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From the March 2009 issue of $100 Plus Club News #114
Can Staff Unionism Advance the Cause of Union Democracy?
Guillermo Perez is a member of the AUD Board of Directors and is currently the chief steward for the United Union Employees of New York (UUE-NY), a staff union that represents 120 union staffers employed by AFSCME Local 1000 based in Albany, New York. Guillermo conducted this interview with AUD founder and Secretary-Treasurer Herman Benson as part of an AUD-sponsored initiative to encourage union staffers to support the work of AUD. Interested union staffers can reach Guillermo at dualunionist@yahoo.com.
GP: Staff unionism, as controversial as it continues to be, has actually been a part of the U.S. labor movement for quite some time. You write about it in your book Rebels, Reformers, and Racketeers. In particular you recount how in 1961 your newsletter Union Democracy in Action received a significant boost in notoriety by actively encouraging the efforts of a group of union organizers employed by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) to form their own union, the Federation of Union Representatives (FOUR). What was significant about that organizing campaign and why did you see it as being relevant to the advancement of union democracy?
HB: FOUR was a pure and simple labor organization. That is, its formation was not prompted by ideology; it was unrelated to any internal union factional divisions. The appointed staff members were overworked, underpaid, and disrespected. That's how they felt, surely with justification. David Dubinsky, ILGWU president, was an imperious personality who would not tolerate any curb on his authoritarian powers. All the staff members I knew were dedicated, socialistic unionists. Because they were avid unionists, always urging garment workers to stand up for their rights, they felt a moral obligation to do the same, not only to improve their daily working conditions, but also, maybe even more important, to safeguard their own respect.
What they and the rest of us learned was that power-sensitive union leaders as employers, facing unionization of their own staff employees, could be just as hostile as any vicious anti-union employer: the same intimidation, firing of outspoken union spokespersons, retaliatory job assignments, resistance to NLRB decisions, until the staff union forces were demoralized and broken.
Back there in 1961, the publication Union Democracy in Action sought to discuss an aspect of the FOUR battle that was not uppermost in the minds of the staff unionists, the effect that staff unionism could have on the strength of internal democracy to unions. To use an analogy, when workers unionize, aiming to defend their own down-to-earth working conditions, they may not realize that they are helping to create an institution that will defend democracy in America. An effective staff union can strengthen democracy in unions. In unions today, enormous practical and constitutional powers are concentrated in the hands of the top leadership - money, job patronage, full time attorneys and PR experts, directed staff, control over access to membership, domination of election and referendum procedures, and control over disciplinary trials - so that it is difficult for any rival tendencies to emerge, even to survive; and leadership, even though elective, soars out of control of the membership.
Any union leadership is entitled to hire the necessary staff to carry on the legitimate business of the union in representing members and organizing the unorganized. The problem is that, almost everywhere, the leaders also use the staff to cut down possible rivals inside the union. By affording staff members some measure of protection against arbitrary dictation, staff unionism can safeguard, to some degree, the misuse of the staff for the narrow political purposes of the leaders above. In any event, staff unionism is a recognition of the principle that the vast powers of the top leadership are legitimately subject to limitations imposed on any employer.
GP: In Union Democracy in Action you write that "[s]ome leaders in unions fear staff unionism with the same hatred as wardheelers in politics detest civil service in government. Unionism disarranges the system of pure patronage. If the official appoints and removes at will; if he rewards favorites and punishes recalcitrants, withdraws and issues assignments at his own caprice, he has effective personal discipline over the staff. Job control gives power. The machine is often mobilized even for righteous causes; but though the cause be noble, the authoritarian nature of the machine remains. It becomes the official's insurance policy against the uncertainties of democracy." (“When Organizers Organize,” Union Democracy in Action #2, 1961)
I believe this point you were making nearly fifty years ago is no less true today, particularly when we witness the authoritarian tendencies of a union like SEIU that clearly mobilizes for righteous causes but frequently does so at the cost of basic democratic principles. And of course, at the heart of SEIU's top-down strategy is an army of disciplined staffers who are regularly used to displace democratically elected "recalcitrant" leaders as we see happening in the case of Sal Rosselli and United Healthcare Workers West (UHW-West).
It's not widely known that the staff union that represents SEIU international staff, the Union of Union Representatives (UUR), actually passed a resolution by unanimous vote last Spring calling on SEIU international president Andy Stern to stop assigning UUR members work that "interferes with the ability of SEIU local union members to express their opinions on issues that concern them, and ... that undermines their leaders." The resolution goes on to state that "[a]ny work done to impede the democratic processes of a local union is a direct violation of the morals and standards of professional organizing."
Obviously a staff union can't lead an internal struggle for democracy among the employer-union's rank and file, but the staff union can certainly help by objecting to the employer's authoritarian methods, particularly where such methods involve the staffers directly. What should be the role, if any, of staff unions in these internal struggles?
