Unions Regroup After Stunned By Losses Beneith Obama, Democrats
As they meet in Orlando, Florida, this week to plan their 2010 political campaign, union leaders are reeling from a succession of defeats they never expected after helping President Barack Obama and the Democrats win elections in 2008.
The union-organizing bill known as card-check, labors top priority a year ago, has stalled. Obama ignored union pleas to use his executive powers to appoint a National Labor Relations Board nominee blocked by Republicans. Senate Democrats such as Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas havent supported some union goals.
“The labor movement is at a crossroads, and it has to rethink its political strategy,” said Amy Dean, a former labor official who is co-author of “A New New Deal,” a book about reshaping the labor movement. “The conversations that we are having at our kitchen tables and our living rooms that express our disappointment with this administration are very similar to the conversations that we had under the Bush administration.”
The executive council meeting of the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor federation, opens today at Walt Disney World with Vice President Joe Biden speaking to the union leaders.
Unions spent a record $450 million helping elect Democrats to Congress and the White House in 2008. With a mixed record of success going into the mid-term 2010 congressional elections, they are wondering what to do now.
Not Happy
“Were demoralized,” said Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. “Were not happy about anything.”
Its unclear whether unions can persuade enough Democrats to back them. Union membership in the private sector declined in 2009 to a record low of 7.2 percent, according to figures released last month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The publics opinion of unions is souring, according to a Feb. 23 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Forty-one percent of the people polled said they had a favorable view of labor unions, down from 58 percent in 2007.
A year ago, Bill Samuels, the AFL-CIOs chief lobbyist, said labor was confident that Lincoln of Arkansas would side with unions rather than the biggest business in her state, Wal- Mart Stores Inc., on labor priorities.
Instead, after voting for the card-check measure in 2007, she now opposes it. Lincoln, who faces a re-election contest this year, also was one of two Democratic senators who joined Republicans in opposing Craig Becker, the stalled nominee for the NLRB. The other was Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
“Our people went to the streets for her,” Hughes, of the Arkansas AFL-CIO, said. “A lot of her friends have turned on her. Shes in Wal-Marts back pocket.”
Flemming, the Atlanta union leader, says he cant see “what the hell good” such Democrats are for the labor movement.
Lincoln “maintains a lifetime voting record of 82 percent with the AFL-CIO,” spokeswoman Katie Laning Niebaum said in an e-mailed statement. “While she hasnt agreed with organized labor on every issue, she has given their priorities a fair hearing and careful consideration.”
Some of labors frustration is turning toward Obama. Earlier this month, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement that union members were calling the White House and “demanding” — to no avail, as it turned out — that Obama appoint Becker during the February congressional recess.
Dean, the author, said Obama never mentioned labor unions or collective bargaining in his State of the Union address in January.
“I am not convinced that the president sees the labor movement as an important part of his governing coalition, and even his electoral coalition,” Dean said.
Which Strategy?