History in the making
Over 1,500 union members gathered in Cleveland June 6-9 to found a Labor Party. According to Jane Slaughter of Labor Notes, "nothing like this has been seen in the United States for decades."
A groundswell of interest in the last two months turned what convention organizers had expected to be an event of 500-700 delegates to one of twice that size. The 1,367 delegates were joined by over 200 observers.
There were tense moments, hot controversies, and inspiring bursts of unity as the five-year-old Labor Party Advocates (LPA) took its first step toward transforming itself into the Labor Party, as it will now be known. It was the first time a labor party had been placed on the agenda of the labor movement since the late 1940's. Some of the older delegates said that they had been waiting their whole lives for this moment.
The question now is what the new party, which is quite unlike what most Americans think of as a political party, will do with its momentum. In his keynote address, Bob Wages, president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW), told the delegates, "We've got to organize to take our country back. This isn't rocket science-this is understanding simply that there are more of us-than there are of them." Why we're here...
The new labor party's more-of-us-thanof-them philosophy was on display on the convention's second day. The press reported that Cleveland Mayor Michael White was seeking to change what he called obstructionist state labor law for public employees, to give himself more power in dealing with unionized city workers. White is a liberal Democrat elected with union backing. would have thought," said Wages, soon as we arrived in Cleveland, the mayor would give us an illustration of exactly why we're here. It's a classic case, where a political candidate stands up with you, pats you on your back, has his arm around your shoulder, and is drizzling all over your shoe."
The whole convention marched a block to City Hall to confront White, chanting and taking over the street, then followed a rumor that he was holed up in a nearby Marriott hotel and occupied the lobby. "We Want the Mayor Out!" turned to "Labor Party Now!" as delegates vented their frustration. The delegates
The OCAW, which was LA's biggest backer all along brought the most delegates, followed by the United Electrical Workers
(UE). Both scheduled regular union conferences for Cleveland to help maximize attendance. During the convention, these two groups did most of the negotiating of language changes presented to the body.
Other sizeable groups were the California Nurses Association, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee with its red T-shirts and pennants, and various locals and individuals from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). In the last month, both the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the United Mine Workers (UMW) endorsed, but did not bring contingents of any size. About three quarters of the delegates were men and around 90 percent were white, in part reflecting the make-up of the four initial endorsing unions (OCAW, UE, Longshore Workers [ILWU], and Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees).
The party's new leadership body, made up of representatives of the principal unions at the convention, will add more members in order to reflect the diversity of the country as a whole. Diversity in this case is defined as including race, gender, income level, and rank and file versus officer status. Sweeney's no-show
Convention organizers had hoped that AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who was in Cleveland for a different meeting, would address the gathering. Instead Sweeney told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that we should save the creation of a labor party to a nonpresidential year.
This semi-supportive stance contrasts sharply with that of former federation president Lane Kirkland. LPA founder Tony Mazzocchi of the OCAW relates that when the Cleveland Central Labor Council, for
USA example, wanted to endorse LPA, it called AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington and got a green light. "Kirkland would have crushed us," said Mazzocchi, "the way he did the CL's who wanted to support McGovern.")
In a forthcoming issue of Labor Research Review, Sweeney writes that although he iss personally sceptical about the wisdom of a third party, he encourages labor party supporters to take their best shot and send a signal to the Democrats. No candidates
The most controversial question of the convention, and its most important, according to Mazzocchi, was what kind of organization the Labor Party is going to be, at least initially. The delegates voted to stay out of electoral politics: neither endorsing nor running candidates (although participation in ballot initiatives will be allowed).
Instead, the Labor Party's "organizing approach" to politics is designed to force existing officials and candidates to respond to its concerns. A rather vague resolution called for working people to engage in common non-electoral political activities throughout the year, not just on election day. It mentioned innovative organizing efforts such as a campaign to restore the right to organize a union and going door to door to gather support for the Labor Party's program
Mazzocchi argues that the labor movement should learn from the success of the right in reshaping the whole national debate just by the use of language. "You create a climate," he said. But speakers from the floor argued that potential recruits won't take the Labor Party seriously unless it contends for power in the usual way — elections.
The policy formulation put forward by convention committees would have postponed any participation in elections till after hundreds of thousands of workers had been recruited and mobilized. Many speakers, though agreeing that the fledgling party is not strong enough to field candidates very soon, were unhappy with putting elections off until
The UE, the ILWU, and a caucus of delegates from the SEIU attempted to work out a compromise. New language changed the "hundreds of thousands" to "significant committed the convention, in 1998, to reassess the question of elections. A motion from the ILWU to allow local or state Labor Party groups to run or endorse independent candidates straight away was defeated
Labor Party organizers' chief selling point to hesitant union leaders, national and local, has been the argument that they can be pro-labor party and still support Democratic politicians. This is only possible if the labor
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Independent Political Action?
* USA party does not field competing candidates of its own. When it reassesses in two years, the party will still face this central contradiction of union politics.
Clearly, a big chunk of members are far from ready to give up on the Democrats. A motion from the floor to ban endorsements of Democrats or Republicans was defeated overwhelmingly. One delegate from North Carolina argued that it would be "a slap in the face" to deny support to "good" Democratic members of Congress.
Martin Dunleavy, AFGE's political director, points out that both he and AFGE President John Sturdivant are members of the Democratic National Committee - and he sees no contradiction there. the acceptance of exclusivity [i.e., endorsing only Labor candidates]," he said.
