5-31-05, 23:00pm

My Mac is about the size of a soap box so I thought I would use it as such this morning.

I just took a look at the home pages for the AFL-CIO, and then, those of the four big unions challenging their leadership.

It is clear on that the AFL-CIO home page has a high priority for political action against the Bush administration's right-wing anti-labor policies and features a Bush Watch. It also features organizing efforts of their affiliates and labor law reform that says the workers voices should be decisive in union recognition. The other four have much less on political action for workers and anti Bush battles. They talk about their organizing efforts and fight against the AFL-CIO leadership.

Of the four, the laborers appear to me to have the most on political action and the Teamsters the least. This does not bode well as I see it, especially when the declaration of the four against the AFL-CIO leadership only indirectly refers to political action (a bigger labor movement will have more power, but don't we have to fight Bush tooth and nail now?). The declaration does say workers have a right to be part of bigger, more effective unons. So one possible scenario is that as the AFL-CIO is busy fighting Bush these other unions will leave and try to get many of the remaining AFL-CIO members into their unions. Isn't that sweet?

For me, the all out attack of the top leaders of these four big and important unions on the leadership of the AFL-CIO has made me appreciate the historic contribution of that leadership. In some ways the attack has brought out the best of the AFL-CIO leadership. Listen to how John Sweeney talks about the economic, political and ideological problems the workers and people must confront:

'Working people and their unions are under attack from every direction from a harsh, globalized, and corporate-driven economy, and from elected ideologues who put corporate profits over people and embrace the shredding of America’s safety nets to create an ownership society. Never has there been a greater need for a strong and unified union movement.'

The four 'reform' union leaders' position paper stresses that having bigger unions is the top priority for the day. The 'reform' package does not mention George Bush. Here is what the AFL-CIO paper says about Bush:

'When George W. Bush assumed the presidency, he declared war on working families and our unions through crippling executive orders. His tax breaks for the wealthy widened our wage and wealth gap, destroyed our federal budget surplus and decimated programs for working families and the poor. Bush sided with his friends in corporate America, whose policy agenda of labor market flexibility, unfair trade and disdain for workersí rights, was already choking working people. Job loss in heavily unionized industries exploded, and America hemorrhaged 2.8 million manufacturing jobs. Key industrial unions suffered large-scale membership declines, and other unions struggled to hold even.'

There is a lot said today on both sides about how the Los Angeles labor movement is a model of what the labor movement can be. Well, political action is one of the hall marks of the county federation here along with organizing, strike & contract support, coalition and public support building.

If there was a turning point in the development in the LA model labor movement I would say it was the Justice for Janitors’ Century City battle in the early nineties. It was against a Scandinavian transnational services corporation. When the county federation headed up a march in the posh West LA high rise complex supporting the largely Latino immigrant janitors, the LAPD waded in and busted heads as they had been doing for the whole 20th century.

Well the Janitors got that contract, and at the victory celebration and in what was then Mi Ranchito restaurant, I happened to be the only reporter who showed up to cover it. John Sweeney, then the head of SEIU, gave this Peoples Weekly World reporter (that was my job then) an exclusive interview (by default of the corporate media). He told me of how a video tape of the police attack was shown to the leaders of the New York and Chicago and other SEIU janitors unions (and others as well), and that at the negotiations with the transnational held in New York, the head of the New York union, after seeing the video, told the transnationals negotiator that if the LA Janitors didn't have a contract the next day, the New York janitors would hit the streets in solidarity.' The deal was closed shortly thereafter.

This victory was critical not only for the LA labor movement. It dealt a serious blow to the racist anti labor traditions of the LAPD and their leader, the corporate pit bull, Daryl Gates. The Rodney King incident was the turning point in that battle but the role of the Sweeney-led SEIU International in this battle shook the reactionary foundations of that institution of racism.