AS BILL CLINTON'S impeachment probe gets underway in Washington, America's unions are trying to arouse some passion from their own members for Democratic candidates in this month's Congressional races. Despite some lip service in recent years to a more independent political stance, the AFL-CIO (equivalent to the TUC) and its main affiliates are still stuck in an abusive relationship with the pro-big business Democratic Party.
One bright flicker on the political horizon, however, continues to be the newly-formed US Labor Party. Defiant in its opposition to politics-as-usual, the Labor Party's National Convention meets in Pittsburgh during 12-14 November.
The Labor Party developed in response to the failure over the past 20 years of the trade union movement to deal with the offensive of big business. The Democratic Party moved further to the right, implementing NAFTA, privatisation, and anti-union legislation. A small section of the unions started to look for an alternative and, in 1996, the Labor Party was launched.
New unions have come towards the party recently, but progress continues to be slow - there are no obvious signs that the Labor Party will make a qualitative breakthrough in the immediate future. However, while largely invisible to the broader population, the Labor Party is becoming a signficant force in the labour movement, one that has achieved a certain stability in its first two years of existence. 'We've shown that we're here to stay', party leader Tony Mazzocchi said recently. 'Most third-party efforts are launched with great fanfare but soon collapse. They never even get to a second convention. Our institutional support is growing; we have more unions involved now than when we started'.
Certainly, the party has sunk quite solid roots in three or four national unions, but much of the labour movement remains untapped potential. With little or no media capability, the party relies on a hard-core group of activists to spread the word. Since the Founding Convention in 1996, some activists have lost patience and drifted away, citing the party's inability to grow substantially or to involve itself in a wide range of struggles and campaigns. 'It's like we're all standing outside the empty ball park', said one party member recently, 'complaining that no one's in there rooting for the team'.