Nelson Lichtenstein: Labor’s Role in the Obama Era: A Troublesome and Unreliable Ally?
WITH A perilous set of midterm elections on the horizon, it would be understandable if labor and its liberal allies just closed ranks with President Obama and the Democrats, downplayed any disappointment they might feel, and muted their critique of his often lukewarm liberalism. After all, if the Republicans take one or both houses of Congress, then the whole Obama presidency will be in danger.
As every good unionist knows, solidarity is a great thing, but in this case it is the wrong prescription for the American labor movement. Instead, the unions and other labor partisans should be difficult and demanding allies of our president. History shows that such a posture would generate the greatest political and organizational dividend, for labor as well as any insurgent group that seeks to transform American politics and policy. To show what I mean, let’s take a look at two eras of labor and social movement success—the 1930s and the 1960s—in order to win a few insights that might be useful for our own times. As Mark Twain once wrote, “History never repeats itself, but sometimes it rhymes.”
There are three points to be made about such times past. First, conservative movements and right-wing ideas actually grow more extreme in eras of liberal and labor reform. We know that is true today, but it was also true at other moments of change or potential change in twentieth-century U.S. history. Second, when a Democratic administration is in power, the most potent and efficacious strategy for labor and its leadership is to be—and be seen as—a troublesome, even unreliable ally. And third, the labor movement needs to be, and be seen as, a social movement. This does not come without organizational costs. It is a dangerous strategy, but such a transformation is essential if anything resembling an organized labor movement is to survive....
WE SOMETIMES look at past moments of victory through rose-colored glasses, but neither the era of the New Deal nor that of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and early 1960s were times of uncontested liberalism. They were also times of mobilization, a renewal of ideas, and activism on the Right. The opponents of reform were not always out-of-touch reactionaries. They were often innovative and aggressive men and women who would later achieve power and position when the political winds tilted in their direction.
The Right grew in these eras not because of too much radicalism on the part of labor and civil rights activists, but because any great reform, no matter how carefully put forward, polarizes a society. The rise of labor in the 1930s created a kind of civil war even within the working class. It was mainly nonviolent, and it would later subside, but such polarities can be expected whenever many Americans, even some that one might expect to be allies, see change as a subversion of their religious or ideological worldview. In the 1930s that social and ideological civil war divided not just American parties, but also churches, factories, and many communities. Anti-labor and anti-FDR rhetoric was pervasive in the years of the Great Depression, even as the unions triumphed at Flint and Pittsburgh and in the mines and mills of countless smaller towns....
THE NEXT important point to remember is that the labor movement, as well as the civil rights movement, achieved their greatest influence when the Democratic administration in power perceived the leadership of these social movements as troublesome, unreliable, and unpredictable allies. Labor leaders like John L. Lewis of the Mineworkers, Philip Murray of the Steelworkers, and Walter Reuther of the Autoworkers were frequently seen by the White House as “going off the reservation,” a phrase I first encountered in the archives at Hyde Park when I poured through the files of FDR’s public policy staff....
AND NOW to my final point. The labor movement wins when it is broad and inclusive, but the expansion comes with its own dangers. Today, given the dire straits in which the labor movement finds itself, those risks must be courted. We know about those risks and rewards from the experience of social movements in the recent past. The feminist movement provides a fitting parallel. It has transformed America—but who are the feminists, and how do you organize them? You don’t. In the late 1960s and early 1970s when that movement took off, people simply announced that they were part of the women’s liberation movement: there was no test, no membership card, no dues to pay, no line to follow....
It is therefore not enough for organized labor to broaden itself by welcoming new forces into its ranks. It must also adopt as its own the students and activists who are now on the outside looking in. It is from those unruly movements and initiatives that a new generation of activists will arise. In courting such individuals, labor faces the unpredictable and the untidy, because the AFL-CIO may well be held responsible for the actions and rhetoric of people it does not fully understand or control. But that is a risk that must be taken if we are to become a social movement once again.