Labor Unions and Al Sharpton: An Enduring Partner ship

By Carl Horowitz 

04/22/2016 

With few exceptions, unions are powerful engines of egalitarian policy and its most potent political vehicle, the Democratic Party.  As the party platform now heavily overlaps with that of demagogic black identity politicians like Al Sharpton, labor leaders have become prominent supporters of Sharpton and his New York-based nonprofit, National Action Network (NAN).  The bond was very much in evidence at Manhattan’s Sheraton Times Square Hotel last Friday afternoon at a panel, “The State of American Labor Unions Today,” one of nearly 30 panels convened during the NAN annual convention held April 13-16.  Despite a couple of no-shows, the speakers satisfied the mostly black crowd, calling for more union organizing, more government programs and more activism to counter the "racist" Right.

Labor and civil rights activists long have marched hand in hand, literally as well as figuratively.  Unions provided the main ammunition for civil rights federal legislation of a half-century or more ago.  Most Americans may not be aware of it, but the August 28, 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his defining “I Have a Dream” speech, was as much a rally for trade unionism as for civil rights.  King was the marquee speaker of the event, formally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, but it was labor officials who laid the groundwork.  The prime movers of that event were:  Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers; A. Philip Randolph, founder-president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a vice president of the AFL-CIO; and Bayard Rustin, head of the AFL-CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute.  Martin Luther King’s fateful visits to Memphis in 1968 were prompted by requests for support from local black ministers for an organizing drive by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers (AFSCME) of city sanitation workers.  And decades later, as I explained in a Special Report for National Legal and Policy Center, various unions were establishing close links with self-styled "anti-racist" revolutionaries in opposing American military involvement in the Middle East.  

Al Sharpton knows all this.  That’s why one of the panels of the National Action Network four-day extravaganza last week consisted of highly partisan union officials and allies.  He also knows that blacks constitute a comparatively large share of the unionized work force.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 13.6 percent of all U.S. black workers in 2015 belonged to a labor union.  The respective percentages for whites, Asians and Hispanics were 10.8 percent, 9.8 percent and 9.4 percent.  Among New York City public-sector unions, especially local affiliates of AFSCME and the AFSCME District Council 37 Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the percentages for blacks appear to be far higher.  Vocal support was in evidence among the audience.

The principal speaker on the labor issues panel was J. David Cox, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.  Cox, whose Washington, D.C.-based union represents roughly 675,000 federal and District of Columbia government workers, expressed the belief that most social problems in this country could be solved with large increases in union membership. Unions, he argued, are the primary engine of social progress.  Moreover, they stand out as true allies of racial minorities and women.  Cox, a native of North Carolina, stringently denounced the recent challenge by Rebecca Friedrichs and her co-plaintiff teachers to the longstanding public-sector union practice of forcing nonmembers to pay partial dues or “agency fees.”  Late in March, the U.S. Supreme Court, deadlocked at 4-4, declined to issue a ruling in that California case, effectively upholding a dismissal by a federal appeals court.

Others spoke, too, and with the same kind of urgency.  Jill Furillo, executive director of the New York State Nurses Association, spoke of her organization’s aggressive campaign to prevent hospital closings, singling out National Action Network for praise in siding with health care workers.  She declared:  “We must be advocates for communities.”  Brianne Gorod, chief counsel for the hard-Left Washignton, D.C.-based nonprofit legal group, Constitutional Accountability Center, echoed basic union positions on economics.  “It’s time to give America a raise,” she said.  "People need a raise, whether or not they belong to a union."  Gorod, like Cox, also expressed relief over the Supreme Court non-ruling in Friedrichs and anger over the fact that the plaintiffs even were given legal standing.  Henry Garrido, executive director of AFSCME District Council 37, was even more aggressive.  “There is an open war on labor in this country,” he said.  Garrido denounced the recent passage by the State of West Virginia of a Right to Work law that will protect private-sector workers in that state from mandatory dues contributions.  The Right to Work idea, he added, originated decades ago with a known “white racist” (which, even if true, is utterly irrelevant to the Right to Work principle itself).  He also skewered the Wisconsin public-sector reform law of 2011 as a disaster, claiming it has led to drastic cuts in wages and benefits and a doubling of fatal workplace accidents.  Shane Harris, a black San Diego pastor and president of the National Action Network chapter in that city, offered loud (if not necessarily persuasive) commentary.  He argued that unions should be seen as human rights organizations, not simply labor organizations.  Unions, Harris argued, are a reflection of a larger struggle for justice in every aspect of life; thus, all of us have a moral imperative to support them.

The panel might have been even more heated had a pair of listed invitees shown up:  Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and George Gresham, president of Service Employees Local 1199, which represents about 300,000 active and retired health care workers in New York City and elsewhere.  These are two of the most powerful union leaders in the country, not just in New York City.  The AFT, as much as any labor organization could, supported Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign of 2008.  And it is working overtime to get her elected this time around.  SEIU Local 1199 provided crucial help to the Obama White House in securing passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010.  Al Sharpton knows who his political friends are. 

The interests of unions and National Action Network heavily intersect.  That’s why the AFGE, AFSCME, AFT, SEIU and New York State Nurses Association each helped bankroll the recently-concluded NAN convention.  And, no coincidence, that’s why NAN set up a labor issues panel for top representatives of these very organizations.  Unions, especially public-sector unions, are moving ever further leftward, especially on racial issues.  That’s the way the Reverend Al likes it.  Thanks to union support, Sharpton and his inner circle are now more equipped than ever to launch campaigns against chosen “racist” targets.  National Action Network and its union allies might wind up better off, but our nation as a whole surely won’t.