Can union democracy coexist with union conglomeration?

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If the New England carpenters who are seeking to have their regional council defined as a local eventually prevail in their lawsuit (see page 8) it will be a substantial victory for union democracy. Officers of the council, which spans six states from Connecticut to Maine, would be elected by direct secret ballot of the council’s 22,000 members instead of by delegates elected in the 26 locals. But such a geographically expansive local would still present immense obstacles to any insurgent group seeking to make a change.

Members of other unions are already struggling for a voice in far-flung locals, where the normal difficulties of holding an unwieldy bureaucracy accountable are compounded by the thousands of miles separating the members. The Service Employees union is forming one big local of building cleaners for all of California, even imposing a trusteeship on the feisty San Francisco local that resists. In 1995, IATSE merged locals representing camera operators, photography assistants, video specialists, and others in Chicago, New York, and Hollywood into a single 6,000-member national Cinematographers Local 600. The Operating Engineers boasts the largest construction local in the country: 40,000-member Local 3. Headquartered in Alameda, California, its jurisdiction ranges from South Dakota to Hawaii, and includes all of Utah and Wyoming, Northern California and Northern Nevada. Most of its members are heavy equipment operators, drillers, concrete pumpers, and dredgers; but 10,000 are school bus drivers, firefighters, police officers, and municipal clerical workers. Conglomeration into big sprawling units has become a major trend in the U.S. labor movement.

Merger proponents argue that labor must adapt to the changing industrial environment in which employers are becoming increasingly centralized; many employers are now subsidiaries of powerful multinational corporations with a broad global reach. If workers are divided into small subunits, the argument goes, employers will pick them apart in negotiations. Sounds reasonable. But the labor movement has faced powerful, centralized corporations for decades and has developed a variety of structures like joint councils or the GM Division in the UAW to coordinate the labor power of workers in those industries, but which allow for a more human scale democracy. Labor’s biggest victory of the past decade, the 1997 Teamsters strike against UPS, one of the world’s largest privately owned companies, was achieved by hundreds of thousands workers in more than 150 locals. They coordinated their campaign through national and regional bargaining and mobilization committees.

A closer look at one large local, Operating Engineers Local 3, illustrates some of the difficulties faced by rank-and-file activists in big locals:

Whatever the advantages of large locals it is hard too see how they apply to Local 3. Police officers in Oakland and 10,000 other California public employees are lumped in with back-hoe operators in Hawaii. Why, among the local’s 30,000 construction workers, should crane operators in Honolulu and Pierre, South Dakota be in the same local? The Local 3 website offers information on everything from political action to applying for a surveyors’ apprenticeship but nothing to explain the rationale behind this sprawling jurisdiction.

According to Joe Trehern, a retired member and former officer of Local 3, it is difficult to hold leaders accountable for the quality of day-to-day representation received by the average member. The 250 business agents who service its 40,000 members are all appointed by the business manager, largely on the basis of political loyalty, says Trehern, a Hawaii resident and truck driver who served as a business agent, district representative and elected trustee in Local 3. Some are completely unqualified, he says, unable to interpret a standard union contract, or simply unmotivated to handle the members’ issues. In smaller more manageable locals, poor representation might lead to a rank-and-file insurgency, but in Local 3, says Trehern, it produces apathy which in turn leads to even less pressure on officers to perform - a familiar pattern in large locals.

Local 3 has an ostensibly democratic structure: a business manager and executive board composed of seven full-time at-large officers and 16 unpaid representatives. Grievance committees, elected in the districts, hear complaints against business agents. In reality, nearly all power is focused in the hands of the business manager because many of the 16 district representatives hold appointive positions as business agents and are therefore dependent for their livelihood on the business manager.

Others board members, who work in the trade, are haunted by the usual fears of workplace reprisals if they step out of line. Local 3 bylaws forbid candidates for office from accepting donations from nonmembers. So while incumbents can rely on their own high salaries or lean on their enormous army of appointed staffers, insurgents cannot accept even small contributions from friends or family. All this is familiar throughout the labor movement, but in smaller, more geographically precise locals, these obstacles can be surmounted by a well-organized opposition movement. It is testimony to the power of democracy, that in Local 3, despite the overwhelming obstacles, not all members are dissuaded from attempting a challenge. In 1994 a partial slate of insurgents received 20% of the vote.

Articles on the Labor Notes site on NUP from various sources.
Several articles on the New Unity Partnership are available on the BC Carpenters website.
An exchange on union democracy between Herman Benson and Steve Fraser, on the Laborers.org website (click on Fraser's name for a link to his article)
Links to rank-and-file websites in the NUP unions: Carpenters, Hotel and Restaurant Employees, Laborers, Needle Trades (UNITE), Service Employees (building services, public employees).
Father Haggerty's "Wheel of Fortune" -- the original grand sectoral plan for the IWW.