On December 5, 1955, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) merged into a single mega-bureaucracy of business unionism: the AFL-CIO.
Today, about 10,000 union officials or staff in the US bring home salaries greater than $100,000, consuming over $1 billion of their member’s money.
Their economic status tends to make them identify with the interests of the employers – that’s why top officials refer to the “middle class,” instead of the “working class.”
Union officials control $30 billion, much of it invested, giving them a stake in preserving capitalism.
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Bureaucracy is a systemic problem. Many staffers are labor studies or law school graduates that never worked in the trades or industries they claim to represent – but many of them would prefer to advance a class-struggle, membership-driven movement. They quickly bump up against entrenched, massive, lethargic layer of functionaries attempting to preserve labor peace.
The conservatism of union officials is reflected in their unwillingness to break from the Democratic Party. If any major union called for it, there would be a labor party in the US tomorrow – one that could win!
Instead, at every election, thousands of docile union staffers are sent out hustling votes for employer tools like Biden, Sanders, etc. Union tops dump millions of dollars into the coffers of the very politicians that wage war on the working class.
Could there be any better example of their impotence than the failure to act in solidarity with the rail workers?
The dismal failure of the AFL-CIO to respond to the current economic and social crisis is a contemptable betrayal of the workers, past and present, that fought to build our unions.
They must be swept away.
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Image: BOSSES, BUREAUCRATS & LAWYERS
Mural Detail from: AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL
by Mike Alewitz/ 1993 (Now destroyed)
Communications Workers Local 9000 Building/ Los Angeles, CA/ approx. 20′ x 20′
Dedicated to the Victims of Police Violence