The debate over structure and leadership bodies demonstrated the tension which exists between the leadership and the 36 chapters represented at the convention. Chapters have recruited most of the party's activists and have pushed the hardest for an activist orientation at the local level. The leadership, however, feels that the key to growth is the affiliation of local and national unions. It worries that members of the chapters are sometimes unrealistic, and can't mobilize the resources needed to sustain the organization.
The structure adopted reflects this tension, but does not resolve it. The Party will be governed by a National Council, made up mostly of representatives of endorsing unions. Chapters will hold their own annual convention, which will send five representatives to the National Council, each
A final sharp debate concerned the language around abortion rights in the platform. The drafters had written a pro-choice plank, but, in an attempt to placate anti-choice delegates or potential members, did not use the word abortion. An amendment to add support for safe, legal abortion was defeated. What next?
The convention passed no action plan that would unite members in different unions and cities, nor did it discuss how to give the group some national visibility, giving rise to questions about what the party will actually do. Given the disparity in conceptions of the party, this lack was perhaps inevitable.
"I think being born is the common project," says Tony Mazzocchi. go back now and communicate to folks back home. Our best recruiting is going to come after the election... [with the subsequent disappointments that are going to grow."
[Reprinted from Labor Notes] by Alan Jacobson
Fledgling attempts at labor party building, small and localized, go back to the years immediately following the CIVil War. In 1901 a number of groups, and key individuals, like Eugene V. Debs founded the Socialist Party (SP). For the next twenty years, the SP would be a major wing of the labor movement and would pose an electoral alternative within the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the country's main trade union tederation. But, despite an official position of political neutrality, the top AFL bureaucrats were actually aligned with the Democratic Party apparatus, and deeply opposed to independent political representation for labor. Some more radical unionists also opposed the SP program, which they considered sectarian.
In some areas, unionists tried to build municipal labor parties. In Chicago the Cook County Labor Party won a number of minor posts. In the mid 1920's, a major attempt to fuse these local efforts combined with a similar movement amongst farmers. The result was the Farmer-Labor Party (FLP). While it was unable to hold together as a national formation, some state FLP formations took root and were able to win a significant number of offices. But eventually, even the strongest, Minnesota FarmerLabor party gave up its independence by merging with the Democratic Party.
In some areas, especially in the Midwest, "Non-Partisan Leagues" became prominent. These committees were an outgrowth of the Populist/agrarian program of the 1890s. The NPL worked within both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as running independent candidates. Their efforts continued
The 1920s was a period of serious decline for the labor movement. A postwar wave of struggles, exemplified by the 1919 steel strike and the Seattle general strike, ebbed. Many unions almost disappeared. Needless to say, any idea of independent labor political action receded into the background — until the upsurge of the 1930s. But during the 1930s the formation of the Committees for Industrial Organization (CIO) trade union federation, and the establishment of a broad drive to unionize the auto industry focused labor's attention once again on the question of political power. At the 1936 UAW convention, radicals were temporarily able to win an endorsement for the formation of a national labor and farmer's party. The vote was quickly overturned in favor of an endorsement of Democratic president Franklin D Roosevelt's reelection campaign. But rank and file sentiment was clearly in favor of independence on the political front. CIO leaders were compelled to form political action committees which seemed to be an initial step toward labor party committees. In fact, they channeled this drive for independence toward the Democratic Party and Roosevelt.
The Communist Party also adopted a pro-Roosevelt perspective and helped to further stifle any real move to create a labor party in the U.S. During World War II U.S. union leaders, again with the CP in the vanguard, enforced a "no-strike" pledge. In the later stages of the war, however, rank and file militancy was on the rise and opposition to this "no-strike" pledge became linked with the idea of Independent Political Action. The idea of a labor party was symbolically part of Walter Reuther's faction within the CIO well into the 1950s
In 1946 and 1947 major strikes rocked industry. In 1948, former Vice President Henry Wallace began organizing an independent party in opposition to President Harry Truman's bid for reelection. The program of his Progressive Party was essentially social-democratic and in opposition to the looming Cold War. Initially labor support was strong but diminished over time, mainly due to an unwillingness to sever ties with the Democrats and opposition to the increasing role of the CP in the Progressive Party's activity and leadership.
From that time on the story of organized labor in the U.S. is one of a deepening commitment to the Democratic Party. The idea of independent labor political action receded more and more from the consciousness ot any signiticant layer of U.S. workers during the long post-war economic boom of the 1950s and '60s. It was kept alive only in the propaganda of small left organizations. But while most considered the call for a labor party in the U.S. a distant dream at best, there remained a few key individuals who did try to maintain it as a
Prominent among these was Tony Mazzocchi, a leader of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. In 1991, on the urging of San Francisco labor activists, Mazzocchi convened a meeting that endorsed the idea of forming an organization to propagandize for a labor party — Labor Party Advocates (LPA). In order to avoid debilitating faction fights in its infancy, LPA was held to a one-point program-building opinion within the union movement in favor of a labor party. While many were sharply critical of this limitation, enough support was eventually generated for LPA to call the founding convention that has just taken place.
Whatever the ultimate fate of the new party, it represents a radical break with the whole post-war tradition of the American union movement and makes a dramatic statement about how dissatisfied many working people in the U.S. are with their present political options. *