Less than 10% slated for organizing.
By Marc Steiner
The Real News (5/24/19)
A copy of the coming year’s AFL-CIO budget baffled many activists when it was released not officially. It dropped the percentage of money dedicated to organizing new workers from 30 percent of the total budget to less than 10 percent, this all being in the course of the face of increasingly diminished power of unions in our country, addressing drop in their membership while they confront a bevy of new laws making it even harder to organize. Most of the budget seems to be dedicated to lobbying and backing candidates. But where are unions now? How do they not live but survive? How are they once again going to become a potent political force in our country representing the working class of America? How does that happen?
We are joined once again By Bill Fletcher, co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal, scholar, columnist, longtime activist, former President of TransAfrica Forum who also served as Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO. He’s authored numerous books, including “They’re Bankrupting Us!”: And 20 Other Myths About Unions, Solidarity Divided, The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Relations, 1934-1941, and his most recent book, a mystery novel, The Man Who Fell from the Sky. Welcome, Bill. Good to have you back with us here on The Real News. …