from New Labor Forum, Dec 3, 1997
The idea that labor needs "a party of its own" is as old as the labor movement itself. American trade unionists and their allies have often looked with envy at the labor and social democratic parties in other countries, and long lamented the hemmed in quality of American progressive politics.
But envious or not, for most union members and leaders the idea of independent labor politics has not been relevant in this country for many, many years. Since at least the New Deal, labor has made its bed -- uncomfortable and lumpy though it may be -- in the Democratic Party. There have been exceptions to this, with the American Labor Party in New York the most prominent, but any exceptions only prove the rule. Like it or not, the Democratic Party is where most of the action is for unions and their members. Only a fool would argue that labor can or should abandon conventional politics for the vineyards of purity.
Of course, only a greater fool would argue that one should never change strategies. This piece will argue that this moment -- when the decomposition of the major parties is so advanced, the business domination of the Democrats so complete, and the opportunity for the creation of an independent formation so ripe -- can and should be seized, even as we give full measure to the legal and organizational obstacles ahead. Concretely, we think the New Party experience over the last four years has been a positive one for the local unions and community groups involved, and that the NP's strategy -- starting local, focusing on non-partisan elections and ballot measures, etc. -- offers a way out of the box that has kept progressives focused entirely on the Democrats. Being independent doesn't have to mean being irrelevant, if we have a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be "independent," and if we are willing to take our own organizing rhetoric about bottom-up strategies seriously.
To give it some context and credibility, here are the numbers on the New Party as of this writing (November 1997). We have just over 12,000 members; 20 chapters in 10 states, and plans to expand in '97-98 to several more; 149 victories in 226 elections, most of them for local, non-partisan office; 40% of the chapter members are people of color; nearly 2 dozen full time staff, a budget of just over $1 million. We're small in the big picture, but it's reasonable to accept The Nation's observation that the NP represents "the most successful progressive third party since the 1930's." There is substantial involvement by unions and community groups in all chapters. It's a multi-racial, class-oriented undertaking that is trying to be modern in its understanding of the economy and the world.
The bare bones of the New Party's strategy are simple: build local community-labor electoral organizations with real members, run to win (and govern), combine electoral work with educational and issue campaigns, don't waste people's votes. Putting flesh on those bones is what the last few years have been about.
We begin with some general thoughts on the relationship of local politics to local unions, move to some specific examples of union involvement in the New Party, and end with a discussion of the particular meaning of the recent Supreme Court decision on "fusion" politics for labor.
Major parties primarily involve themselves with major races -- President, Congress, state constitutional officers, and sometimes Mayors and legislators. But the grist of politics for local union members is local offices. The local sheriff or police chief, the local judges, the local school board members, or county or city council, impact them directly in the provision of services, the adjustment and assessment of tax rates, the provision of quality of life in terms of crime, housing, education, recreation, and other locally provided benefits, and together create a climate which often determines whether a community is pro or anti-labor. This is where the potential for democracy is still most deeply rooted. Most compellingly, this is where union members are personally active.
Local public employee unions -- teachers, service employees, and municipal workers - face the same situation as private sector unions, and then some. Their boss is running for office. Ad hoc coalitions -- inside and outside of any party structure -- are common, particularly on non-partisan campaigns and candidates. Interest is high, and the impact of labor -- members and contributions -- on these sorts of races is even higher. Labor endorsements in most City Council races, for example, are keenly sought by candidates, and often have more impact than in higher level partisan races. Ironically, though, this vital, democratic activity is taken for granted by the major parties. Labor's participation is assumed, and it receives little interest, assistance, or direction from major parties for whom this should be the minor league training ground.
As the major parties have become more candidate-driven and less organizational, labor's impact and participation has waned. The energy released -- and it really was remarkable in many places -- by labor's efforts in 1996 should not blind us to the central reality of the labor-Democratic relationship: They want us "on-call" but not as equal partners, even where our impact is the greater part of the equation for victory.
It is also in local politics that unions get most frequently embarrassed -- many times before their own members. When we cannot get the stroke to get local police to take a hands-off position on picket lines, union members rightly question the contributions and GOTV efforts we have made for the major party candidates. If a union cannot deliver a little help to a member on a DWI or a bounced check problem or the other minor interactions with the local judicial system, then relevance and clout diminish. When there's an ongoing dispute with a contractor, and still we find that local municipalities, counties, and schools do not bid jobs at prevailing wages, then union members sit on the bench and our overall labor market position worsens. When we are left with calls unreturned and pushing buttons that never light up, well, that's a very local problem.
