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US unions: In unity, maybe, there is strength

Twenty years ago, some the largest unions in the United States broke away from the AFL-CIO claiming that it was not doing enough to organise workers.  Everyone understood that the labour movement was rapidly shrinking, down to a tiny percentage of the workforce in the private sector.  The breakway unions set up an alternative national centre known as “Change to Win”.  It was not a success. Recently the top leaders of the AFL-CIO (Liz Shuler) and the SEIU (April Verrett) announced that the split was over.  SEIU had rejoined the AFL-CIO. 


Guest blog by Eric Lee


I was an eyewitness to some of the events 20 years ago, having been invited by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest American union, to the founding conference of Change to Win in St. Louis.  That conference was full of hope, with inspiring speeches and promises to revitalise the labour movement.  But Change to Win never really became an alternative centre to the AFL-CIO and was unable to deliver on its promise.


The men who founded it — and they were pretty much all men — included Andrew Stern of SEIU, Bruce Raynor from Unite Here, and James Hoffa Jr, from the Teamsters.  Today none of them head up their unions anymore.  And in the case of the AFL-CIO and the SEIU, women leaders have replaced them.


This month, the top leaders of the AFL-CIO (Liz Shuler) and the SEIU (April Verrett) announced that the split was over.  SEIU had rejoined the AFL-CIO.  Of the unions that broke away in 2005, only the Teamsters, now headed by Sean O’Brien, remain outside the tent.


Shuler and Verrett took pains to assert that, as Forbes magazine put it, “the combination was not a consequence of Republican Donald Trump winning the November election and returning to the White House.”  No one mentioned that both the AFL-CIO and SEIU had endorsed Kamala Harris in last year’s election.  And that the Teamsters had refused to endorse any candidate, instead taking up the opportunity to address the Republican National Convention.


Of course it’s about Trump — like everything else in the US these days — even if union leaders don’t want to say it.  To understand the role unions play in American politics, this statistic tells us a lot: in last years elections,18% of the voters came from union households, with 54% backing Harris and 44% voting for Trump.  Considering Trump’s strength among white, working class males, those are extraordinary numbers.  They show how much workers who join unions are pushed in a more progressive direction, while those outside the labour movement are much more likely to fall for Trumpianpopulism.


A strong and united labour movement, now with some fifteen million members, is the last, best hope for a working class expecting an onslaught of attacks.  That means not only defending workers in their workplaces, but more generally flexing union power in society.  As Liz Shuler put it, “We are the, probably, only institution in the country that has an infrastructure in every city, in every state, in every workplace, that is a mobilizing machine.”


That “machine” will now be used first of all to defend workers from Trump and his allies.  As the Huffington Post put it, “The incoming Trump administration will probably seek to reverse the labor-friendly reforms under President Joe Biden, while a Republican-controlled Congress won’t make it any easier for workers to form unions.” Some Republican leaders have talked openly about getting rid of the National Labour Relations Board, which was set up in the 1930s to ensure some very basic workers’ rights.


There are no guarantees that the reunified American labour movement will do any better than the divided one.  In the 1930s, the CIO split from the AFL, triggering the most successful organising campaigns in the history of the American labour movement.  Change to Win was unable to repeat that success.


Today, threatened by the most dangerous right-wing and anti-worker government in American history, unions are making the right decision by getting back together.   In unity, maybe, there is strength.



Eric Lee is an American-born activist and author. He is the founding editor of LabourStart, an online news service for the international trade union movement. This article was first published in Solidarity

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