If America would like to see the millions of people who lost their jobs over the past year finally get off the unemployment line, you would hardly know it by the actions of our labor organizations. The AFL-CIO is currently waging a war on Wall Street and the companies that employ many of the 11.5 million AFL-CIO members in the United States. Given the track record of the AFL-CIO and its president, Richard Trumka, the outcome won’t be pretty.
Today the AFL-CIO will hold their “March on Wall Street,” a 10,000-person protest in New York City to show support for taxes on bankers’ bonuses, financial transactions, and private equity and hedge funds. And earlier this month, Trumka wrote a derisive op-ed in the Wall Street Journal attacking private equity firms for supposedly reaping big profits while the portfolio companies’ employees lost jobs and the bondholders lost money.
These tactics are nothing new, because in his long career as a labor leader, Trumka has often resorted to overbearing tactics. After spending more than seven years in the coal mines of Southwestern Pennsylvania, Trumka became the youngest United Mine Workers president and claimed he would work cooperatively towards reform. Yet instead, he led a strike against the Pittson Coal Company, which led to the arrest of 3,000 miners and only served to cement his image as an old-school, labor-boss bully.
Why should we listen to Richard Trumka? He isn’t exactly the ideal messenger for honest criticism of business. When, under Trumka’s watch, the AFL-CIO allegedly laundered over $100,000 for the re-election campaign of Teamsters President Ron Carey against James Hoffa–does that name ring a bell?– Trumka pled the fifth and refused to address the allegations.
And now is not the time for the typical tough-guy talk we have come to expect from Trumka. Specifically, his numerous statements demonizing “corporate bosses” and Wall Street only serve to strain employer-union relations rather than create positive discussion and change. Instead of working to build stronger relationships with big business, Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO are simply attacking the companies. Trumka launched a verbal assault on business in the Wall Street Journal, a bastion of free market ideology and the antithesis of big labor’s ideology. Additionally, he and the AFL-CIO are encouraging their members to continue the attacks on Thursday with “yelling and chanting” on the businesses’ doorsteps. Does the AFL-CIO want to start a conversation, or just create more animosity?
Aside from Trumka’s empty rhetoric aimed at business, he has some of his facts wrong, too. In his op-ed, he failed to note the numerous companies that have thrived due to private equity investments, such as Dollar General, Michael’s, Burger King, and AutoZone, to name a few. These companies experienced–and in many cases continue to experience–growth while under private equity ownership, but none were mentioned in Trumka’s diatribe. He also missed the January 2009 study that found that “companies purchased by private equity firms also generally outperformed national and industry averages in the growth of their total sales,” which was “accompanied by significant new job creation.”
The policies espoused by Richard Trumka and his ilk in the labor movement won’t help Americans get their jobs back–nor will their tactics of focusing on their so-called solutions for the economy and needlessly attacking the very companies that provide unionized workers with salaries and benefits. Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO should clean up their own house and find ways to participate in meaningful conversations about labor relations–and avoid the cheap political stunts in the style of the old-school labor bosses.