FBI Raids NYC Central Labor Council

Feds: Hands Off Labor!

In a sinister dawn raid, more than 20 FBI agents invaded New York City’s Central Labor Council (CLC) offices in Manhattan on March 2. The Feds sealed off the CLC offices for hours as they rummaged through records. Then they hauled away computers, books and records belonging to the labor federation, which includes 400 local unions representing over one million workers. The flimsy pretext for this outrageous raid was to find out whether CLC president Brian McLaughlin “had been given use of an American Express card by electrical contractors,” according to “law enforcement officials” (New York Times, 3 March). In another government attack on the union movement, on March 3 two labor officials in Los Angeles were indicted on charges of illegally using union personnel and funds in an election campaign. These government attacks are a threat to the entire labor movement.

In a statement following the raid, the CLC said that there were “currently no charges or allegations against the Central Labor Council or any of its officers, directors or employees.” The FBI raid on the CLC was part of an investigation of alleged bid-rigging launched in the late 1990s under Democratic president Bill Clinton. CLC president Brian McLaughlin is being targeted—as director of the street lamps division of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3, NYC’s main union of electrical workers—for supposedly agreeing to deals to reduce labor costs for two electrical companies, enabling them to win city contracts.

We don’t think McLaughlin and his cohorts on the Central Labor Council are class-struggle heroes. None of them did a damn thing to support the New York City transit workers strike last December. McLaughlin, a Democratic Party state assemblyman, embodies the trade-union bureaucracy’s collaboration with the capitalists and their politicians—he even campaigned for Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg’s re-election last year. Instrumental in nailing down no-strike labor agreements for the 2004 Republican National Convention, he was cited by Kathryn Wylde of the New York City Partnership and Chamber of Commerce as a labor leader who “has always been reasonable.” But we understand that when the government intervenes into the unions, they are representing the exploiting capitalist class that is the deadly enemy of the working class.

In Los Angeles, the poisonous logic of dragging the unions into the courts of the class enemy is now playing out. Citing the Feds’ investigation, Martin Ludlow resigned as executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor two weeks before his indictment. He is up on charges of illegally using union personnel and funds in his 2003 City Council campaign. Janett Humphries, former president of Service Employees International Union Local 99, was also indicted. In reaching a plea agreement, Ludlow promised to cooperate with the state as it seeks to hang other union officials. In turn, Humphries has initiated her own lawsuit, seeking to implicate higher union officers.

It is a lie that the courts, cops and officials of the capitalist state—whose purpose is to defend the profits, property and rule of the capitalist class—intervene into the unions to protect the members’ interests. Who really believes that this strike-breaking, blood-soaked imperialist state, with its Halliburton/Bechtel/Pentagon sweetheart deals, wants to root out “corruption”? The raid on the New York City CLC and the L.A. prosecutions are just the latest cases in the government’s decades-long effort to strangle the unions in the guise of “fighting corruption,” especially if the unions flex some muscle. Over the past 15 years, the Feds have seized sweeping powers in the Teamsters, Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees and the Laborers’ International unions. They have restructured a number of major local district councils under threat of outright government takeover—often the result of lawsuits initiated by labor “oppositionists” who seek to ride the Feds’ coattails into union office.

We fight for the complete independence of the unions from the capitalist state. The labor movement has plenty of problems, including sometimes corruption, but it’s up to the workers themselves to clean them up. NYC’s powerful transport workers union crippled the finance center of U.S. imperialism last winter, while Los Angeles has had a series of militant strikes over the past few years, largely fueled by immigrants from Latin America who bring with them a history of hard class struggle. These are the forces to which we look to defend our class. All NYC and L.A. labor must demand: Feds/cops hands off the unions!