Antiwar Labor Pains (Page 2)

This article inaugurates a new series, "Waging Peace," covering the movement that is emerging across America--in union halls, in churches, on campuses, on the streets, even in some corporate and government quarters--to oppose war on Iraq.
   --The Editors

Meanwhile, rank-and-file groups similar to NYCLAW have sprung up in Albany, Washington, Detroit, Portland and Seattle. And while the uniformly progressive San Francisco Labor Council went firmly on the record against Bush's overall war on terrorism in August, its activists also fuel the very involved San Francisco Labor Committee for Peace and Justice.

But the growth of antiwar activity is uneven and is leaving some gaping holes. In Los Angeles, where the county federation has earned a progressive reputation on local and domestic issues, there have been no antiwar initiatives coming from the leadership. "You can sense a real antiwar sentiment in the union halls," says a local SEIU organizer. "But apart from individuals trying to hook up with each other, there's been no real attempt at significant organized action."

Similar stories come from other urban labor councils. When George W. Bush came to Cincinnati in October to deliver a televised policy statement on Iraq, about 3,500 protesters rallied outside. But only about 150 of the demonstrators came from the ranks of organized labor. "A lot of our community coalition partners were at that demonstration," says Dan Radford, a member of SEIU Local 7 (Firefighters and Oilers) and executive secretary-treasurer of the Cincinnati Central Labor Council. "But it hasn't really come up as an issue at the council. It's sort of funny because even some of the more conservative unions have not shown much enthusiasm for Bush on this war with Iraq. But at the council level it's just not been discussed very much at all." Indeed, Radford says, the most dynamic local antiwar figure comes not from labor but from show business. Television ringmaster Jerry Springer, a former liberal mayor of Cincinnati, gave the most fiery antiwar speech at a recent Democratic get-out-the-vote rally.

In Seattle, the King County Labor Council, which played a high-profile role in the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization, took the opposite tack and has actively endorsed antiwar activity. The council's executive secretary-treasurer Steve Williamson was a lead speaker at the October 26 Seattle peace rally, which brought out as many as 5,000 people.

"The national [AFL-CIO] didn't really want to deal with this issue, after pretty much supporting whole hog the war in Afghanistan," says Steve Hoffman, a member of the municipal employees' union who also holds a seat on the King County Labor Council and is a leader of Seattle's Organized Labor Against the War. "But now they see the way the war has been used to cut jobs, to call in the government on the ports strike, just the amount of money being spent on this. The AFL is finally coming under pressure from below, with more and more peace resolutions being passed at the level of county labor councils and those being proposed inside the international unions."

Hoffman helped to ratchet up that pressure by shepherding a successful antiwar resolution through to adoption in August by the 500 delegates and guests of the Washington State Labor Council, the first such statewide statement.

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