28
care benefits increased from 18 to 78 percent.
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Throughout the 1980s and 1990s labor, led by
the United Auto Workers and Sweeney of the SEIU, became increasingly tied to business in
changing the framework of the health care debate from focusing on social justice to stressing
economic competitiveness. In the 1993 health care debate, the AFL-CIO assiduously avoided
endorsing any particular plan, and the Steelworkers also declined to endorse a single-payer
system.
Reinvigoration and Advocacy
Labor and business have therefore been affected by economic and political changes that
have forced leaders to rethink their political orientations and strategies. There has been a
precipitous decline in trade-based unions in the last 20 years.
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The service and public employee
unions that have enjoyed rapid growth are less likely to embrace bipartisan brokerage. Party
reforms that contributed to increasing party polarization and the rise of the right have also
prompted union officials to rethink their traditional broker role and move toward more
progressive politics and adversarial strategies. At the same time, the enactment of FECA and
other campaign reforms created new opportunities for unions to contribute to campaigns through
the creation of PACs and issue advocacy.
The decline of trade labor has been partially compensated for by the development of
public sector and service unions. Government employees are covered under different labor laws
81
Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, “A New Labor Movement in the Shell of Old?” in The Transformation of U.S.
Unions: Voices, Visions, and Strategies From the Grassroots, in Ray M. Tillman and Michael S. Cummings, eds.,
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999): 9-25, 15.
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Tim Bonfield, “Health Care No. 1 Cause of Strikes,” Cincinnati Business Courier 7 (May 21, 1990): 1; “Unions
and Health Care,” Business and Health 9 (August 1991): 8-10; Steve Early, “Labor’s Health Problem: While
Fighting Givebacks, Union’s Can’t Lose Sight of the Big Healthcare Picture,” The Nation 277 (July 7, 2003): 20.
83
Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union Members Summary,” (January 31, 2004), at
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
. Accessed April 29, 2004.
Convention