Rhode Island teachers fired in line with the Obama administration's attacks on unions. Obama's "Race to the Top" education policy will create more unemployment among education workers.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
By David Moberg
In These Times
March 2010
After Obama earlier this week supported the
mass firing of 93 teachers and other staff at the
troubled Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, the
AFL-CIO executive council, already meeting in Orlando,
fired off an unusually harsh resolution.
Labor leaders said they were "appalled" by the
"unacceptable" and "disappointing" presidential
statements, especially since the local superintendent
fired the teachers rather than negotiate over how to
continue the recent academic improvement at the working-
class community's school.
It was a mini-PATCO moment-echoing faintly President
Reagan's decision to fire striking air traffic
controllers-in the increasingly frayed relations between
organized labor and a president who has at times seemed
distant from the labor movement, yet at other times
seemed more pro-union than any president in many
decades.
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said Obama's comment
was "a bad call" based on "wrong facts," but that it
happened at all caused him "concern, deep concern."
Union reaction to the administration is increasingly
ambivalent. Partly it reflects frustration-mainly in not
getting adequate legislation passed to deal with the
multiple crises of working Americans (jobs, incomes,
health care, worker rights and more).
But that unease is tempered by satisfaction-mainly in
administrative actions.
This complex relationship was on display with two
speeches to the executive council-both somewhat
defensive, if not apologetic. Vice-president Joe Biden
was received lukewarmly with pointed questions about
broad administration policy afterwards. Labor Secretary
Hilda Solis received a much more enthusiastic reception,
partly as a result of her efforts to enforce existing
laws better and to develop more pro-worker regulations
(such as on occupational safety and health).
Labor leaders know their frustration primarily stems
from Republican obstruction, right-wing demagoguery, and
the anti-democratic rules of the Senate. (Asked if the
theoretically bipartisan labor movement would endorse
any Republicans this year, Trumka said, "We're hoping.
None come to mind at this point.")
But the unreliability of a significant bloc of
conservative Democrats slowed or stopped progress even
when the Democrats could claim the magic number-60-in
the Senate. In a plan first hatched by a group of big
unions from the AFL-CIO and Change to Win several weeks
ago, organized labor-from the state federation to the
AFL-CIO threw its support behind Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill
Halter in a primary challenge against Sen. Blanche
Lincoln, a Democratic nemesis of unions. Communications
Workers, Service Employees (SEIU), AFSCME (public
workers), and the Steelworkers each pledged $1 million
for his campaign.
Lincoln, known as the Senator from Wal-Mart, rejected
labor law reform, opposed the public option in health
care reform, and refused to vote for cloture on the
appointment of labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National
Labor Relations Board. Halter is no labor tribune: he
says he doesn't support the original labor law reform
involving majority sign-up, but leans to a compromise
that would hold NLRB representation elections more
quickly.
But "maybe something like this will send a message" to
other Democrats, says AFSCME president Gerald McEntee.
"I think it does represent a new strategy. We're going
to take into consideration records on issues facing the
people. There's always the danger [of losing a
Democratic seat]-we do want to support Democrats-but
when people are as recalcitrant as this, you have to do
something or you're not a labor movement."
There are other ways to deliver the same message.
McEntee says the AFL-CIO coordinated political program
will be even bigger this year than in the 2008
presidential election (partly because it will be
necessary to spend heavily in some normally blue states
like California and Illinois to erect a firewall
protecting vulnerable Democratic seats). But AFL-CIO
political director Karen Ackerman says that despite that
effort many Democrats may not get a labor endorsement or
get an endorsement with no money. "Those who've not
proven themselves will not get our support," she says.
Union leaders-and likely many members and other workers-
are upset with a variety of Obama policy choices, such
as dropping the public option and imposing an excise tax
on high-cost health insurance policies (and were
disappointed even with the improvements Trumka and other
negotiated) or going easy on the big banks. (As blogger
Michael Whitney noted, there were no mass firings of
bankers.)
But people's biggest frustration, especially among the
broader base of Obama voters, is that so little is
getting accomplished and that-even if Republicans and
blue dogs and filibusters are largely at fault-that
Obama doesn't seem to be fighting hard enough. "People
get demoralized when they don't have a vehicle to fight
back," Ackerman says. Or when their representatives
don't fight, adds UNITE HERE (hotel and restaurant
workers) president John Wilhelm . "There's no fight
visible to the average worker," he says.
Demoralization will make it harder to mobilize the Obama
voters this fall, even though the union political
operation is much more effective than in 1994, when
union member and working class disillusionment with Bill
Clinton's NAFTA deal and his health insurance reform
failure helped Republicans take control of the House.
Yet Wilhelm says, "It will be extremely tough. Our folks
are seriously disappointed not to see significant
changes since the Democrats took control. That was the
promise. Especially the response to the job problem has
been so anemic....Our members may not vote for
reactionaries, but they may not vote."
"I think Rich Trumka is right," Wilhelm continues. "The
conversation has to be about jobs." And the plan this
year, far more than ever, McEntee says, is to lead into
the election battle with an issues fight over job
creation, including taxing the financial services
industry both to pay for reconstructing the jobs and
economy its executives destroyed and to discourage
speculation over investment in the future.
Winning that fight means pushing the president and many
Democratic lawmakers and officials beyond where they
want to go as well as defeating Republicans. At a time
when even many union members are disillusioned, and
right-wing scare tactics are powerful, the political
challenge for organized labor this year is extraordinary.
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