Had a chat yesterday with a senior UFCW person who said, “we’re disaffiliating. There’s not much question about that.” Though the union has made no official announcement, speaking of UFCW President Joe Hansen, my conversation partner said, “Joe wouldn’t have gone to the board to ask for authority if we weren’t going to do it.”
Of course, things might change and a deal could be struck–but my phone friend says that the main obstacle to a deal now seems to be AFSCME’s president Gerry McEntee. “This is a battle about who runs the Federation. Gerry is the predominant power in the Federation. He wants his political program and he’s willing to split the labor movement to get it. Gerry can move enough people to make a deal but he’s decided he’s better off without SEIU and the UFCW.”
If you believe this view, it rests on a rationale view of McEntee’s best interests. Remember, much of AFSCME’s power comes from members organized in government jobs–so it makes complete sense for him to push for spending tens of millions of dollars to elect political allies, particularly at the state level, who make decisions on whether workers can have collective bargaining rights (alot of that can be done by executive order) and what money workers will earn (in states like Florida where wages and benefits are decided through the legislative budgeting process, not traditional private-sector style collective bargaining).
Yes, this is completely beside the point whether it makes sense, with a tiny labor movement, to pour even more money into politics at the expense of similar expenditures in organizing–if the labor movement doesn’t grow, there is just a shrinking number of union members to turn out to the polls. “To get us to stay in, you’d have to redirect a large amount of the money away from the political program, and McEntee will never go for that,” says my birdie, who thinks McEntee doesn’t care as much about questions such as the size and make-up of the proposed Executive Committee and Article XX.
Nor is the continued presidency of John Sweeney a big stumbling block. “Sweeney is a placeholder, everyone knows that. He’s not going to be there for four years,” says the birdster.
As for the question of whether to take part in the AFL-CIO convention, I’m getting the sense that a number of the Change To Win coalition folks have decided to take part, though not from any illusion that they will change the outcome. At least at the UFCW, though my source says that it’s viewed by many as “an expensive process for a meaningless gesture,” it’s hard to go to local leaders, who will serve as delegates and say the union decided not to go.
