The campaign to organize Madison janitors is dead, sacrificed on the alter of the Democratic Party.
As we noted here before, one fatal flaw of Business Unions is their inability to learn from defeats. In this case, the SEIU isn’t even admitting defeat. Instead, they announced that the organizing drive at CleanPower has simply “entered a new phase”—a phase curiously characterized by the organizers leaving town.
But we here at LaborLeft have no need to obfuscate. The unvarnished truth is that the SEIU and AFSCME took a dive on this one. They put the interest of Governor Doyle and the Democratic Party ahead of the interests of the janitors.
Recall that the SEIU’s strategy was to get the state to deny the new contract to CleanPower in favor of a more union-tolerant outfit. After a lot of hard work by a lot of dedicated people, they had the legal grounds for denying the contract to CleanPower and they began campaigning to get the state to do the right thing.
But the campaign had a strange twist. While the union and supporters held several aggressive actions, they never targeted Jim Doyle. Instead of picketing the Governor’s Office, they had us picketing the Risser Building. Instead of occupying the Governor’s Conference Room, we occupied conference rooms at the DOA building. Instead of demanding that Doyle cancel the contract, they demanded that minor civil servants at DOA cancel it.
This wasn’t oversight. On several occasions it was pointed out that the decision to dump CleanPower could be made by the Governor. This is a cabinet form of government and those DOA bureaucrats work for him. And it was an election year, so that Doyle might be sensitive to labor demands. But SEIU organizers could not utter the “D-word.” In the end, Doyle gave the contract to CleanPower even as the state AFL-CIO was campaigning to get him re-elected.
But let’s not forget that those janitors who clean state office buildings used to be AFSCME members. It was Republican Tommy Thompson who contracted out those jobs back in 1990. So, the naïve among us might assume that Doyle, the first Democrat to hold the office in 16 years, would reverse Thompson’s decision and make them unionized state employees again.
Doyle didn’t do that, of course. But, then, AFSCME made no visible demand that he do so. One might envision a campaign where, after his first election, AFSCME officials would meet privately with Doyle and demand that he reverse Thompson’s decision to contract out. And, if he didn’t do it, the union would steadily increase the heat through public exposure, leaflets and picket lines until he did so.
But, there’s an axiom of Business Unionism: “Never criticize a sitting Democrat.” If that means that a few hundred janitors have to continue working for poverty wages, well, labor has its priorities.
Resond to this article.
This goes to over 100 labor activists in the Madison area and I get dozens of responses every month. But no one seems to want to leave their comments on the blog website. That's what the blog format is about. You can share your opinion (anonymously if you want) for others to read. So, rather than accost me in a bar somewhere, click on "comments" below and leave your message in the box entitled "Leave your comment."
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6 comments:
This is SEIU and AFSCME to a T. I worked as an organizer for both of these outfits and could never get the leadership of either to act like a labor union.
If Andy Stern is THE ANSWER, we are asking the wrong question.
I worked for AFSCME Council 24 when Tommy Thompson laid off most state janitors, except for those who cleaned the Capitol building.
As was typical, AFSCME didn't ask for the help of other unions, except in a superficial manner.
You are correct that AFSCME does not believe in worker based unionism. They find it too threatening to their style of top down leadership.
Most of the people represented by AFSCME do not realize what they are missing, and do not understand how powerful a worker based union could be. And that's how AFSCME wants it.
Dan Roberts
Sisters and Brothers,
The head of Tommy's bargaining team is now at MGE (since 2000). MGE has, through attrition, eliminated our IBEW janitors and replaced them with contractors. Through the grievance process we discovered that the employer is paying $25.00/hr to the vendor (while the worker probably earns $7.50-$9.00/hr). We are struggling to reverse this vicious and imprudent decision. Eliminate the contractor and a janitor can make $16.00 with fully loaded bennies and get in under the $25.00 paid to the contractor. So, this is life in the private sector. Same struggle against the same actors of the same class interests. If AFSCME and SEIU doesn't want to organize janitors, maybe someone else should.
It's interesting how detailed this UW contract with clean power is:
http://www.bussvc.wisc.edu/purch/contract/wp5199.html
One problem is possibly that Cleanpower was smart enough to hop on the green bandwagon:
http://www.greeningtheheartland.org/2007archive/current_exhibitors.html
CleanPower : www.cleanpower1.com
CleanPower provides green cleaning services for corporate office, multi-tenant, educational, medical and industrial clients. CleanPower utilizes Green Seal certified chemicals and sustainable procedures, and is able to help you achieve/maintain your LEED status. The company, headquartered in Milwaukee, is supported by offices in Appleton, Green Bay, Madison, Racine and Sheboygan.
Somebody is still doing the work, you know super cheap laborers that can't afford anything. Janitorial work sucks. I've done it, not lately, but for half the current going rate 20 years ago! This is like a drop in the bucket, United just announced 950 pilot layoff. Yeah, things have been going downhill for a while.
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