The results in Iowa reflect two troubling developments for labor.
The most important is the steady 40-year decline in the percentage of the workforce represented by unions, which reached 13.2 percent in 2002, just over a third of what it was in the early 1960s. The decline in private-sector unionization has been most dramatic, falling to 8.5 percent, about a fifth of what it was four decades ago.
The second development is the split between the industrial and public-sector wings of labor that resulted in their resources being divided between Gephardt and Dean. This division reflected both the different legislative goals of the two main branches of the union movement, and the fact that public-sector unions are steadily eclipsing private-sector unions as the dominant force in the AFL-CIO.
The two largest public- and service-sector unions, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union, backed Dean. Gephardt, in turn, had the backing of virtually every major private-sector union -- either the national union or its Iowa local. These unions were determined to replicate Gephardt's 1988 victory in the Iowa caucuses and prove that American workers are fed up with free-trade policies. Instead, Gephardt came in fourth with just 11 percent, and was forced to drop out yesterday.
After the leadership of the AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization of the labor movement, rejected pressure from the manufacturing and industrial unions, some 17 of these unions took the unusual step of forming their own federation.
These unions included the Teamsters, Steelworkers, Laborers, Ironworkers, Machinists and Bricklayers, and together they created their own labor collective, the Alliance for Economic Justice, in part to promote the Gephardt bid.
"The people with the best organization are going to get people to the more than 2,000 caucus sites," declared a confident Teamsters President James P. Hoffa Jr. as he entered an Iowa Steelworkers' hall, the day before the caucuses. "That's critical, and that's what Mr. Gephardt has."
Yesterday, Hoffa sought to put the Iowa setback in the best light. In a prepared statement, he said:
"While we are certainly disappointed in the Iowa Caucus results. . . . the issues that Congressman Gephardt injected into the campaign -- fair trade and a rejection of NAFTA-type agreements, universal health insurance, an international minimum wage, worker rights and pension reform -- are issues that resonate and have been adopted by several of the Democratic candidates still in the race."
Frank Voyack, political and legislative director of the Ironworkers and executive director of the Alliance for Economic Justice, said the leadership of the 17 member unions will talk politics on a conference call today, but "we are all taking a deep breath."
Voyack said he does not expect the group to endorse another candidate any time soon. "We are probably going to take a powder for a while and see how this plays out for a bit," he said.
After the Democrats lost the House and Senate in 1994, John J. Sweeney, then the president of the SEIU, ran a successful insurgent bid for the presidency of the AFL-CIO on a platform of reviving organized labor as a force in the workplace and in national politics. In the elections of 1996, 1998 and 2000, labor showed renewed strength, increasing the share of total turnout of union members and their families. It did that by getting more and more members to the polls, not by increasing total membership, which has stagnated or declined.
In 2002, Republican turnout programs threatened for the first time in decades to challenge those of labor and civil rights groups, as Democrats lost ground in both the U.S. House and Senate.
Labor leaders now view the 2004 election as one of the most important in generations, since a Bush victory would likely be accompanied by continued Republican control of the House and Senate, and the prospect that new legislative initiatives opposed by unions would be enacted into law.
Labor Among Iowa's Big Losers
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 21, 2004; Page A08 |
