What's it all about, AFL…

Tim Nesbitt illuminates the split in organized labor by comparing the convention of the AFL-CIO to a national constitutional convention...

...we just learned that four states decided not to send delegates, and two of those states decided to set up their own government. So it appears that our unions will soon have two models of governance to choose from.

The AFL-CIO model will remain a coalition of independent unions. But, if resolutions recommended by its Executive Council are approved at this convention, it should become more effective at coaxing unions into more cooperative models for organizing and bargaining via industry councils.

The “Change to Win” model is still to be seen. If its unions (states) can agree on their jurisdiction (boundaries), they can avoid the disagreements that arise from decades of uncoordinated organizing activity, even if they remain independent. And, they can easily find opportunities to showcase cooperative organizing efforts in industries where they have complimentary interests.

If the CTW unions can find those cooperative organizing efforts, more power to them, but there's little in recent or deeper history to instill much confidence in that outcome. My view of the Teamsters continues to be colored by their behavior during their last sojourn outside the folds of the AFL-CIO when they attempted to break the United Farmworkers Union via sweetheart contracts with California growers. Locally, we've seen the SEIU move hard on the Operating Engineers traditional turf.

It's important to remember,too, that the root conflict in the current split comes from an attempt by a few big unions to put forward a new model of organization that would eliminate many independent Internationals, pouring smaller fish down the craw of the bigger. In fact, in many respects, the CTW proposals seem anti-democratic on their face, so it's little wonder that they have cast aside any pretense of respect for democracy in the AFL-CIO, spurning the will of the majority by walking away, essentially telling their brothers and sisters in the House of Labor that "We're going to take your ball and go home."

Over at The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel strikes a more hopeful note than I can muster, though I guess I hope her optimism proves justified, but I agree with this...

I don't think this split was necessary, and still think it would have been best for the state of progressive politics if both sides could have worked out a deal on federation reform and leadership transition. (Why didn't the insurgents run a candidate to contest John Sweeney? Why didn't they try to move an agenda from within?)

She lays the blame for the collapse of solidarity on an excess of testosterone. It's a suitably feminist response, I suppose, but the whole CTW tantrum seems to infantile to lay off on a post-pubescent hormone…