Fawning over Trump Shuts Out Our Movement’s Future

By Len Shindel - Labor Notes, February 15, 2017

Surrounded by key union leaders, Trump was relaxed and smooth. He thanked the Sheet Metal Workers for their work on his hotel down the street—even as an electrical contractor was suing his company after allegedly getting stiffed on the job.

Union leaders clapped when Trump announced he was trashing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump said their members would soon be needed to complete a load of new projects as he terminated the “disastrous” trade policies that had sent jobs out of the country.

He assured them they would be building new Ford plants and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities for companies like Johnson and Johnson. The union leaders said they also asked Trump to move ahead, despite widespread protests, on the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline.

NO PROMISES ON WAGES

Sean McGarvey, president of the national Building Trades, asked whether the new administration would continue provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act protecting wages for construction workers on federal projects. Nonunion contractors had sent a letter asking the president to set the law aside.

Trump said he “knew a lot” about Davis-Bacon, but he made no commitment.

Nonetheless, as participants got up to leave, Carpenters President Doug McCarron said he had one more message for the president. He gushed over Trump’s inaugural address, calling it a “great moment for working men and women in the United States.”

Trump’s Counselor Kellyanne Conway and Press Secretary Sean Spicer, sitting directly behind the president, beamed like newlyweds on a honeymoon who just rolled out of the sack to find they had hit the lottery.

Afterwards a union press release crowed, “In politics, there are people of words, and people of deeds. North America’s Building Trades Unions are grateful that President Trump is a man who puts actions behind his words.”

BALANCING ACT

I don’t pretend for one minute that any labor leader’s job is easy, especially after the defection of so many union members to a Republican Party that has never buried its animosity toward unions.

Trump brilliantly exploited the Democratic Party’s support for neoliberal trade policies like NAFTA and the TPP. He drove the stake in deep. And since the election he has hired Robert Lighthizer, who previously worked with AFL-CIO economists seeking to strengthen the Obama administration’s trade negotiations.

But fawning over Trump’s lip service to trade and infrastructure mimics the Democratic Party’s failings on those issues—the illusion that by treating your adversaries well, you can bend them to your agenda. Rumor had it that Laborers (LIUNA) President Terry O’Sullivan, who was also in the White House meeting, was even worried about members wearing their orange union T-shirts to the Women’s March on Washington.

UNDERMINING LOCAL ACTIVISTS

When McGarvey, claiming to speak for all the trades, kowtows to a president who launched his political career attacking the legitimacy of the nation’s first Black president and stereotyping Hispanics as “rapists and murderers,” he undermines the work and morale of dedicated activists and potential members who represent the future of the U.S. labor movement.

My anger over this stuff has turned to sadness. Thirteen years ago, after 30 years as a Steelworkers activist and local union leader, I went to work for the IBEW as a communications specialist in the union’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

I marveled at how strongly members identified with their trade and their union. But I also learned that this pride sometimes came with the evil twins of nepotism and exclusivity. So I gained even greater respect for the courageous IBEW activists and leaders who were working to build a more diverse and inclusive union.

I was honored to write stories about former gang members in South Central L.A. who joined the building trades, transforming their lives and contributing to their communities. I took pride in reporting how apprenticeship instructors were teaching principles of solidarity and fairness.

And while I had deep differences with the IBEW on fossil fuel policy, I took heart in the work of local unions that promoted jobs and training in renewable energy—working with, not against, environmental advocates.

WRONG MESSAGE

Such forward-looking activists are found not only in the IBEW. They exist within O’Sullivan’s LIUNA and McCarron’s Carpenters too. Members of both unions have worked to reach out to recruit tomorrow’s workforce and mentor new leaders, including large numbers of Latino workers.

In fact, McCarron built his reputation supporting Latino drywall installers in his native California who organized to join the Carpenters. There is so much fertile ground to increase the building trades’ density in previously ignored or excluded sectors.

We need a critical reassessment of the Building Trades’ message and strategy toward the new administration. But that will require a struggle by other courageous leaders and activists in the trades. Sometimes internal polarization is necessary for a movement to win.

Kevin Norton is an assistant business manager in Los Angeles IBEW Local 11.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.