Organized Labor

This month’s column continues last month’s, which recounted the first half of a trip to Washington, DC by a joint business-labor delegation from San Francisco for the swearing-in of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

As Speaker Pelosi finished her speech after accepting the gavel from John Boehner, her Republican rival for the Speakership, and before she called the children to the dais, we hurried from Congressman Tom Lantos’s office to Senator Feinstein’s swearing-in, for which we were late. To help us avoid long waits at security checkpoints Congressman Lantos’s aide Candace guided us on the little electric tram that runs through the tunnel from the Cannon House Office Building to the Capitol, then led us through the Capitol itself, then brought us on another tram through another tunnel to the Russell Building and the hearing room for the Rules and Administration Committee, which Senator Feinstein now chairs. The Senator had just finished her swearing-in there and was speaking to those who had gathered for it.

After her speech and others I shook the Senator’s hand, and we chatted about names from this Council’s past and present – Evankovich, Mazzola, de la Torre, Smith – names from her time as a San Francisco supervisor and mayor and from her long relationship with the Building Trades.

Any politician from San Francisco has been obliged by labor’s strength in the City to have a relationship with us. Frequently these relationships are complex. Sometimes they are in one degree or another adversarial, as with a mayor who must at once manage the City’s budget and satisfy the needs of its unionized workforce, or as with a senator or congresswoman who is being at once told by a Democratic president to vote for NAFTA and warned by her longtime supporters in labor that this vote would be unacceptable.

When we in labor recall those adversarial moments in our relationships with our politicians, we would be well-served by two other considerations: First, in many other cities, politicians feel no need to have any relationship whatsoever with labor, and so while we assert our strength, as we must, we should prize it and the relationships it compels as all too uncommon; second, just as we may on occasion fight among ourselves, one union against another, but should acknowledge our overriding community of interest at another level, so should we sometimes evaluate our relationships with our politicians to decide if a community of interest overrides (although it cannot erase them) our occasional clashes.

In the evening the House Democratic Leadership and the House Democratic Caucus staged a celebration and concert at the National Building Museum, a vast high hall that seems intended more as a demonstration of masonry styles than as architecture. At one end of the hall was a stage with drum sets and microphone stands. At the other were food stations meant to represent the four corners of the country – Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest. Bruce Hornsby, members of the Grateful Dead, guitarist Warren Haynes, and Mike Gordon, the bassist from Phish, came onstage and played a set.

As I looked around at the sporadic dancing in the crowd it occurred to me that its population largely skipped a generation. It consisted either of those in their fifties or older – Democratic Party donors – and those in their twenties – Party staffers, I assume. I recalled the same population and the same skip of a generation in congressional and senatorial corridors and offices.

This is how our country is governed, by those my age and older and by their young staff. The missing generation is the generation raising young families, taking out first mortgages, worrying about how many gallons of milk and pairs of kids’ sneakers a hard-earned paycheck will buy.

One of our primary duties in labor is to assure that government serves the needs of this generation, and to serve it ourselves. When it gets ample work with good pay and good medical benefits its children thrive. When its benefit plans are adequately funded and kept strong they are kept strong also for our members either retired or soon to retire. When we exclude parts of it by failing to organize we weaken our ability to speak for it. We assure that the children it raises will come of age without knowing or appreciating us. We forego the strength that its work would bring to our trust funds and the security this would give our older members.

Onstage Richard Gere spoke. Alexandra Pelosi told stories about her mother as a homemaker. The Speaker herself spoke.

As Tony Bennett began to sing many of us in the San Francisco business-labor delegation, anticipating the long day ahead, left and walked back to our hotel in the unseasonably pleasant Washington night. One can celebrate only so much; there is work to do.

The last day of our visit to Washington included two contrasting visits.

The first was to the headquarters of the United States Chamber of Commerce. Seated around a large rectangle of tables in a high-ceilinged hall, we listened to a presentation by R. Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s Executive Vice President for Government Affairs. The Chamber’s website boasts that Josten organized a national group called “The Coalition: Americans Working for Real Change, uniting many diverse, single-issue business and citizens groups under a broad-based umbrella to combat the legislative and political activities of the resurgent AFL-CIO….” He analyzed the Democratic victory in the November election in the way most favorable to the Chamber and its affiliates. Nancy Pelosi was in power, he said, thanks to moderate and independent voters. The “Blue Dogs,” the coalition of conservative Democrats, had ten more members. The Democrats didn’t have the votes to override vetoes, but had to decide whether they wanted to make law or make points.

He was joined after a short time by Thomas Donohue, President of the Chamber. Donohue outlined some of the Chamber’s agenda in the coming year. He said that the Chamber would be preparing a report on school systems and would try to build public outrage over low high school graduation rates. The Chamber would found an institute to deal with energy, power generation, and global warming, and would advocate nuclear power. It was founding also a new program, “Let’s Rebuild Together,” to advocate upgrades of the nation’s infrastructure.

In 2005 Donohue spoke on the need for work on national transportation infrastructure to the Fiftieth Anniversary Conference of the National Heavy and Highway Alliance, which is comprised of the Laborers, Operating Engineers, Carpenters, Iron Workers, Plasterers and Cement Masons, Teamsters, and Bricklayers. He said, “While management and labor will always have their differences … we've learned to seek out and find common ground.”

The apparent contradiction between this accommodation of “common ground” with labor and Josten’s talk of “combat” against the activities of the AFL-CIO illustrates a point made before in varying ways in this column. Our economic system pushes us into a rough dance with business. As Building Trades unions, dependent primarily on private employers, we can do only as well as those employers. Business must do well for us to do well. For its part, national business is now seeing the unfortunate side effects of its conscious decision to perform more and more construction non-union. It has come to regret that decision in some measure, particularly in those regions where it has succeeded best. At a moment when skilled labor is needed it is lacking. Union apprenticeships remain the most effective means of providing that skilled labor. Non-union apprenticeships have had some accomplishments but confront constantly a fundamental reluctance of employers to release workers for training without a contractual obligation to do so. Business has come to see that it is somewhat dependent on us, as well.

And so we will work together with business in advocating infrastructure upgrades. We can be sure that at the same time we will have to fight against infringements on prevailing wages.

A dance that is half a fight, a fight that is half a dance: That is how it is with us, business and the Trades.

From the Chamber the joint San Francisco business-labor delegation walked a block to the offices of the AFL-CIO, against which the Chamber’s Josten had declared “combat.” Food was waiting for us there, and a smaller rectangle of tables in a snugger room. John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, went around the table and shook the hand of every member of the delegation. He is a small man, a bit stooped by age, but with a strong voice. He wore bandages on his face where age and his fair skin had given him problems. We ate. We talked. Sweeney answered questions graciously and gave his staff the opportunity to speak and answer questions.

During the question and answer session one of the business delegates, who had dealt in a former position with the Teamsters representing sanitation workers, remarked that he had come to appreciate how a union contract had regularized employee relations. So much was made clear, so many problems avoided – among them unequal treatment, over-influence of manager personality and preference, individual maneuvering for pay.

Sweeney asked him if he would be willing to come back to Washington and testify on occasion.

The gathering laughed.

It was in this way, in good humor, sharing a meal, in a warm setting and with the personal warmth of John Sweeney setting the tone, that the joint delegation of San Francisco business and labor finished its trip to Washington.