A new strategy to reverse labor’s decline? By Lee Sustar, SocialistWorker
Led by the SEIU, Sweeney’s old union, the NUP includes the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) and the textile and garment union UNITE, along with the Laborers and, unofficially, the Carpenters’ union, which is outside the AFL-CIO. Their proposal: a top-down restructuring in which small unions would be merged with larger ones and jurisdictions redrawn according to 15 targeted industries.
According to documents leaked to the media, local labor councils would be abolished and replaced by appointed officials, while 77 percent of union budgets would be devoted organizing, with most of the rest slated for politics. But ruthless centralization and greater resources for new organizing won’t reverse labor’s decline.
First, union democracy isn’t an optional extra. It’s the essence of what makes labor a movement. A leaner, more energetic labor bureaucracy is still a bureaucracy.