By Gregg Robinson
Nationally and locally two holes have opened up for labor in the Democratic Party. With Joe Biden’s decision to step down, arguably the most pro-labor president in recent history will no longer be in the White House. Locally, the death of Becca Taylor has removed a strong labor supporter from the leadership of the local Democratic Party. What happens next in both these areas places labor, as the old curse says, in interesting times.
At the national level, the risk is that a Kamala Harris administration would be attracted to following the lead of Barack Obama unless pushed by labor. That is, Harris will be tempted to combine DEI appeals with a bow to corporate elites like those out of Silicon Valley. Obama’s strategy was to mobilize communities of color, the young, and white college-educated voters, and give rhetorical support to labor, but appoint neoliberals to economic positions. The labor movement can’t afford this approach again. To fight this real possibility, two strategies are necessary. First, labor needs to create a coalition of solidarity and push the party for appointments of pro-labor supporters into strategic offices. Second, it needs to demand the Democratic Party follow the kind of economic populism championed by Ian Haney-Lopez (see my previous discussion).
Solidarity, If Not Forever, Then When?
In this election, as many have noted, the vote in the Rustbelt will be crucial, giving the labor movement one source of leverage in this very working-class part of the country. Labor’s ability to speak to and turn out the vote of blue-collar workers in this area will be pivotal, but unions need to get something in return. This is where Elizabeth Warren’s line that “Personnel are Political” is key. In return for this help, unions need to get guarantees of appointments to labor important positions. This would mean not merely a verbal commitment to these policies as we saw under many previous Democratic administrations, but a specific commitment to appointing not just pro-labor personnel, but pro-PROGRESSIVE labor personnel.
For example, two of the candidates on the short list of VPs, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Mark Kelly of Arizona, have problematic records on key labor policies. Shapiro has notoriously supported vouchers for public education, a toxic position for teacher unions; while Kelly is among only three Democratic Senators who voted against the PRO-Act (though NOW he claims he supports it). These are just two examples of where the labor movement needs to push back against anti-labor appointments OR get some specific compensations in return. .
We desperately need the largest and most influential unions to come together to make these kinds of demands. What most people do not know is that the three largest unions in this country are in the public sector: the National Education Association (NEA), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). The next largest are private sector unions, the Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which, combined, represent less than half of what the NEA alone represents!
The public sector unions tend to be among the most progressive inside the labor movement, supporting environmental reforms, redistributive tax policies, and were among the first to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. However, instead of holding out for Democratic Party commitments to pro-labor/pro-progressive personnel appointments, they were among the first to endorse Harris. This is in contrast to the United Auto Workers (UAW) where President Shawn Fain has held out for stronger pro-labor commitments before jumping on the Harris bandwagon. There is still time for labor to make a commitment to solidarity modeled on Brother Fain’s approach, but the clock is ticking. Solidarity among public sector unions needs to be more than just a word our leaders speak, but a reality they practice.
Left Economic Populism
In addition, labor needs to push the Democratic Party to a commitment to a left populism that combines aggressive attacks on the rich with an interpretation of DEI issues that unites ALL workers no matter what their ethnicities. This is a left populism that corporate Democrats hate. These elites will want Kamala to avoid the “class-war” rhetoric that this Economic Populism requires because it scares them. Instead, they argue to downplay class inequality as an issue, and push issues that don’t threaten their economic interests like abortion, anti-racism, and defense of democracy.
Of course we need to address these latter issues, but this needs to be in the context of a platform that speaks to the anger and despair of working-class people who have been left behind by the economic changes of the last half century. It also involves following the research by Ian Haney Lopez, who has argued that the most effective approach to racial issues is to focus on how the corporate elite has used race to divide us so that they could ship our jobs to China, hammer our unions, and give themselves tax breaks.
If the Democratic Party cannot muster the courage to speak this language of economic populism, the Trump/Vance Republican Party certainly will. A coalition of progressive unions can save the Democratic Party from its corporate wing by using the power of solidarity to demand this language be at the heart of the current campaign.
San Diego
At the local level, the tragic death of Becca Taylor as head of the County Democratic Party has produced in San Diego a microcosm of what was just described at the national level. Taylor was a strong supporter of labor in the local Democratic Party, and with her death a hole in local party politics has opened up. In many ways the need for solidarity among progressive unions at the national level is even greater at the local level.
The person who has taken over for Taylor is Kyle Krahel-Frolander, a Harvard-educated political activist from North County. Krahel-Frolander is employed by Mike Levin as his Deputy Chief of Staff, and is a hard-working Democratic Party activist, but he does not share the day-to-day connections with labor that Taylor had. Krahel-Frolander can be expected to be the face of pragmatic insider politics in San Diego. In Krahel-Frolander’s Linked-In profile there is a list of the causes he believes in. Nowhere on this list is anything connected to labor, workers, or the union movement. As to economic populism, as a young activist 15 years ago during the Great Recession, Krahel-Frolander was calling forthe nationalization of the large banks to break their power. That was then, and in the ensuing years he seems to have become more politically “responsible.” Under his leadership, which is likely to be in effect at least through the election, we can expect an intelligent, dynamic, and mainstream approach to winning elections for Democrats. But this approach is not likely to be comfortable with economic populism.
The ability of labor to push local Democratic leaders to take a more economically progressive approach is limited by the lack of union solidarity in the local party machinery. Most unions have used the Democratic Party like it was a filling station: when it was needed, union leaders would stop by to get its tank filled with support for a particular issue or candidate, but after this there was no sustained presence in the local party structure. This is again particularly true of public sector unions, which also have some of the largest memberships in our community.
The only union that has taken the need to have a sustained presence in the Democratic Party and supported that need with real resources is Laborers Local 89. During the last election in March, they committed serious money to supporting a slate running to become members of the County Democratic Party. Unfortunately, this slate focused largely on electing local Democratic officials like mayors and council members rather than progressive union activists. In this context it is likely that the newly elected Laborers slate will only reinforce the pragmatic orientation of Krahel-Frolander.
We need a local version of what was just described at the national level: public sector unions in San Diego need to form a coalition that will commit serious resources to a regular presence in the Democratic Party. We cannot leave it to the Laborers as the only union with real skin in the local party game. Our public sector unions have the resources that would make the Democratic Party more likely to support strongly progressive positions, not just on issues related to labor, but also on the environment, homelessness, Gaza, and housing. The only thing missing is solidarity among these unions that moves beyond episodic participation in the party’s elections. The filling station approach to the Democratic Party only leaves the gas tank of pro-labor/pro-progressive politics inside it running on empty.
The old saying that “nature abhors a vacuum” presents Labor both at the national and local levels with both threats and opportunities. The worst of these threats is that without progressive union solidarity, the only voices speaking to working-class anger will be Trump’s and Vance’s. With this solidarity, however, progressive reforms both in Washington, D.C. and San Diego can become real possibilities. Eugene Debs, over a century ago, said what is still true today: “Without union solidarity nothing is possible , but WITH solidarity, nothing is impossible.” Let’s hope our local union movement has learned from history.
Gregg Robinson is a long-time activist, president of the San Diego Labor Democratic Club, vice president of the San Diego County Board of Education, retired Grossmont College Sociology professor, and a member of the AFT Guild, Local 1931 Retiree Chapter.