COALITION POLITICS

LABOR AND COALITION POLITICS:The Progressive Alliance

byAndrew Battista

In late 1978 Douglas Fraser, then President of the United AutoWorkers, assembled a new national coalition of over 100 organizationsfrom the labor, civil rights, feminist, environmental, citizen action, andother movements. Called the Progressive Alliance, this coalition wasestablished to "create an alternative to the direction in which our countryappears headed" and to "develop and implement new programs forachieving social, political and economic justice in America.'" The for-mation of the Progressive Alliance generated considerable enthusiasmand hope among its member groups. But the Alliance was disbandedless than three years from the date of its founding, having made at mosta minor impact on U.S. politics. Brief and disappointing though it was,the experience of the Progressive Alliance warrants examination, forit sheds light on two important themes: the problems and prospectsof coalition-building among liberal and progressive political forces, andthe recent history and politics of the liberal wing of the U.S. labormovement.

The origins of the Progressive Alliance lay in three developments:1) defeat of the Labor Law Reform bill, which dramatized the destabili-zation of the postwar accord between capital and labor; 2) the failureof the Carter administration to enact the Democratic Party's 1976 plat-form; and 3) political divisions in the labor leadership during the 1970s.

'Progressive Alliance, "Statement of Principles," Jan. 15, 1979. Unless otherwise identified, alldocuments (memos, letters, minutes of meetings, reports, position papers, brochures, etc.)referred to in these notes are part of a documentary collection from the Progressive Alhancethat was stored in the Washington, DC, office of the UAW and that is now in the author'spossession. I wish to thank Mr. Bill Dodds, formerly Executive Director of the ProgressiveAlliance, and the staff of the UAW Washington office for helping me to track down thiscollection and for consenting to put it in my possession. Research for this paper was facili-tated by a Presidential Grant-in-Aid and a Research Development Committee Grant fromEast Tennessee State Univ.

LABOR HISTORY

Douglas Fraser's decision to organize the Progressive Alliance sprangmost directly from the defeat of the Labor Law Reform bill by Senatefilibuster in late June 1978. Organized labor's top legislative priorityfor the 95th Congress, the modest bill sought only to prevent employerdefiance of labor law in order to make effective the existing right ofworkers to organize and bargain collectively.̂ It nonetheless suffereddefeat in a Democratic Senate "at the hands of an unprecedentedly broadcoalition of business groups" which waged against the bill "one of themost intense legislative campaigns in the history of Congress."^ A crit-ical role in this campaign was played by the nation's largest corpora-tions, including many in the Labor-Management Group and the Busi-ness Roundtable, ostensibly political centers of corporate pragmatism."

Douglas Fraser was the first labor leader to act in response to thisdefeat, initially by resigning from the Labor-Management Group, aprivate consensus-building and advisory body composed of corporateexecutives and union officials.* In his July 1978 letter of resignationFraser denounced the campaign as "the most vicious, unfair attack uponthe labor movement in more than 30 years" and as evidence that "leadersof the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wagea one-sided class war today in this country . . ."* Fraser's letter an-nounced the UAW's intention to "reforge links with those who believein struggle" and to "form new coalitions."^ This was the first publicdeclaration of Fraser's plan to organize the Progressive Alliance; twomonths later it was formally launched.

As David Brody has argued, the genesis of the Progressive Alli-ance can be traced to the destabilization of the postwar settlement be-tween capital and labor:* under this accord unions gained organiza-tional security and workers the prospect of negotiated increases in wagesand benefits along with a system of industrial jurisprudence at the work-place; in return business secured industrial stability and guarantees of

'On the Labor Law Reform bill see the series by Philip Shabecoff in the New York Times, April29, May 15, May 25, June 18,1978; Congressional Quarterly Almanac, vol. 34,1978,284-287-and Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, "Labor U w Reform and Its Enemies," The NationJan. 6-13, 1979.

^The first quoted phrase is from Ferguson and Rogers, 1; the second is from Thomas B EdsallThe New Politics of Inequality (New York, 1984), 128.

'Ibid.'On the Labor-Management Group see William T. Moye, "Presidential Labor-Management Com-

mittees: Productive Failures," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Oct. 1980, 51-66'Douglas Fraser, letter of resignation from the Labor-Management Group, July 17, 1978. The

text of Fraser's letter, together with an accompanying UAW press release, was reprinted inRadical History, Fall 1978, 117-122.

