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Unions and Politics Today and in the Future in the U. S. Big labor sometimes seems up against the ropes, a punchy political heavyweight well beyond its prizefighting prime. But it's still a vicious counter puncher when it is backed into a corner.
While hardly anyone believes the elections of 1998 are a make-or-break test of big labor's staying power -- and some even argue that it has little motivation for pulling out all the stops this time around -- the midterm elections were seen by many as a test of whether unions can recover the brawler style that long made them a contender. Every major labor union professed to be fully mobilized for action in the campaign season. They pointed to the $ 31 million in political-action committee, or PAC, contributions the unions had made to federal candidates as of Oct. 1 (more than 90 percent of it to Democrats), millions of dollars more spent on issue ads, phone banks and flurries of direct mail. When all is said and done, most observers say big labor's success or failure ultimately must be measured in terms of seats gained or lost by Democrats, whom unions predominantly back against Republicans. Democratic Party gains or even modest losses will be spun as successes against predicted Republican advances and a continuation of the hot hand labor has had since the campaign of 1996 -- a campaign which the media widely perceived as a resounding success for unions and a harbinger of their return to form. Republican electoral gains actually have strengthened labor's hand where it matters most. "Once Republicans came to power, business PAC money shifted toward the GOP, which meant Democratic candidates -- incumbents as well as challengers -- were more reliant on labor than they used to be.
But many more militant union members have come to resent that reliance and openly are questioning the Democratic Party's commitment to their interests. Some people in the labor movement see democrats as neoliberals who are promoting internationalist trade policies, welfare reform and other issues that can jeopardize union jobs. Another response to the alienation labor activists are feeling has been an ostensibly less partisan posture toward candidates being taken by some major unions, most notably the Teamsters, who say publicly they will put their money, volunteers and votes behind whichever candidate looks out for the interest of their members. Of course, Republicans still rarely qualify for such support -- less than 10 percent of union PAC contributions went to GOP campaigners in the election cycle, even though a number of Republican candidates are opposed to the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade pacts the unions regard as poison. But the tactic of proposing to help even GOP friends of labor has been effective at neutralizing some Republicans who imagined they actually might win union support, while letting Democrats know that union backing can't be taken for granted. Although labor votes frequently are the last thing unions consistently can deliver, they still offer endorsed candidates important manpower support and financial backing.
Indeed, declining membership hasn't necessarily hit unions in the pocketbook. One study found that the real value of union PAC receipts increased by 130 percent between 1980 and 1994, even though membership numbers declined, and the 1996 value of big labors' in-kind assistance to candidates has been estimated as high as $ 500 million. Rumors of big labor's demise have been greatly exaggerated, according to a number of labor watchers. Federal Election Commission records show that the Teamsters PAC had nearly $ 6 million on hand, the second-highest total in the land. Big labor also is going back to left-wing basics in the messages it peddles -- epitomized by AFL-CIO issue ads echoing the "Save Social Security First" bromides coming from Democrats hoping to undermine Republican tax cutters.
This is not to say that individual unions don't still have their special-interest legislation in mind. Complacency by unions led to the election of a congressional Republican majority in 1994, after Democratic passage of NAFTA, union voters dropped from 19 percent of the electorate in 1992 to 14 percent in 1994. But Republican actions in Congress served as a wake-up call to unions, resulting in a rebounding 23 percent voter participation in 1996, the year of the so-called air wars over television. Much like corporate America, big labor has gone though a consolidation and downsizing, forcing unions to make do with less, find common interests with other unions and look beyond their traditional labor niche for workers to organize. But unlike corporate America, a robust economy and high employment isn't necessarily a god-send for the union organizer. Bibliography: Craft, Donna & Terrance W.
Peck, editors. Profiles of American Labor Unions. Gale Research, 1998. Jacobs, Eve.
Handbook of U. S. Labor Statistics: Employment Earnings, Prices, Productivity and Other Labor Data. Began Press, 1997. Murray, R. Emmett.
The Lexicon of Labor. New Press, 1998.
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