Presidents, senators, and others are important, but for most local unions politics is a more personal affair. The Democrats are running a bed-and-breakfast in the White House, and in general are happy in the candidate-centered, media-driven political culture that now characterizes our politics. Fundamentally, they have become anti-organizational in how they spend their money and how they orient the party. They smile pro-union, but the everyday actions are anti-union. This is killing the organizing climate. And it is encouraging employers -- even reasonable employers -- to go bad with impunity. They believe that they can get away with it, because they have the jobs, even though we have the workers.
Part of the NP appeal to local unions is that we provide an opportunity to build an organization that can avowedly be pro-union. Simple actions go a long way, as we have seen when local NP members have walked picket lines with strikers (when's the last time the Democratic Party did that?). In a real local political organization, union members can participate and their numbers and ideas mean something. In fact, in a real local party, union members could even run and win with organizational backing, where now too often they are bystanders at the parade of others' ambition.
Here are some examples from different kinds of cities that show what can happen when the pieces come together.
The Campaign for a Sustainable Milwaukee is a labor/community/business effort aimed at challenging conventional economic development strategies. Instead of using public moneys to support the "low road" of economic development, the Campaign has refocused the debate on "high road" strategies: jobs that pay family supporting wages, skills training, ending subsidy abuse, improving labor-market regulation, reworking public transit, getting credit where it's needed, improving public schools, and so on.
Taking that agenda into the political arena is the mission of Progressive Milwaukee/NP. With support from the Central Labor Council, ATU Local 998, SEIU Local 150, the Machinists and other unions, the chapter has been electing its members to the School Board, City Council, County Board, and State Legislature. These elected officials (several of them union activists) have led the fight to pass living wage ordinances at the school, city, and county level. Over the last year, the city council raised the wage floor for city contractors to $6.41/hr., and the school board raised theirs to $7.70. These raises have not only meant real money for real workers, but have simultaneously chilled plans to privatize further city and school services. Even the very language that is used among political and journalistic elites is beginning to change, with phrases like "family supporting jobs" and "living wages" entering the parlance of everyday life. The Chamber is not exactly rolling over and conceding that its "low-road" strategy is bankrupt, and the Governor is still pushing highway spending instead of the light rail program we prefer, but the battle has been joined.
The Little Rock NP is relatively small: a couple of hundred dues-paying members. But it has a talented core of trained political activists and enjoys strong organizational support from the Arkansas Education Association, SEIU Local 100, AFSCME and ACORN, the largest community organization in the city. New Party members have won four seats on the Little Rock School Board and three seats on the Little Rock Board of Directors (the city council).
The School Board was the site of our first major battle against privatization. Linda Pondexter ran and won a seat on the board with the backing of the NP and the NEA, and ultimately became School Board president. She then led the fight against the superintendent's campaign to privatize the school transportation system and hire a private company to manage the district's custodians. The superintendent has now resigned, and a new superintendent (less inclined towards privatization) was recently hired. And this fall, with three seats open on the School Board, the New Party and its union allies have a decent shot to elect a progressive, pro-labor majority.
At the same time, Little Rock's city manager has been, working overtime to bust the city workers union and contract out garbage pick-up to Waste Management, Inc. The New Party helped AFSCME Local 994 organize a demonstration against the privatization effort, and the NP members on the City Board were the only City Directors to vocally oppose privatization. They're beating us on this one, but the fight is ongoing. And, more to the point, labor in Little Rock has a real and reliable political vehicle in Little Rock, one capable of winning and exercising political power for its members. American politics is actually quite porous, and a credible group of labor and community leaders can quickly make "independent" politics come to life pretty quickly.
As in Little Rock, the Missoula New Party is numerically small but politically potent. With little over two hundred members, the Party has four members on the City Council. With organizational support from a variety of labor, low-income housing, environmental, women's and gay/lesbian organizations, the Missoula New Party has emerged as a powerful vehicle for a progressive political agenda.
