Our Union Leaders Keep Dropping the Ball on Radical Change

This week, union leaders voted against including Medicare For All in the DNC's platform. What gives?

This week, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) platform committee held a virtual meeting to hammer out the details of the party’s 2020 platform, and to attempt to find some common ground between the party’s increasingly divided conservative and progressive wings. Some of its members insisted that the end result represents the party’s boldest, most progressive platform ever, which very well may be the case; when desperately trying to hold onto power while meekly propping up the status quo has been your whole thing for decades, the bar is already set pretty low. 

Even as the younger generations of politically active voters and non-voters have become increasingly radicalized and begun demanding sweeping change from their leaders, the Democratic Party’s establishment has shied from their demands at every turn, instead folding in on itself like a creaky carnival ride at the end of the neoliberal country fair, sticky with cotton candy vomit and children’s dashed dreams. The success of the Bernie Sanders campaign shocked and horrified them to the extent that they rushed to destroy it, but now that the Democrats have realized that, in order for Biden to win the presidency, they might actually have to get people to vote for him, they’ve been quietly tweaking their tune.

The platform committee’s discussion touched on the recommendations of the Biden-Bernie Sanders Unity Task Forces that were dreamed up as an effort to bridge that yawning gap between the centrists backing Biden and those who support Bernie Sanders’ more urgent left-leaning agenda, but boy oh boy did that idea fall flat on its ass once it came down to votin’ time. 

During the meeting—which it bears mentioning took place during a global pandemic, in the midst of a mass unemployment wave, and weeks away from a nationwide eviction crisis—the Committee members voted 125-36 against adding Medicare for All to the party’s platform. Proposals to expand Medicare to children and all people over 55 and to legalize marijuana also went down in flames—because why wouldn’t the Democrats want to avoid giving healthcare to the country’s most vulnerable citizens during a pandemic or meaningfully addressing the horrific problem of mass incarceration and lingering fallout from the government’s racist drug war during a massive popular uprising for Black lives?

As disappointing and infuriating as it was to see these political animals ruin yet another generation’s chances at survival, it did not come as any surprise. At this point, anyone who still holds out hope that the Democratic Party will save us should slide into my DMs, because I’ve got a bridge to sell them. However, what really stuck out to me was seeing how the labor leaders on the committee had capitulated to those establishment interests. 

That original Biden-Sanders task force on the economy was co-chaired by Rep. Karen Bass (a “no” who holds a 98% lifetime score from the AFL-CIO) and AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson, who was not on the DNC platform committee and has been very vocal in her support for Medicare For All. The end result emphasized just how much of an outlier Nelson often is in the highest levels of organized labor—and how much we need her politics and perspective right now.

Among the other “no” votes were the elected leaders and officers of powerhouse unions like the American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry, National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García, and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers President Lonnie Stephenson. 

Anand Singh from UNITE HERE Local 2 and longtime labor activists Michelle Deatrick and Michael Lightly were also on the committee, representing the interests of working people; they each voted “yes.”

To be fair, these leaders were undoubtedly trying to represent the interests and opinions of their membership, as is right and proper. What they have failed to realize, though, is that no union is a monolith, and Medicare For All is popular with more than 85% of Democratic voters—many of whom just might be teachers, healthcare workers, and electricians. Despite the pushback that’s grabbed most of the headlines around the matter, Medicare For All has long been popular with a significant chunk of the labor movement (as well as non-unionized workers across the country). 

(I should mention here that I don’t have any agenda here in my support for universal healthcare besides wanting less people to die. I’m not a fan of the Democrats or the Republicans or any politicians in general, but if we’re stuck with these jagoffs for now, then they’d better make themselves goddamn useful and stay out of the way when the people make their demands known.)

It's been a major talking point for the past four years, and union leaders and rank and filers have come down on various sides of the issue. According to the site Unions for Single Payer Health Care, 637 union organizations, including union nationals, union locals, and labor councils, signed on to support HR 676, the 2019 Medicare For All bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers. In 2019, the AFT and the NEA were both official endorsers for Rep. Pramila Jaypal’s HR 1934 Medicare For All bill, alongside a plethora of other major unions like National Nurses United, United Mine Workers of America, the United Auto Workers, and the American Federation of Government Employees.

But just this week, the presidents of NEA and AFT voted against including it in the party’s platform. What happened?

We’ve seen similar inaction in the ongoing call for the AFL-CIO and its member unions to disaffiliate from the International Union of Police Unions and kick cops (and ICE agents, and corrections officers) off its membership rolls. As grassroots coalitions and collectives of rank and filers, labor activists, and a few elected leaders (hi!) have tried to force the issue, the federation as well as many of its affiliated officials have refused, instead pushing a reformist liberal narrative around “working together” to make things better (and presumably persuade their cop members to stop murdering Black people). 

It’s been disappointing and frustrating to see, because there is such a clear moral choice in front of us right now, and the people we are supposed to trust to lead us are botching the opportunity to acknowledge the movement’s racist past (and present) and show that they are truly, fully committed to justice. To see them fumble the Medicare For All ball the same way feels like another defeat. 

Some of this circles back to the cozy, infinitely problematic relationship between organized labor and the Democratic Party. Politicians will always default to serving the rich, the privileged, and their assorted corporate interests; any crumbs they toss down to the working class and the poor is a bonus, not a feature. It doesn’t matter whether they vote blue or red; capitalism always wins. The labor movement depends on the Democrats to advance their agenda through legislative means, and the Democrats count on the union vote to keep them in power. 

It’s a useful arrangement for both, but in both instances, it means that much-needed resources are poured into political campaigns for empty suits while the actual workers are left to fend for ourselves. There is so much rot at the top that needs clearing out, and I’m hoping that the battle for the 2021 AFL-CIO presidency kickstarts that process. (Nelson 2021!).

We can start making moves now, though. I know it’s probably pretty funny to see an anarchist talking about elections as any kind of valid tactic, but we’re not talking about an explicitly anarchist project here, we’re talking about the labor movement in all of its ideological vastness and historical creakiness, so hear me out: if you’re a union member and are fed up with the way things are going, run for your local council.

Run for whatever elected positions opens up, and get all your comrades to do the same. You want to know how my union, the Writers Guild of America, East, became the first AFL-CIO affiliate to pass a resolution calling on the federation to expel IUPAA? Because I’m on the council, and so are a number of other young leftists, and we pushed it through. If they're not going to listen to us, then we've got to take the power back and do it anyway. 

Ultimately, I believe in the labor movement. I believe in the collective power of my union siblings. I believe that we will win. But I also believe that we deserve better from our leaders, and that if they can’t step up to the plate and take real, radical action to protect and fight for the rank and file and the working class as a whole, then we’re going to need to make some big changes around here.