For the past several years, one of the ongoing mysteries of a not overly mysterious labor movement is what the Carpenters Union will do in any given election season. Since the maverick Doug McCarron became Carpenters president in 1995, the union has left the AFL-CIO, linked itself to such organizing-intensive and progressive unions as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) in the New Unity Partnership, and, since 2001, hosted Labor Day picnics at which the guest of honor was George W. Bush.
That may prove a trickier position this year, given Bush's opposition to virtually all things labor. Still, Bush's Labor Department has sided with the Carpenters' leadership over a number of locals complaining about the absence of internal democracy, so it's not as if McCarron has been left totally empty-handed. A Bush endorsement, certainly, would cause a far bigger revolt among the union's members (and secondary leaders) than anything to date. Some McCarron associates in attendance at labor events today said that they thought the union might stay neutral in the presidential race, and that it was less likely than in previous years that McCarron would actually invite Bush to a Labor Day bash.
With the exception of the Carpenters and the Operating Engineers, every national union is actively supporting the Kerry-Edwards ticket. The list of endorsers includes the Teamsters, which the Bush administration once had visions of winning over. That hope was shattered some time ago -- probably at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting where Labor Secretary Elaine Chao showed up toting a book that she said contained records of every union impropriety her department could document.
Besides, the Teamsters are a real union that endeavors to organize, and President James P. Hoffa made very clear at Sunday afternoon's caucus of AFL-CIO delegates to the convention (the federation says that more than 900 of the delegates and alternates are union members) that, as he put it, “workers' freedom to join unions has been destroyed by George Bush.” Citing polls showing that more than 40 percent of workers would join unions if they could, Hoffa complained that the Bush administration “gives aid and comfort to renegade corporations” that routinely violate the National Labor Relations Act in order to thwart unionization drives. Both Hoffa and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told the caucus, to considerable applause, that John Kerry would sign the Employee Free Choice Act, which would require employers to recognize unions when a majority of their workers had signed cards. It would also require them to submit to binding arbitration if they failed to agree to a first contract.
Harold Meyerson is the Prospect's editor-at-large.