'Ibid.•David Brody, 'The Uses of Power II: Political Action," chapt. 6 of his Workers in Industrial

America: Essays on the 20th Century Struggle (New York, 1980); see especially pp. 245-251.

COALITION POLITICS ^03

its "managerial prerogatives" (i.e., its unilateral right to decide strategicbusiness issues such as pricing, investment, location of production, andtechnical change).' The defeat of Labor Law Reform registered thebreakdown of the economic and political balance of forces that hadsustained this accommodation. Fraser himself viewed this defeat as proofthat business had "broken and discarded the fragile, unwritten com-pact previously existing during a period of growth and progress.'"".

Of equal or greater importance to the formation of the ProgressiveAlliance was the failure of the Carter administration and the Democraticmajorities in Congress to enact key planks of the Party's 1976 plat-form. Fraser and other labor and liberal leaders viewed that platformas "progressive," so they expected major legislative gains when theDemocratic Party captured the White House and retained its substan-tial Congressional majorities in the 1976 elections." By 1978, however,many of these leaders were bitterly disappointed, not only by defeatof Labor Law Reform but also by defeat of common situs picketing,by lack of progress toward national health insurance, and by the resultsof Presidential and/or Congressional action on the minimum wage,the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill, tax reform, and energypolicy." What Fraser termed the "irresponsibility" of the DemocraticParty's elected officials toward the 1976 platform was one of the cen-tral problems that the Progressive Alliance was formed to address."

In Fraser's view, the failure of the Democratic Party to enact itsprogressive 1976 platform reflected three underlying problems in theinstitutional and political structure of the Party. The first was the growinginfluence of business in the Party, due to its "money power" and toan increasingly bipartisan corporate political strategy.'" The secondproblem was the absence of institutional mechanisms by which the

'I have obviously depicted the postwar labor-management settlement in only the most schematicterms. For elaborate and persuasive analyses of the nature and development of this accom-modation see: David Brody, "The Uses of Power I: Industrial Battleground," chapt. 5 ofWorkers in Industrial America; Thomas A. Kochan, Harry C. Katz, and Robert B. McKersie,The Thinsformation of American Industrial Relations (New York, 1986), chapt. 2; and RichardEdwards and Michael Podgursky, "The Unravelling Accord: American Unions in Crisis,"chapt. 1 of Richard Edwards, Paolo Garonna, and Franz Todtling, eds.. Unions in Crisisand Beyond: Perspectives from Six Countries (Dover, MA, 1986).

'"Fraser, letter of resignation."Douglas Fraser, telephone interview, April 8, 1987."UAW Washington Report, Oct. 1978, 3; U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 9, 1978, 80. For

an analysis of labor's record in the House during the 95th Congress see Marcus D. Pohlmanand George S. Crisci, "Support for Organized Labor in the House of Representatives: The89th and 95th Congresses," Political Science Quarterly, Winter, 1982-83, 639-652.

"Douglas Fraser, letter of invitation to the initial planning meeting of the Progressive Alliance,Sept. 19, 1978; Douglas Fraser, telephone interview, April 8, 1987.

"Fraser, letter of invitation; Douglas Fraser, "Revitalized left needed for principled politics againstcorporate power," In These Times, June 6-12, 1979, 18.

LABOR HISTORY

Party's elected officials could be held accountable for enactment ofthe Party platform, a problem symptomatic, in Fraser's view, of thedeplorable lack of principle and responsibility in the U.S. party system.''These two ultimately rested on a third and fundamental problem: thefragmentation of liberal political forces, which dissipated their poten-tial power in the Democratic Party. Hence a "principal motivation"in Fraser's decision to form the Alliance was the need to coordinateprogressive political forces in order to assert their full collective powerin the Democratic Party."

