Between 2005 and 2011 Unions Piss Away 1.1 Billion Dollars On Federal Elections
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Labor gave $1.1 billion in donations to candidates in federal elections between 2005 and 2011, and what do we have to show for it? No Employee Free Choice Act. President Obama’s nominee for Commerce Secretary is a heads a corporation that is being boycotted by labor for anti-union practices and horrible working conditions. The candidate who stated in 2008 that he would put on his walking shoes and join a picket line wherever collective bargaining rights were threatened seemed to forget where his local Foot Locker was when it came to worker oppression in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. But then again, that should not be surprising, given that the 2012 Democratic National Convention was held in a right-to-work state at non-union hotels.
After so much continual disappointment, it seems like a good time for introspection. Is continued engagement in national politics the best use of union resources? If we cannot point to any major victories after $1.1 billion of investment, largely in one party’s candidates, then is it not time to think about more productive, movement empowering ways to spend that money?
As an exercise, let’s take away half of the money spent by labor unions on federal candidates between 2005 and 2011, and reinvest it in organizing new workers and building internal capacities. For roughly $550 million, here is what labor could buy (these figures are calculated with the advertised salaries in AFSCME job listings for each position):
14,146 organizers
7,123 policy analysts
7,709 labor educators
7,709 field strategists
That is a lot of people, no matter how you divy them up between each position. Those are the kind of numbers that could really begin to do some major work in an area like the South, where years of inattention by major labor federations has served to make the work that much harder. A movement building apparatus that large could not only educate, inform, and organize workers on the job, but it could also mobilize communities to battle against employers and elected officials who seek to undermine a worker’s voice in the workplace.
To that end, if the labor movement must invest in politics, it would be wisest to do so at the community/local/state level. It is there, our “laboratories of public policy”, where the labor movement can have the most positive impact on the lives of working people.
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The labor movement’s biggest strength has never been its campaign war chest; it has always been its people. It is time to invest in movement building. It is time to invest in the organizers and the members who make the labor movement the force for progressive change that it has been for generations. And most importantly, it is time to invest in building solidarity amongst neighbors and between communities. If we are to invest in politics, then let us invest in the sort of politics that impacts people and communities the most, and that will put people in touch with the brand of social justice and progressivism that has been a staple of movement unionism.
No amount of money spent on a member of Congress or a Presidential candidate will ever match the effectiveness of investing in people. If the labor movement is to grow, we must recognize that simple fact.
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