-by-step approach.
"This not a hare-brained scheme by people who don't understand the nature of politics in this country," he says. "We see the possibility of success."
For more information on Labor Party Advocates contact:
- Labor Party Advocates, P.O. Box 53177, Washington D.C. 20009-3177, or call Bob Kasen, (202)319-1932
- Dave Schmitz, United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1001, Bellevue (206)644-2292
- Patricia Augostino, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Puget Sound Chapter, (206)441-7816
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Contents on this page were published in the June/July, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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Copyright © 1994 WFP Collective, Inc.