Democracy and leadership in the labor movement

Heated debates about union democracy often center on a false dichotomy between strong union leadership and meaningful member-centered democracy.

A recent thread on the Working Life blog is trying to get past this dichotomy, but I fear we're not all the way there. I commend Jane Slaughter of Labor Notes (which publishes some of the most strident voices on the "pro-democracy" side of this confused debate) for emphasizing that democracy is not about "what looks democratic on paper" but rather "what will make the union more powerful against the boss." But from there she slips back into the same old dichotomy, by claiming that the Change to Win union leaders believe "that what makes a union powerful is very smart officers and staffers carrying out a well-thought-out plan" as opposed to the engagement of the members, as though the two were mutually exclusive.

The way I interpet the message pushed by Andy Stern of SEIU, John Wilhelm of UNITE-HERE, and Bruce Raynor of UNITE-HERE (I don't know much about the personal philosophies of the other CTW leaders, or the organizational cultures of their unions) is that we need to involve and engage more workers in our movement (especially, but not only, the 90% of workers who don't even have a union), and that the only way to do this is to have smart, committed leaders carrying out a good plan.

I can't repeat this too many times: a good plan carried out by good leaders is by no means mutually exclusive with membership involvement. To involve the membership effectively takes a lot of money and time. That's not a reason not to do it, it just points to the fact that it requires (you guessed it) good leaders with a good plan. Does this mean all those "smart officers and staffers" have to be college grads? Of course not. In my experience, many of the best organizers and strategists are straight from the rank and file. But should we exclude energetic, idealistic Ivy Leaguers who want to make a difference? Why on earth would we? It's damn hard to find a good, committed union organizer, and it doesn't make sense to close any doors. (Some of us, by the way, are both college grads and rank-and-filers.)

My experiences with UNITE-HERE and SEIU have taught me that strong leadership and membership involvement are not in conflict with one another--neither can exist without the other. In the locals I've worked with, the job of every organizer (some of whom are from the rank-and-file, some of whom are progressive college grads, some of whom are both) is to recruit and train rank-and-file leaders--as organizing committee members, chief shop stewards, etc. Mobilization is important, of course, but it's secondary, and good mobilization is simply a reflection of good leadership development.

Nor, as I've said before, is membership involvement mutually exclusive with the large-scale external organizing that CTW has in mind. In fact, in order to organize a lot of workers into our unions, we're gonna need thousands of rank-and-file leaders out in the field, teaching their non-union brothers and sisters how to stand up. Keep in mind that it takes very strong leadership to convince union members to spend their time and their dues money organizing non-union workers. That's the type of leadership Stern, Wilhelm, and Raynor have distinguished themselves by providing.

Finally, I'd like to nominate Maria Elena Durazo as the leader whose story perhaps most neatly embodies the way democracy, leadership, and power go hand-in-hand. In the late 80s she led a Labor Notes-style reform candidacy in HERE Local 11 in Los Angeles. The president of the local at the time was a white guy in a majority latina union who was more interested in protecting his own little domain and providing services to some of the more privileged members (banquet waiters) than in involving the membership or organizing anyone. He went so far as refusing to translate membership meetings into Spanish.

The race was close and, because there were allegations of fraud, the votes were never counted and a trusteeship was imposed by the international. Of course, the first instinct of Durazo and her supporters was to oppose the trusteeship as vehemently as they had opposed the old regime. But once they got to know the trustee and his staff, they realized that they were part of a small but growing progressive faction of the HERE international. They were, in fact, close associates of John Wilhelm. This was several years before Wilhelm was elected president of the union.

Durazo worked with some of the experienced organizers from the international to continue the internal organizing work she had begun during her campaign. They started recruiting an organizing committee and actively recruiting and training stewards for the first time in the local's history. After the trusteeship ended, Durazo was elected president. The cooperation with the international continued, and so did the hard work. The local started waging militant contract fights, and they started organizing non-union hotels and food-service contractors in the LA area. Meanwhile, they helped transform not only that one local, but the entire LA labor movement (the trustee, the late Miguel Contreras, moved on to become the leader of the LA County Federation of Labor, and Local 11 was always one of the strongest affiliates) and the entire international union (many organizers who have helped turn around other HERE locals were originally trained in LA). Most recently, Durazo and the Local 11 staff led the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride and a successful city-wide contract fight, the main objectives of which were to maintain free family health insurance and to line up the next contract expiration date with other HERE locals around the country. In these times, to accomplish those goals was a major victory. Stay tuned this year and next year for a lot more external organizing and a nationwide contract fight against the major hotel chains. Local 11 enters these fights as a model for the entire labor movement both in terms of rank-and-file leadership development and in terms of its committment to organizing the unorganized.

My main point is this: it took strong leadership to turn around a local that had a history of discouraging membership involvement; it took a special kind of farsighted, mature leadership to work with Wilhelm rather than trying to compete over the contested turf; and it will take even stronger leadership, not only from Durazo but also from hundreds of worker leaders, to win the huge fights that the local (and the international) have coming up in the near future.