Finally, the origins of the Progressive Alliance lay in the internalpolitics of the union movement, specifically in divisions in the laborleadership during the 1970s. The areas of tension included: the Vietnamwar; the relationship of labor to the Democratic Party; the relation-ship between organized labor and the new social movements (the anti-war, civil rights, women's, and environmental movements); GeorgeMeany's leadership of the AFL-CIO. At some risk of oversimplifica-tion, these disputes tended to align the top leadership of the AFL-CIO(its executive officers and Executive Council majority), with its basein the building and construction trades unions, against a bloc of liberaland progressive labor leaders drawn from unions in the manufacturing,public, and private service sectors.*^

Particularly divisive was a series of decisions by the Federationleadership regarding labor's relationship to the Democratic Party. First,the AFL-CIO opposed the reform process initiated in the Party after

Fraser, letter of resignation; Fraser, letter of invitation; Fraser, "Revitalized left neededF;raser had been concerned with these and other problems in the party and electoral systemssince he assumed the Presidency of the UAW in 1977. In that year Fraser initiated a seriesot meetings between top UAW officials and a group of academic social scientists-includingamong others Lee Benson, George Gerbner, Joel Fleischman, Ira Katznelson, and ChristopherArterton-to discuss problems in (and reforms of) the party system and electoral processsuch as voter registration laws, the low and class-skewed rates of voter turnout, campaigntinance, the absence of a strong issue orientation in election campaigns, and the lack ofparty responsibility. Although these meetings were soon terminated by decision of the UAWtxecutive Board, they were an important influence in the formation of the Progressive Alli-ance. Many of the academic participants in the meetings subsequently played significantroles in the Al hance, and the discussions in the 1977 meetings influenced the Alliance pro-gram. Don StiUman, interview, July 17, 1986, Washington, DC; Stephen Schlossberg, tele-phone interview. Mar. 26, 1987; Lee Benson, telephone interviews. May 9, June 12 1987

Fraser, telephone interview, April 8,1987; Douglas Fraser, "Functions of the Progressive Alh-17T t^'^^ memo of May 3, 1979; Michael Harrington, telephone interview, April 13, 1987.

Information on the intra-labor divisions of the 1970s may be found in Philip Foner, AmericanUiborandthe Indochina War: The Growth of Union Opposition (New York, 1971); JohnHerhng, Change and Conflict in the AFL-CIO,''£)isse/i/, Fall 1974,479-485; Graham WilsonUnions in American National Politics (London, 1979); and Andrew Battista "Politicalf T T / i " Organized Ubor, 1968-1988," paper presented to the 1989 Annu'al Meeting

(W- Midwest Pohtical Science Association, Chicago, April 13-15, forthcoming Polity

COALITION POLITICS 405

1968; second, it refused to endorse or campaign for George McGovernas the Party's Presidential candidate in 1972; and third, it renouncedinvolvement in the Party's 1976 Presidential nomination process.** Un-able to abide the marginalized role in the Democratic Party to whichthese decisions relegated organized labor, the liberal unions acted indefiance of them as an informal labor caucus in support of the Party'sreform process, formed the Labor Committee for McGovern in 1972,and established the Labor Coalition Clearinghouse to coordinate theirparticipation in the 1976 Democratic nomination process."

It was these liberal unions that formed the core of the ProgressiveAlliance. In addition to the UAW, this group included the AmericanFederation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), In-ternational Association of Machinists (IAM), National Education As-sociation (NEA), Communications Workers of America (CWA),Graphic Arts International (GAIU), United Food and CommercialWorkers (UFCW), Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW). Theseunions organized the Progressive Alliance, provided the bulk of itsfunding, occupied its strategic leadership and staff positions, and re-tained a controlling influence over its agenda and activities.^" Withoutdenying the specific and central role of Douglas Fraser and the UAW,the formation of the Progressive Alliance must be understood as aneffort by a larger bloc of liberal unions to establish a framework forlabor politics outside the confines of the AFL-CIO.

The origins of the Progressive Alliance suggest that its nature andpotential significance were threefold. First, the Alliance was conceivedas an anti-corporate political coalition and as an alternative for laborto collaboration with business. Second, the Alliance was establishedas a progressive reform caucus in the Democratic Party in order to pro-mote "party reform aimed at creating a stronger, more accountable,more ideological Democratic Party" and the "transformation of theDemocratic Party into a genuinely progressive people's party."" Third,the Alliance represented a bid by the liberal labor leadership to con-

"William Crotty, Party Reform (New York, 1983), especially chapt. 7 and 131-133; Wilson, chapts.2 and 3.

"Ibid.; see also Alan Ehrenhalt, "The Labor Coalition and the Democrats: A Tenuous Romance,"in Charles Rehmus, Doris McLaughlin, and Frederick Nesbitt, eds.. Labor and AmericanPolitics (Ann Arbor, rev. ed., 1978), 215-221.

