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From the February/March 2001 issue of UDR
In Canada: Auto Workers and Carpenters defy U.S. internationals
In July, the Canadian Auto Workers union was suspended from the Canadian Labor Congress in a dispute over congress rules which, like the AFL-CIO no-raiding pact, forbid one affiliated union from taking members from another. In defiance of the congress, the Canadian Auto Workers welcomed into its ranks 30,000 members of eight Ontario locals of the Service Employees International Union. According to Buzz Hargrove, CAW president, 11,000 of the SEIU members voted to disaffiliate in workplace balloting; and 95% of the votes supported the CAW in a government collective bargaining election.
In an open letter addressed to the U.S. and Canadian labor movements, Hargrove explains why his union decided to defy the CLC. The SEIU members, he charged, were motivated by "dictatorial leadership from Washington, poor service, and a fundamental lack of control over their Canadian affairs." The CAW itself, some years ago, had disaffiliated from the United Auto Workers to establish its own independent national union. Hargrove writes that most other Canadian labor leaders oppose his position and support the CLC. "Many worry that their own disaffected members, after years of poor service and concessions...will make similar choices."
According to a report in Labor Notes, Hargrove said that "the CLC must agree on a mechanism for workers to be able to exercise the democratic process and join another CLC affiliate if they desire. The labor movement must protect the democratic rights of its members, or...the CAW will have no choice but to take up the fight."
In printing Hargrove’s open letter, New Directions, the opposition caucus in the UAW, writing that it "has not taken a position on these events," also publishes a statement from what it identifies as the "Left Caucus in the CAW" sharply criticizing Hargrove. Diana Albrecht notes that there are 60,000 other SEIU members, including 24,000 in Ontario, who choose to remain in the SEIU. She claims, too, that "Any CAW member who has fought for the betterment of their union" has faced the same problems as the SEIU’ers in their union. She accuses him of "furthering the rightwing neo-liberal agenda of breaking working class solidarity."
After all the charges and countercharges have been exhausted, the question remains of the validity or the effect of the no-raiding pact. With virtual unanimity, AFL-CIO leaders welcome the pact arguing that it saves unions from internecine warfare which ends without overall benefit to the movement. After bitter battles, they say, 100,000 unionists are moved from union A to union B and 100,000 others are moved from B to A. The net gain, they claim, is zero; the net loss in effort, money, and ill-will is enormous.
But that is a view from the leaders at the top, not the members below. The no-raiding pact offers security to union dues collectors and renders them insensitive to membership discontent. When those unionists can readily leave one union to join another, it means that 200,000 members, disaffected where they were, can be transformed into loyal and contented members in their new union. And the leaders of both unions will be forced respond to their members or lose them.
Some years ago, a large bloc of members of AFSCME DC 37 in New York were about to leave and join the United Federation of Teachers. Albert Shanker agreed to take them in, thinking that his down-the-line support of AFL-CIO president, George Meany, would render the UFT immune from the no-raiding pact. He was wrong and the UFT had to withdraw, leaving those discontented unionists trapped in DC 37. But imagine that they had been free to leave. Surely the AFSCME leadership at all levels would have been jolted out of the complacency that corrupted the union; and it might have been spared the multi-million dollar scandals that later beset it.
Recall, too, those years ago when the 250,000-member New York Civil Service Employees Association was an unaffiliated quasi-union, bureaucratic, non-responsive to its members, and dominated by a politically connected law firm which was making millions out of its union connections. Because the CSEA was independent, and not protected by the AFL-CIO no-raiding pact, 50,000 professional and scientific state workers left to form their own Public Employees Federation, an AFL-CIO affiliate. The members of both unions benefited from that "raid." PEF became a great democratic union. The CSEA was shocked into becoming more like a real union.
Which union members were better off, DC 37 members who were "protected" by the no-raiding pact; or those state workers who were free of its constraints?
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