Mark Shields, nationally known columnist and commentator, is the moderator of CNN's The Capital Gang


Will labor abandon or rescue Dick Gephardt?

Monday, September 15, 2003 Posted: 11:24 AM EDT (1524 GMT)

 


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WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- In American politics, organized labor is not the biggest, or richest, or cleverest, or most powerful of players.

No, what has made organized labor so respected among those who practice politics, beyond its ability to turn its members into effective campaign workers, is the movement's unshakeable loyalty to its political friends.

The rule for candidates was simple: If you support labor, you can be sure in your toughest election fight -- primary or general -- that organized labor will be in the foxhole with you. That is, unless your name is Dick Gephardt of Missouri and you're running for president in 2004.

Nobody can seriously question Gephardt's 20 years of stalwart support for the cause of organized labor and working families. He has never tailored his positions to the passing fashions of our globalizing, privatizing, downsizing times.

Some theorists do not like him, because subsequent events have proved him right. As Democratic House leader, he led the opposition to "free trade" agreements, championed by the president of his own party, with Mexico and China.

Gephardt predicted "a race to the bottom" would ensue, with profit-obsessed manufacturers moving their runaway shops to where workers were most docile and their wages the lowest.

By 2002, there were 1,348,800 fewer American workers, covered by collective bargaining, employed in manufacturing in the United States than there were in 1993, when the North American Free Trade Agreement was ratified.

On the Mexican side of the U.S. border, in the maquiladoras, have sprung up factories owned by many Fortune 500 manufacturers, which employ young Mexicans at wages barely a fraction of what U.S. workers earn.

The factories are spotless and shining, state of the art. The workers, who are unable to buy the goods they produce, live in squalor. Often, their only shelter is a shipping crate. There is no electricity, no running water. Raw sewage runs through the unpaved street. I have seen it, and I have smelled it .

Civilized human beings do not force their fellow humans to live that way. But not to worry, because now the manufacturers are moving their factories to China.

Many of the unions most adversely affected by the loss of those manufacturing jobs in the United States -- including steelworkers, machinists and Teamsters -- have endorsed Gephardt.

But support by two-thirds of all union membership is required before the AFL-CIO, itself, could make a pre-primary endorsement of any presidential candidate --something the labor federation has only done twice before, for Walter Mondale in 1984 and Al Gore in 2000.

Today, the largest union in the AFL-CIO is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), whose members include nurses, janitors and social workers (and whose employers, governments and building owners, do not have the option of moving overseas). Thus, those unions are not directly threatened by the United States' lost trade war.

Nearly two out of five public employees belong to a union, while fewer than one out of 10 workers in the private sector does. To underline the historic shift in the nation's economy, there are today more members in the SEIU, alone, than there are in the autoworkers, the steelworkers and the machinists unions, combined.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents public employees, when added to the SEIU, makes up nearly one out of five dues-paying union members in the United States today.

This week, both the SEIU and AFSCME decided not to make a presidential endorsement. Gerald McEntee, the AFSCME president, whose prestige rose after his early endorsement of challenger Bill Clinton in 1992, candidly explained the decision not to endorse Gephardt or anyone else this way, "Can Dick Gephardt, as much as he has stood with unions, can he get to the dance, can he win the nomination and can he beat George W. Bush?"

That would represent a sea change in the values system of American labor. Electabilty apparently now trumps loyalty and constancy.

Do the political risks Dick Gephardt took to fight labor's fights on trade and across the board now mean less than the latest telephone poll from Cedar Rapids or Manchester?

The next time organized labor has a life-or-death issue on Capitol Hill and its representatives go to make their case to undecided legislators, they better be prepared for the inevitable retort: "Do not talk to me about how you will be there when I need you after the way you treated Dick Gephardt."

By the middle of October, the decision will be known -- labor will either rescue or abandon Dick Gephardt's presidential campaign.