| 摘要 | Last Thursday, both the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Change to Win labor federation endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, providing a major boost for the Illinois senator in union-heavy Ohio. While the endorsements are significant for Obama, they also reveal the extent to which American labor unions have changed over the past four decades.
From the 1950s through the mid-1990s, the AFL-CIO was headed by traditional labor leaders such as George Meany and Lane Kirkland. While they were populist in their economic outlook, they were also famously hawkish on foreign policy and conservative on many social issues. They represented a blue-collar, “tough guy” labor movement, the embodiment of the Democratic Party’s old-guard establishment. In the culture wars of the late 1960s and early 1970s, these unionists clashed publicly with left-wing radicals. When the Democratic Party bosses needed to restore order at their 1968 national convention in Chicago, they called upon union members to literally beat back the hippie protesters. After the Democrats nominated George McGovern as their presidential candidate four years later, many labor unions refused to endorse anybody in the race, providing implicit support for the incumbent president, Republican Richard Nixon.
During the 1980s, organized labor continued to favor the candidates of the Democratic establishment. In 1984, much like today, a young, inspirational insurgent candidate, Gary Hart, was challenging a veteran establishment candidate, Walter Mondale. Even though Hart experienced some early success, labor union stalwarts rallied around the establishment Mondale and played a critical role in helping him secure the nomination.
Fast-forward to the present. It seems clear that this year’s establishment candidate, Hilary Clinton, will not have organized labor rush to her rescue. Part of this may be political payback for her husband’s presidency. After aggressively supporting Bill Clinton twice, many labor unions felt that his administration either ignored them or endorsed legislation (such as NAFTA) that was inimical to union interests.
But there are more fundamental issues that explain labor’s shift. For starters, the leaders of today’s unions are different from those of yesteryear in personality and ideology. Consider Andy Stern, the charismatic president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and arguably the most important labor leader in America. Stern didn’t get his start in the union movement working at a steel mill; instead, he attended the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1960s and first joined the SEIU as a social worker. Unlike Meany or Kirkland, Stern is unabashedly liberal on nearly every policy issue. And when Stern was unhappy with the leadership of the AFL-CIO, he spurned the old labor line about “solidarity,” withdrew the SEIU from the AFL-CIO, recruited like-minded unions to do the same, and formed an entirely new labor federation, dubbed Change to Win.
Prominent Stern allies, such as UNITE HERE leaders Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm, have similar backgrounds. Teamsters boss James P. Hoffa has a degree in economics from Michigan State University, a law degree from the University of Michigan, and was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship. While Hoffa flirted with the idea of supporting George W. Bush in 2000, he changed his mind and later joined Stern in leaving the AFL-CIO in 2005.
Along with the leadership, the rank-and-file membership of organized labor has also changed. Union membership was previously defined by a key demographic: male, white, and blue-collar. Today’s unions hardly fit that mold. According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 14.3 percent of African-American workers are members of a labor union, compared to only 11.8 percent of whiteworkers. Unions have also made inroads among Hispanic workers, with nearly 10 percent of them now belonging to organized labor. Stern’s SEIU has targeted these demographic groups with moderate success. SEIU has also courted occupational groups that labor unions traditionally ignored, such as security guards, janitors, and home-health care workers.
The end result is that most of today’s unions—both at the top and at the bottom—no longer resemble the more conservative organizations that instinctively backed the Democratic establishment candidate. Indeed, the only significant labor backing that Clinton can depend on comes from a smattering of government employee unions, most notably the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). But even here, her support is shallow. These unions made their endorsements last fall, when it appeared that a Clinton nomination was inevitable.
In the 2004 Democratic primaries, AFSCME endorsed Howard Dean, who was running as the ultimate anti-establishment candidate. If AFSCME were making its decision about the 2008 primaries today, it would probably endorse Obama. Supporting anti-establishment candidates just seems to be a natural fit for modern-day unions—no matter how much their predecessors might have disapproved.
Bryan O’Keefe is a labor policy consultant in Washington, D.C. |
