The $40 Million Question: Why Does Politics Matter to Organizing?

[Omaha Steve]

FULL story: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/08/28/the-40-million-question-why-does-politics-matter-to-organizing/


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The $40 Million Question: Why Does Politics Matter to Organizing?

As the AFL-CIO union movement mobilizes for the upcoming 2006 elections, Judith Freeman, a senior research analyst in the AFL-CIO Politics and Field Department, highlights the need to combine political action with organizing outreach to build strength in today’s union movement.

The AFL-CIO is spending $40 million in 2006 and building a massive, sophisticated, voter contact and turnout program to get pro-worker candidates elected to the Senate, House and state-level offices and as governor. Some ask: Why not put all that time, energy and money into organizing drives, to increase the size, and therefore power, of our unions?

Without a doubt, unions must be focusing on organizing new workers, but it seems like there must be a good reason for the commitment so many in the labor movement have to political activity. As it turns out, the reasons are quite good.

Last week, Kelly Candaele wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. The article’s title, “Unions Should Organize, Not Politicize,” clearly defines Candaele’s position that unions should spend their time, people and money organizing new workers, not in participating in electoral politics. But the content of his article actually does a good job of arguing the vital importance of labor’s participation in electoral politics as a necessary complement to organizing.

In the article, Candaele states:

The National Labor Relations Board, which once served as labor’s protector, is now an impediment to organizing.

In fact, the Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is about to sign a law that reclassifies many workers as “supervisors,” making them immediately ineligible to be in a union. Dubbed “the Kentucky River decision,” Bush’s hand-picked anti-union board will take away the freedom to organize for up to 8 million Americans, including many nurses, communications professionals, construction workers and others. (See Stephen Colbert’s “The Word” segment for a video explanation.

The impact of politics on organizing doesn’t stop at the national level, and even can be more pronounced locally. Candaele also writes:

The means to a more equitable and democratic society can only come through the expansion of collective bargaining rights to millions of unrepresented workers.

Absolutely. But what about when a governor, with the stroke of a pen, can decide certain workers can’t have a union? After the 2004 elections, when Indiana and Missouri both elected new anti-union governors, these newly elected officials promptly passed laws that resulted in 40,000 state employees losing the right to be represented by a union and bargain collectively. These workers have no recourse to get back their collective bargaining rights because those politicians are not on our side.