Tiny labor.

• Author: Lenow, Howard B.
• Position: Letter to the Editor

I have been a union labor lawyer for more than twenty five years and am troubled by both the recent split in the AFL-CIO and what appears to be the knee-jerk support of fellow progressives for the Change to Win movement ("Tiny Labor," by Barbara Ehrenreich, August issue). While Ehrenreich does not come right out and say it, the tenor of her article falls in this camp, and I respectfully suggest the easy critique of John Sweeney and Big Labor's failure to galvanize the labor movement over the last ten years is just too simplistic and misses the bigger picture.

It is absurd to suggest that John Sweeney's leadership of the AFL-CIO laid the groundwork for labor's decline. Much more significant forces have been at work as the country moved to the right and supported the likes of George W. and his ideological cronies.

While the compromises that sometimes pushed the AFL in less progressive directions were often disheartening, without Big Labor's activism, I wonder just how much worse things could have been.

I am not a blind supporter of Sweeney's policies and am fundamentally opposed to much of the AFL-CIO's support for a regressive foreign policy in Venezuela and Israel. However, Sweeney, himself a dissident when he succeeded Lane Kirkland, initiated a host of reforms within the AFL-CIO, including a rededication to organizing, worker education, and most of all, progressive domestic politics.

One of the key differences between Sweeney and Andy Stern is that Sweeney remained true to the principles of union democracy and rank and file control, while Stern is committed to a corporate form of union organization that runs roughshod over the labor movement's best traditions of union democracy.

Ask Andy Stern why he has consistently opposed efforts to have his own position as president of the SEIU subject to direct membership vote.

Ask Andy Stern how many local unions have been trusteed under his administration. And ask the members of those unions how much their voices counted in the restructuring of the SEIU.

Also ask him why he opposes the unionization of the staff that works for SEIU local unions.

I wonder whether Stern's distaste for the democratic culture of trade unionism may prove, in the long run, to be labor's poison pill.

Howard B. Lenow

Wayland, Massachusetts

American workers have a lot of uphill battles. Barbara Ehrenreich touches on many of the dilemmas facing the labor movement...