Maritime labor’s impressive gains over the past four years are a reminder of what can be accomplished by getting the basics right. That was the assessment of the top leaders of the AFL-CIO, who addressed the Maritime Trades Department’s 2005 convention in Chicago July 21-22. All three— President John Sweeney, Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson and Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka—singled out solidarity, organizing, political action and progressive leadership.
“Most of our maritime unions have your primary jurisdictions highly organized, and our union density is probably greater than in any other industry,” Sweeney said. “Members of maritime unions are working steadily and enjoying very good pay, defined benefit pensions and fully paid health care. And there’s more union and American shipbuilding going on right now than in many, many years.
“But I remind you that these advantages exist because of the character of your leadership and the power of your solidarity.”
Citing a spate of new shipbuilding projects, preservation of the vitally important Jones Act and the reauthorization and expansion of the Maritime Security Program, Chavez-Thompson noted, “The Maritime Trades Department is exactly what the union movement is all about.”
Fifty years after the historic merger between the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, organized labor stands at a crossroads, said Trumka.
The solution? Solidarity.
“What we’ve built together needs to be strengthened and not weakened,” he stated. “I think that what we’ve built together is worth not just maintaining, but defending. And I’m especially proud of what we’ve done to strengthen our movement” in the past 10 years.”
He recalled in detail the national labor federation’s numerous accomplishments during President Sweeney’s tenure, and then turned his focus toward the challenges currently facing America’s working families.
If left unmet, those challenges “truly threaten our future…. We can’t let any employer, any politician or anybody else tear down what we’ve built…. What we must do instead is to keep standing up together, keep fighting together—all of us together. Our obligation as trade unionists in the year 2005 is to take up the fight for every last man, woman and child, and we do that best when we’re united and fighting together. That is what we shall do—fight together and win together in 2005.”
American workers are confronted with a different world and different challenges than their parents and grandparents faced, Sweeney observed. As a result, the federation—at its own convention the following week— adopted a series of reforms that will lead to a restructuring of the labor movement. According to Sweeney, there will be a renewed emphasis on political action and organizing.
For the first time in its history, the AFL-CIO will rebate part of its dues to unions that devise strategic plans for organizing. Also, it will be “building a year-round, year-in, year-out grassroots membership mobilization for legislation and politics.”
American workers are worried about their economic future, said Chavez-Thompson. While they realize that “one of the very best paths to the middle class is union membership,” they haven’t joined up more numbers “because their freedom to join has been compromised.”
Trumka said that organized labor will fight for enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act to help correct the situation, and for other pro-worker issues, including better health care and retirement security.
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