Minnesota unions fear the worst

As international unions head for this month’s pivotal AFL-CIO convention ? a convention that could spark the most serious split in the nation’s labor movement in 70 years ? Minnesota union leaders say they don’t want “you’re with us or your against us” edicts that force them to quit cooperating with each other.

Changes are expected as international union leaders gather in Chicago for the convention, which starts next Monday. Last-ditch efforts at compromise are possible at an Executive Council meeting scheduled Friday.

“We’re a model for the country, and we shouldn’t change,” said Ray Waldron, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

“We really work well together in Minnesota,” said Eliot Seide, executive director of AFSCME Council 5. “What I fear is that a conflagration around the country could get to us here.”

Their biggest question ? Will union locals and councils in Minnesota still be allowed to work together, even if dissident unions actually split from the national AFL-CIO?

The six dissident unions, which have formed a coalition they call “Change to Win,” say they don’t want the national dispute to cause harmful fallout on state and local union movements. To back that up, they are pushing an amendment to the AFL-CIO constitution that would minimize the consequences of their disaffiliation. Their amendment would allow AFL-CIO organizations to let non-affiliated unions participate fully in local, state and trade-sector activities.

National AFL-CIO leaders haven’t responded publicly to that proposal. However, a letter from AFL-CIO president John Sweeney earlier this year left the impression that the AFL-CIO is willing to yank charters from state and local organizations that try to work officially with dissident unions.

“I think in Minnesota, all of us who are leaders in our movement will do everything we can to resist that,” Seide said. “But I fear it may overrun us.”

“We’re very interested in the outcome of that resolution,” said Julie Schnell, president of the Minnesota State Council of SEIU, one of the national unions likely to leave the AFL-CIO. “Somehow we have to continue our work together.”

“We’re going to work together, whether we’re in the AFL-CIO or outside of the AFL-CIO, because at this point it’s in everyone’s best interest,” said Scott Malcolm, executive secretary treasurer of the Lakes and Plains Regional Council of Carpenters.

How far will stuff flow downhill?
If a split plays out the wrong way, it is the Minnesota AFL-CIO, central labor councils, and Building Trades councils that would suffer some of the most immediate consequences.

A split could devastate those organizations’ budgets and endanger many of their activities. These AFL-CIO organizations help unions coordinate and generate mutual support for election, community and contract campaigns; for legislative lobbying; and for workplace organizing.

Central bodies also publish the state’s three labor newspapers: the Labor World in Duluth, Minneapolis Labor Review and The St. Paul Union Advocate. “The end result is that central labor bodies and the federation will be laying off employees,” Waldron said. “That’s the cold facts.”

It’s no mere rhetoric. The six Coalition unions represent more than one-fourth of Minnesota’s 424,000 union members. In St. Paul, they account for more than 30 percent of the Trades and Labor Assembly’s budget. The impact is even bigger on the proposed St. Paul Regional Labor Federation: The six Coalition partners represent more than 35 percent of union members in Ramsey, Dakota, Washington and Chisago Counties.

That much potential revenue loss is “so significant that I can’t plan for it,” said Bill McCarthy, president of the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council, the state’s largest central body.

Most central labor councils are on a shoestring budget already, said Shar Knutson, president of the Trades and Labor Assembly. “I don’t see how you keep what you’ve got,” she said. “You certainly can’t build if that happens.”

Trying to minimize damage
Knutson is among central body leaders from around the country trying to minimize the fallout on local labor movements. “We’re putting together our own resolution, trying to make a case for local movements that doesn’t put us on one side or the other of the national dispute,” she said.

Waldron said he expects, at the very least, that Minnesota unions will carry out unified election efforts in 2006. But he’s uncertain how much else they could do together.

“It depends on the rules,” said Dick Anfang, president of the Minnesota Building Trades. “If ? the survivors of the national AFL-CIO forbid local affiliation by non-AFL-CIO entities, it will create significant problems, if those rules are enforced to the letter of the law.”

Getting angry
The risk of a showdown that could lead to self-destruction of the nation’s labor movement angers Minnesota leaders.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Waldron, “with our leaders firing round after round after each other.”

“I understand why these unions are looking for significant changes, but it’s a dangerous game when you threaten to pull out,” said McCarthy, president of the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council. “We’re under attack from corporate America. We’ve suffered huge losses over the last 10 years. If we have unions pulling out, it only serves to divide us.”

Where is the solidarity?
“I don’t understand,” said Seide. “Solidarity is Rule No. 1. Working people and unions stick together. When we don’t and we position ourselves this way, we’re going to destroy ourselves. And I fear that. I fear that greatly.”

Don Seaquist, president of UFCW Local 789, says he expects his international will leave the AFL-CIO if significant reforms don’t occur in Chicago. But his international leaders “don’t want to fractionalize the labor movement if they don’t have to,” he said.

For the AFL-CIO to refuse to let affiliated and non-affiliated unions work together on the local level would be a “worst-case” scenario, Seaquist said. “But that’s leverage the AFL-CIO is putting on these players ? if you pull out, we’re going to take our ball and go home.”

The possibility that leaders will overreact, “get defensive and stop working together” is real ? but doesn’t have to happen, said Malcolm of the Carpenters. “To use a religious connotation, I don’t think we all have to go to the same church in order to achieve the same end goal.”

“I truly believe these folks at the top have lost touch,” said Anfang, president of the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council. “If they’re willing to take this to such a radical end, they really, truly don’t have the good of the membership in their head.? I think it’s wrong. The whole thing sucks.”

The debate at the national level has been too focused on the AFL-CIO as an institution and has not been relevant to rank-and-file members, said Dave Foster, director of District 11 of the United Steel Workers.

“I’m concerned that average union members are not engaged” in the debate, he said. “One of the most important issues facing the labor movement is how to end its social isolation in America today,” Foster said. “Part of the future of the labor movement lies in changing its approach to American politics. Simply talking to ourselves is not enough.”

Throughout his career, Foster has been active in building bridges to other groups, such as the environmental movement, human rights organizations, women’s groups and others. The Steel Workers’ Associate Member program, which connects nonunion activists and workers to the labor movement, is just the latest example.

“We’re at a point in history where a progressive view of government is about to be eradicated,” Foster said. “A labor movement that’s too parochial cannot survive. I think it’s important that a compromise emerge in Chicago that holds the labor movement together during extraordinarily perilous times.”

Written by St. Paul Union Advocate editor Michael Kuchta, with contributions from Minneapolis Labor Review editor Steve Share and Workday Minnesota editor Barb Kucera.

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Visit the Workday Minnesota special section, Labor’s Future

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