Need a change in NY labor leadership

To the editor:

Recent reporting in the July 24 edition of The Chief effectively highlights the urgent need for a change of direction (or leadership?) within the NYC labor movement.

At the same time that we should all be celebrating and learning from the incredible and deep organizing in the Twin Cities, where community organizations and the institutional labor movement successfully mobilized a powerful general strike against the deadly ICE occupation, we are finding about the disappointing contrast with NYC labor heavyweights District Council 37 and Service Employees International Union 1199.

Reporting by The Chief and republished reporting from New York Focus highlights a grave problem where many NYC union officials clearly see themselves as separate from the workers they represent.

From DC 37 leaders cutting out and ignoring rank-and-file members (even blatantly retaliating against them for trying to organize directly amongst each other rather than solely through staff or elected leadership), to 1199 leadership secretly collaborating with exploitative corporate healthcare bosses to improve PR in exchange for email lists and easier access for staff organizers, the NYC labor "officialdom" seems to forget which side they are supposed to be on.

This demonstrates a deep fear of their own members, no regard for the intelligence and wisdom of their own members, and a belief (shared with the boss) that their own rank-and-file members still need to be managed rather than empowered. I have heard firsthand the president of a prominent private-sector NYC union local say in an organizing training that "the number one job of a union organizing should be managing workers' expectations."

This outlook is not only demeaning and elitist, but a dead-end for the labor movement.

Who really is the union? Unions are not institutionalized nonprofits or leadership structures. Unions are rank-and-file workers united together to build worker power and directly confront capitalism and exploitation.

We must all remember that.

Paul Brown

The author is a member of the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY.