Labor is opposing a possible Iraq war
Leaders of unions that backed the conflicts in Vietnam and the Gulf say they distrust Bush.
By Jane M. Von Bergen
Inquirer Staff Writer
In a growing movement, labor leaders - representing some of the same unions that had firmly backed the U.S. government in conflicts ranging from the Vietnam War to the Gulf war - are lining up to oppose the possible war against Iraq.
Labor leaders express distrust of President Bush's motives in pursuing the conflict, and say they lack convincing proof of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. They also say the President's war push is being used to distract the American public and workers from the nation's economic woes, including mounting unemployment and a crisis in health care.
"There's a lot of feeling that Bush's bravado is covering up things he doesn't know how to deal with: the economy, the people that don't have work," said Patrick Eiding, an asbestos worker and president of the Philadelphia Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO, which passed an antiwar resolution on Jan. 8.
Antiwar resolutions passed around the nation so far represent the views of an estimated two million rank-and-file members, labor's antiwar activists say.
"It's a landmark change," said Steven Frasier, a labor scholar and editor of the New Labor Forum, a journal sponsored by Queens College in New York. While there have always been left-leaning labor leaders, the current antiwar movement is attracting a broader range of support, he said.
Frasier and other experts said today's labor leaders came of age during the Vietnam War - as protesters or participants - and many still harbor strong feelings about how the United States handled that war.
The labor movement has also shifted left as AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, who was elected in 1995, has reached out to social activists and students who had been alienated by conservative labor leaders such as George Meany, who led the AFL-CIO until his death in 1980, experts said.
On the other hand, it could just be politics as usual.
Given labor's animosity toward Bush, "if there's a way to embarrass the President, they'll find it," Victor Kamber, a Washington labor consultant, said.
He said the war issue never came up at a national meeting yesterday of the Building Trades Council. Typically, building trades unions tend to be more conservative.
Eiding, the Central Labor Council president, and others are careful to say that labor backs the women and men in the armed services. And they say if they were convinced of a need for a war, labor leaders would support the country's war efforts unequivocally.
Last night, the 4,000-member Philadelphia Area American Postal Workers Union passed an antiwar resolution.
Last week, the local branch of the Coalition of Labor Union Women passed its antiwar resolution, its president, Kathy Black, said. Its national officers council passed a similar resolution Jan. 10. Black's group is among those organizing a local "town meeting" on Feb. 8 to discuss labor's role in the war.
On Dec. 20, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 in Plymouth Meeting, which represents 26,000 retail and health-care workers, passed an antiwar resolution.
Tomorrow, a labor contingent will march in the National Protest Against the War in Washington, with the 250,000-member Service Employees International Union in New York sending 12 buses, said Gene Bruskin, a union official and a coordinator of U.S. Labor Against the War.
The group held an organizing meeting last weekend in Chicago that attracted 125 labor leaders from around the nation. It was hosted by the 20,500 members of International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 705. In November, the local passed an antiwar resolution, 402-1.
President Jerry Zero said the resolution came up at the last minute, when a part-time warehouse worker handed him a draft just before the meeting.
"We've got truck drivers and UPS people who are pretty conservative," Zero said. But the people who stood up to support the resolution talked about relatives who had died in Vietnam, and friends and brothers still suffering from the after-effects of Desert Storm, he said.
The resolution passed by Philadelphia's Central Labor Council urges the Bush administration to "continue to abide by and work through the resolution of the U.N. Security Council, and we oppose an invasion without U.N. Security Council approval."
The Central Labor Council represents 115,000 unionized workers in Philadelphia, including Teamsters, autoworkers, electricians, bakers, retail clerks and health-care staffers.
Among those who strongly backed the Philadelphia resolution was Patrick Gillespie, head of the Philadelphia Building Trades Council.
At the meeting, Gillespie said he did not want another nation-damaging conflict between the "hippies and the hard hats."
If there is any lesson to be learned from Vietnam, it is that "we were manipulated by our leaders," he said in an interview yesterday. "That's what I see happening now."
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Contact staff writer Jane M. Von Bergen at 215-854-2769 or jvonbergen@phillynews.com.
Posted on Fri, Jan. 17, 2003
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