Union activists have played a critical role in building the New Party in Missoula and shaping its agenda. The Party's bread-and-butter issues have been living wage jobs, affordable housing, and campaign finance reform, issues attractive to Missoula's union members but also to working class people generally. And the chapter has been astute in injecting its issues into campaigns where it did not have its own horse.
For example, a few years back the chapter supported the incumbent Mayor in his successful re-election effort against an opponent who was both the owner of a minimum wage restaurant and a leader of the local Chamber of Commerce. The Mayor probably would have won without our support, but he was happy to have it. And the NP joined with the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) to really shape the debate around jobs and wages.
Such shaping can pay off down the road. Today the Missoula New Party has launched a living wage campaign, seeking to tie the receipt of public money to wage, benefit, and other conditions. And labor sits prominently at the table when the Missoula New Party leadership meets with its city council members to plan strategy for advancing a progressive program.
Not all of the chapters' projects result in success, of course. But we can state categorically that the local union leaders find it refreshing to not have to pull their punches to satisfy business elites or Democratic Party consultants, and that union members (who are also parents, bus riders, neighborhood watch captains, etc.) are more than ready to work in alliance with community allies.
As we get to higher level partisan races, however, there is a problem for the New Party or anyone else that cannot win on its own -- the "wasted vote syndrome." Even voters who support our values may be reluctant to vote for our candidates, for fear that their vote will be "wasted" on candidates with no serious chance of winning. Traditionally, minor party supporters have faced the unappetizing "tri-lemma:" of wasting their vote, choosing between the lesser of two evils, or staying home.
How to beat the problem? The American answer has always been "fusion" politics. Permit the minor organization to ally with a major one behind joint candidates, with votes cast on either organization's ballot line "aggregated" together. This permits supporters of the minor organization to express their support of it, without wasting their vote on hopeless candidates. It permits the organization to "fill in its dance card" with cross-endorsements in races where it can't win on its own but that are important to its supporters, even as it builds its independent capacity to run candidates on its own further down the ballot.
Fusion is legal in 9 states, practiced regularly only in one (New York), and many people inside and outside labor were hoping for a decision from the Supreme Court that would have legalized it everywhere. The Supreme Court did not deliver that decision, however, and struck a major blow against minor parties in its recent ruling in Timmons vs. New Party. For the first time in American history, the Court explicitly ruled that "the State's interest permits them to enact reasonable election regulations that may, in practice, favor the traditional two-party system."
It's an appalling and stupid decision, and will someday be reversed, but for the time being it means that the task of changing the "rules of the game" to allow minor parties to achieve meaningful ballot status now shifts entirely to the states. State-based ballot initiatives to establish fusion (or proportional representation, or the instant run-off) should find their way onto labor's political agenda, because such efforts not only improve the political terrain in which we all operate, they build lists, develop cadre, frame issues, develop capacity, etc. We need to play offense from time to time (viz. the living wage), and democratic reform measures are an excellent issue for labor to use to establish itself as the carrier of the general interest.
But whether we have state fusion laws soon or not, organized labor can easily assert its independence from the Democratic Party without becoming irrelevant. Labor could take a small chunk of the change it's using on educating the membership on the relative value of Democratic candidates, and use it instead to build the kinds of labor-community political organizations that are already being modeled. Inside the NP we think the Christian Coalition is a good model: it's independent, runs its own people, messes with the Republicans in any number of states, has actual members, and isn't afraid to get involved in the lowest levels of political action. If fusion's legal in a state, we should experiment with ballot-status parties. If it's not, go with the non-partisan party. The point here is to find a strategy for broadcasting our values to the public, because we believe those values are popular.
What's the long term play? Nobody really knows. Perhaps the Democrats will re-align themselves because of the threat of exit that independent formations provide. Or perhaps a genuine multi-party system will emerge. But not knowing the future shouldn't stop us from doing what we know makes sense in the present.
An independent, constructive politics is available to us right now, a politics that will directly improve labor's position in the workplace, on the streets, and in the corridors of power. And since we also know that building it will be a long march, and it's already late, we might as well get started.
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New Party 227 West 40th St. Suite 1303 New York, NY 10018 |
phone: 800-200-1294 fax: 212-302-5344 email: newparty@newparty.org web site: http://www.newparty.org |