By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

Working people are under attack as never before in this country. To fight back, all we have is each other, sticking together in a strong labor movement. Yet we could soon see a tragic split among American unions.

President Bush, his corporate friends and right-wing politicians are starving health care and education and handing the proceeds to the military and the super-rich.

They want to carve up Social Security into risky private accounts that would cut benefits and profit Wall Street. With costs rising, real wages are falling, and millions of jobs are being shipped overseas.

The U.S. Labor Dept. has switched from protecting workers to harassing unions. Federal employees are losing their basic right to join a union as conservative governors push to crush pension plans, cripple public sector unions and crimp labor involvement in politics. Union membership has shriveled to about one worker in eight nationwide, and one in 12 in the private sector.

The Bush onslaught is aimed at destroying organized labor as a force for economic justice in our society. Now, more than ever, American unions need to stand united to build our political power and rebuild our numbers. More members would maximize the results of our grassroots political action, and political victories would undercut the attacks on our standard of living and help in organizing drives.

I was in Boston at the Democratic Convention last summer when a group of dissident unionists escalated their negative campaign to a new level. As we set up one of labor’s most unified efforts — mobilizing thousands of activists members in an all-out campaign — the detractors were busy blaming the victim, the AFL-CIO, for the anti-labor policies of a string of Republicans that goes back to Reagan.

And now — incredibly to me — five unions have formed a coalition that they say is aimed at more aggressive union growth, but which could actually fracture the AFL-CIO. Four of them are even threatening to secede if they don’t get their way at the national convention in Chicago later this month.

The dissident unions have every democratic right to criticize the policies, structure and leadership of the AFL-CIO. Over the last year, they have raised some valid issues that other labor leaders have been coming to grips with, presenting real opportunities for compromise at the convention. But threatening to quit is no way to convince people that your ideas are right, and splitting the labor movement is no way to make us stronger.

No union has a right to undermine the unity and strength of organized labor. Their coalition could weaken the labor movement, which is the only force capable of protecting millions of working people, union members and others, from being ground into poverty.

Unity is an absolute necessity for a labor movement that wants to grow, increase its political power and revitalize itself, but we need to use our unity effectively. Labor needs to realize that as the nation shifts to a service economy, women, people of color and immigrants make up the fastest growing sector of the work force and have suffered the worst blows under Bush. Some 55 percent of the union jobs lost in 2004 were held by black workers.

Organize, mobilize, politicize
Although 30 percent of union members today are workers of color, and 42 percent are women, the dissidents sought to restructure the AFL-CIO Executive Council by eliminating representation for key labor constituencies — such as African Americans, Latinos, Asian Pacific Americans and women. Groups like the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and the Coalition of Labor Union Women fought back and stopped this plan.

If we really want to broaden and expand the union movement, labor must make a greater effort to address the needs of women and minority workers. Among the unorganized millions in the growing service sector, these groups are strongly receptive to labor’s message. To achieve its potential strength, this movement must go further to increase diversity among leaders and staff and build stronger ties with labor’s community allies.

We are at a turning point. The quitters and splitters would play right into the hands of Bush and big business, weakening the labor movement and leaving our pay, our benefits and our unions at the mercy of our enemies.

Instead, we need to sit down together and work out a strategy to organize, mobilize and politicize American working people, union members and future members, parry the Bush assault, and renew the fight for what we believe in.

Solidarity is our strength. With a strategy based on solidarity we can battle Bush, bring union benefits and bargaining to millions of unorganized working people, and restore social justice to the top of our nation’s agenda.