AFL-CIO’s Sweeney voices solidarity with Bush’s warsBy Bill Vann
5 September 2003John Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO, appeared Wednesday before the Detroit Economic Club, a forum organized by the city’s establishment to unveil what was touted as a new “jobs initiative.” As it turned out, the US union federation’s plan amounted to little more than a political scam aimed at saving some of the jobs, salaries and perks of its own officialdom at the expense of the unemployed.
The general indifference to what Sweeney had to say was made plain by the absence of invited executives from the Big Three automakers, prominent local politicians and even leading union officials.
Nonetheless, his remarks in Detroit deserve careful consideration for what they reveal about the social and political physiognomy of this organization that bills itself as the “American labor movement.”
Sweeney began by declaring that, two days after Labor Day, “we have a lot to celebrate.” He continued: “Worker productivity in our country is the highest ever, and the working class heroes who pulled us through 9/ 11 and its aftermath are doing so again in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Why record “worker productivity” is something an organization that claims to represent the interests of workers should celebrate, the AFL- CIO head did not explain. The dramatic increase in productivity by US corporations—at an annual rate of 6.8 percent according to the latest Labor Department figures—has translated into layoffs on the one hand and speedup on the other. Sweeney’s remark, delivered to a largely corporate audience, amounts to boasting about the role of the AFL-CIO unions in facilitating this whipsawing of the American workforce.
But it is on the issue of war where the real reactionary character of the American trade union bureaucracy comes through most clearly.
--snip--
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/swee-s05.shtml