When most of us think of politics, the first thing that comes to mind is presidential or congressional elections. Nonetheless, the election late last month of John Sweeney as president of the AFL-CIO may be a more significant catalyst for change in the lives of most workers than many glitzier races.

After Lane Kirkland retired as president of the AFL-CIO, Kirkland’s designated successor, Thomas Donahue, faced an unprecedented electoral challenge from John Sweeney, the president of the Service Employees International Union. Donahue was the candidate of the labor establishment. He wanted to continue the federation’s traditional conservatism in foreign affairs and was far less interested in internal debate than was his challenger. He argued that organized labor is already so vulnerable that airing internal disagreements would lead to its demise. Sweeney replied that candid debate is needed both to revitalize the union movement and to help it reach out to new constituencies.

For many Maine residents, this race probably seemed like much intramural sound and fury. Though unions have been an important factor in such large Maine industries as paper and ship building, they are much less salient than in the state of my birth, Michigan. During my decade in this state, I have been amazed at how much antagonism there is to unions even on the part of many workers.

While I do not share this aversion, labor under Kirkland and his predecessor, George Meaney, has helped fuel the hostility. In the glow of the post-Cold War era, we often forget that the leadership of the AFL-CIO was one of the most hawkish forces in U.S. politics. Meaney was an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War. In a quieter and more deceitful fashion, the federation’s leadership also worked hand in glove with the Central Intelligence Agency to promote in foreign nations the same sort of company unions which U.S. labor law forbids.

Domestically, the union movement became increasingly myopic as well. After a burst of organizing activity in the 1930s and 1940s, the large industrial unions concentrated on assuring good benefits and salaries for their members while neglecting the growing ranks within the service industries. In their internal affairs, these unions also increasingly became hierarchical bodies with leadership styles analogous to their corporate brethren. Union conventions and executive salaries and perks mimicked the corporate pattern.

This form of unionism served its members adequately for a time. Wages and benefits in the largest mass production industries dramatically outpaced other workers through the 1950s and 1960s, though even then some union dissidents chafed at their lack of workplace power and the narrow focus of their leaders. The dissidents were right. Workers excluded from the union parade could be more easily recruited as strike breakers once corporations decided to attack labor. The weakness of foreign labor — especially in Third World nations — has allowed U.S. firms to relocate high productivity factories abroad but pay wages which are a tiny fraction of U.S. standards. Unions can properly place some blame for their current plight on corporate greed and trade agreements, but they must also acknowledge their own contribution to this process.

Today, even where workers are organized, they must engage in humiliating concessionary bargaining with employers just to stave off foreign competition. Wages have fallen and unemployment has grown within the industrial sector. Labor could have pursued a different strategy during the last two decades, including building alliances with foreign labor and organizing service sector workers in an effort to keep all wages high. The challenge from such technologically innovative nations as Japan and Germany could have been better addressed through seeking a larger voice in corporate management and an employee share in ownership. Had organized labor been pursuing a democratic strategy all along, it would have been far better equipped to promote more progressive trade agreements.

Despite labor’s past failings, I doubt that this economy can ever achieve prosperity or social justice without a vigorous union movement to contest the concentreated power of multinational corporations. At the level of national policies, this means support for legislation which makes union organizing a more fair and equal process and forbids permanent hiring of replacement workers. Those who have opposed such legislation in the past, such as Sen. William Cohen, on the ground that it would disrupt the “level playing field” between labor and management, are simply closing their eyes to the enormous power globalization and concentrated wealth have given corporate ownership.

Striker replacement legislation and fairer labor laws would give workers a chance to form and join unions, but they would not force workers to support unionization. Unions are unlikely to attract many new workers until they change some of their ways. Too many unions still deny the rank and file any effective voice in policy, show no interest in organizing unorganized workers, and downplay qualitative concerns about worker control and the hours of work. No one union election can by itself reverse these trends, but John Sweeney’s recent victory may at least open up some of these issues. Maine workers, both union and nonunion, have an important stake in this process.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor.