Lyres in Labour – or, look for the union libel

As a 25-year member of the organized labor movement (American Federation of Musicians, Local 433), I find myself one peeved proletarian. Triple peeved, in fact.

Peeve the first. The AFM union card used to be a handsome, impressive thing: hefty and slick – just a hint of lamination – with nicely rounded corners, tastefully colored lettering and a sharply embossed representation of the AFM’s emblem, the lyre. The new version issued this year is cheap and flimsy. The coarse paper could have been made from recycled clarinet reeds, the fuzzy black-and-write lettering appears to be the work of a rather lackadaisical home-office printer, the lyre is fuzzy and unembossed. I can only take comfort in the hope that this degradation occurred in this, my silver anniversary, year by mere coincidence.

Peeve the second. AFM’s parent organization, the mighty AFL-CIO, has chosen this year – my 25th and the year in which Congress finally passed campaign finance reform – to air a TV ad that is Exhibit A in both the case against current campaigns and the one for better commercials. It purports to represent millions of skilled American workers, yet its presentation is laughably amateurish. It is whiny at a time when the organized labor movement needs to project strength. There’s one more thing wrong with the ad. See if you can spot the flaw.

The ad, which AFL-CIO crows about running in eight states, informs the public in each of these states that one of their U.S. senators (the one who just happens to be a Republican incumbent running for re-election) takes special delight in sending good American jobs overseas. In fact, the only thing these senators enjoy more is sending good American jobs overseas so they can be done by children working in inhumane conditions.

One of these senators is Maine’s Susan Collins. This is shocking: I, like many other Mainers, have known Sen. Collins reasonably well for several years and never suspected that beneath that pleasant exterior dwelled a soul that would give Lord Voldemort himself the heebie-jeebies.

Most of us shy away from judging the souls of others, but for my friends at AFL-CIO it is all in a day’s work – at union scale and time and a half for overtime. The reason they make this judgment is that these eight (who just happen to Republican incumbents running for re-election) voted against the Dodd Amendment to the Trade Act of 2002.

This act contains, among a zillion other things (including much-needed protections for America’s vital sugar industry), the provision that gives the president Trade Promotion Authority, or fast track; the power to negotiate trade deals which Congress can approve or reject not alter. It is a power the last five presidents had, but it lapsed in 1994 and was not renewed. For reasons lost in the foggy shroud of history, Congress at that time decided it couldn’t trust the president at that time.

The Dodd Amendment would have required that these fast-track deals guarantee the protection of the rights of workers, including children, according to the Core Labor Standards of the ILO, recognizing, of course, the right of sovereign nations to establish their own standards as long as they strive to improve their standards to those of the ILO. Fifty-two senators voted to kill this amendment; not one Republican voted to let it live.

Instead, 66 senators – including the eight in question – voted for the original version which (note the glaring differences with Dodd) recognized the right of nations to establish their own labor standards as long as they guarantee the protection of the rights of workers, including children, by striving to improve their standards to the Core Labor Standards of the ILO.

The ad also blames the senator-who-shall-not-be-named (although it fearlessly names her by urging Mainers to tell her to stop being so evil) for the 22,357 good Maine jobs that have been lost to Unfair Trade Laws since 1994. Never mind that she didn’t take office until ’97 and Unfair Trade Law most to blame is NAFTA, which was passed in ’93 with the urging of that Democratic president Congress learned not to trust and with the enthusiastic support of Democratic Sen. George Mitchell, the only member of Congress from Maine who wasn’t worried about losing good American jobs overseas.

Amid voices of displaced workers bemoaning their tough luck, the ad notes that it was “paid for by the working men and women of the AFL-CIO,” which brings us to peeve three. Twenty-five years of paying dues to further the cause of live music and I end up bankrolling something that is (you’ve probably spotted the flaw by now) blatantly untrue, not to mention stupidly partisan. The next time those right-wing nuts start grousing about paycheck protection, I’m going to pay better attention.

What, you ask, is this ILO that the U.S. Senate (Dodd or not) accepts as the arbiter of standards regarding the rights of workers, including children? It’s the International Labour Organization, an agency of the United Nations and, on a historical note, the only surviving remnant of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the subsequent League of Nations. It’s based in Europe (Geneva, Switzerland), hence the quaint spelling of Labour. Sort of like the lyres that have me so peeved.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.