HB: Andy Stern, SEIU president, is mobilizing the full force of the union to impose a trusteeship over the 150,000-member UHW-West local in California and to cut down Sal Rosselli, the local's president who has been Stern's only effective critic in the union. In an extraordinary act of resistance, the UUR informed Stern that it will oppose any effort to force staff to join the drive to undermine the local and its leaders. In moving against his critics in California, Stern ignores demonstrations by thousands of SEIU members, criticism from a hundred pro-union academics and writers around the country, and scores of community leaders and elected officials in California. He has not demonstrated the temperament to shrug off this act of defiance by UUR. In time, I am convinced the UUR will need the same kind of moral support that UHW-West needs in its defense against repression by Stern.
The role of the staff in internal union struggles? Ideally, I suppose, the staff should function in a kind of civil service capacity, fulfilling its duties on everything related to the union's collective bargaining responsibilities and remaining aloof from internal union conflicts. That seems simple; the goal is fine, but life is complicated. The principle is difficult to apply confidently and hard to enforce.
When it comes to contested union elections, there should be no problem. The staff should not take sides. But staff employees generally have a vested interest in the fate of incumbent officers. After all, they usually got their jobs through the incumbents. With no one around to watch all day long, who can stop staff members from doing their bit for those in office? Because federal law provides that union resources may not be used to support candidates for union office, staffers presumably may not campaign for candidates while on paid union time. But the U.S. Labor Department has made that restriction virtually unenforceable by ruling that it is O.K. for union staff to campaign while on the payroll if it is only "incidental" to their regular duties. With that loophole, any clever union administration can find a way to justify any staff employee's campaign work. A staff union cannot be expected to police rules against campaigning. But it should protect its staff members from being pressured, or coerced, into supporting candidates for union office against their own inclinations.
On other internal issues, it can get complex. Suppose, for example, there is a difference of opinion on whether to prepare the membership for a possible strike. The administration wants to get ready, but staff is opposed. The administration directs the staff to arouse the membership for action, but some sympathize with the opposition's misgivings. How does the staff union handle the problem? I am not suggesting an answer. This is one of those questions that might be addressed at any conference of staff unions.
GP: In my own case staff unionism has meant much more to me than improved wages, benefits, and working conditions. It has allowed me to be a labor activist independent of my union-employer (or as you put it in 1961, "[to put] a crack in the smooth structure of uniformity") and I think it has made me a better labor educator for the union members I work with. Unfortunately, I have to agree somewhat with those labor activists on the left who oppose staff unionism because of its tendency to maintain the status quo at the expense of much needed reform. But the same could be said of teachers' unions posing an obstacle to some aspects of educational reform, yet I know of no legitimate unionist on the left who would advocate doing away with teachers' unions.
HB: As I see it, there are two different kinds of objections to staff unionism that come out of the "left" - whatever that is. Sometimes they are thrown together, but let's keep them apart.
Some in the left are delighted to use union democracy as an instrument for a militant class struggle policy against the conservative right. But they are dismayed by the thought that democracy could be used by the right against the left. They are outraged when the collaborationist right deploys an obedient, militarized staff to entrench its own power and advance its program in the interest of exploiters. But that same left would like to have the same kind of disciplined, militarized staff available to a leftist regime to advance a program in the interests of humanity. And so there is no room for a staff union that might stand up even against a leftist leadership.
But the need for union democracy transcends political lines and broad social programs. Up to recently, that thought must have seemed an empty abstraction. Right now a depressing lesson is enacted under our eyes. About five or ten years ago, under its current leadership, the SEIU and its big component Local 1199, were on the very left of the left of our labor movement. Its top leadership and its staff were - and are - bulging with assorted leftists of one stripe or another. And now, still under the banner of liberating humanity, the SEIU, under Stern, is creating an authoritarian model of unionism, sometimes militant, sometimes corporatist, but increasingly repressive. Under these circumstances, it seems to me, the defense of staff unionism is clearly a defense of democratic unionism.
A different questioning of staff unionism from the left derives from the possible problems that staff unionism can pose with respect to democratic reform. To take an extreme case, consider an ineffective, or autocratic, or even corrupt leadership that has lost the support of the local membership. An election is scheduled and the old gang is likely to be ousted by a good reform opposition. Fearing defeat, and anxious to protect the cronies they had installed in the staff over the years, they quickly arrange the formation of a staff union, sign a long range contract with the new union, with cushy jobs and salaries and protection against discharge. The incoming reform administration is saddled with what looks like a hostile dead weight.
No question, with a staff union come problems you wouldn't have without a staff union. But how does that differ from any other field of human endeavor? I believe that an intelligent union leadership can handle its problems without slash and burn. In any event, they will have to find a way, because like it or not, the National Labor Relations Board Act protects the legal right of union staffers to organize.
At a time when the danger looms of a new unionism moving toward authoritarianism, I believe that staff unionism can be a modest -- a very modest -- push in the opposite direction. Let's start with that and go on to figure out how to resolve the difficulties.
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