"The list of unions in this paragraph does not exhaust either the unions enrolled in the Allianceor the general category of "liberal" unions; it merely comprises the dominant unions in theAlliance, as judged by levels of participation, distribution of leadership and staff positions,and the pattern of financial support for the Alliance. Both documentary and interview evi-dence confirm the claims made in this paragraph about the unions that formed the coreand directive group in the AUiance.

"Fraser, letter of invitation.

LABOR HISTORY

Struct a political role for labor distinct from that played by the AFL-CIO. At the first meeting ofthe Progressive Alliance, in Detroit in mid-October 1978, some delegates proposed the organization of a newpolitical party." The Alliance never officially ruled out this option."However, the third party option was not a live strategic issue in theAlliance and was never seriously discussed.̂ " At the initial meeting Doug-las Fraser had declared that a third party was "not a good idea at thepresent time; it just wouldn't work."" Even apart from Fraser's opposi-tion, there was no substantial support in the Alliance for a third partyventure. But if the Alliance was bound by the pre-existing commitmentsof its partners to be a Democratic coalition, it was at the same timea coalition born of rising dissatisfaction with the current drift of theParty. In launching the Alliance, Fraser proposed that reform or trans-formation ofthe Democratic Party should be the coalition's strategy."Thus the formation of the Alliance was an attempt to establish a progres-sive caucus in the Democratic Party in order to reform its structureand program. The Alliance pursued this party-caucus strategy in fourprincipal ways.

First, the Alliance sought to coordinate the political forces on theDemocratic Party's liberal wing. In the view of Fraser and others, or-ganizational fragmentation and political competition among liberalforces had weakened them and made the Party vulnerable to businessand conservative influence. By providing an organizational mechanismto aggregate the interests and coordinate the activities of liberal forces,the Alliance sought to make possible a reassertion of their power inthe Democratic Party. Fraser conceived this task of coordination asone of rehabilitating the old liberal-labor alliance and relating it to newergroups and movements among youth, minorities, and women.̂ ^

Second, the Alliance promoted a more progressive agenda and pro-gram for the Democratic Party. The Alliance staff prepared positionpapers on such issues as the proposed balanced budget amendment,national health insurance, plant closures, state and local tax reform,and the Equal Rights Amendment and distributed them among Partyleaders and activists by means of a computerized mailing list of some20,000 persons." At the 1980 Democratic National Convention the Al-

"Soiidarity, Oct. 15-30, 1978, 5. {Solidarity is a journal published by the UAW.)"Political Process Commission, "Mandate for the Subcommission on Political Parties," Jan.

16, I70O."Christopher Arterton, telephone interview, April 3, 1987."Solidarity, Oct. 15-30, 1978, 5."Fraser, letter of invitation, 3, and the "Tentative Agenda" appended to this letter.Traser, telephone interview, April 8,1987; Fraser, "Functions of the Progressive Alliance"- Michael

Harrington, telephone interview, April 13, 1987."Douglas Fraser, 'Tunctions ofthe Progressive Alliance"; "Notes of 4/23/79 Meeting" (unsigned

COALITION POLITICS 407

liance submitted an "Economic Bill of Rights," that proposed "extendingto all citizens the basic elements of a decent existence" by means ofpublicly guaranteed economic rights to employment, a living wage, de-cent housing, medical care, a quality education, adequate social insur-ance, and others." The Alliance failed to win its incorporation in the1980 platform.

For more long-term programmatic influence in the DemocraticParty, the Alliance established an Issues Commission to generate in-novative solutions to economic and social issues and to integrate theminto a comprehensive agenda and program.^" Prominent intellectualswere recruited; however, such work as the Commission accomplishedwas not widely circulated in the Democratic Party."

Third, the Alliance moved to develop linkages with the DemocraticParty's liberal and progressive candidates and public officials. TheProgressive Issues Project was intended to provide a source of intellec-tual and political support for Democratic candidates and officials, es-pecially at state and local levels. Also, at the time of its demise the Alli-ance had under consideration a proposal to organize a ProgressiveCaucus in the Congress; the Alliance would supply this Caucus withpolicy advice and political support while the Caucus could press theAlliance's legislative and budgetary goals." These examples indicatesome inclination to establish the Alliance as an organizational basefor the coordination and support of liberal candidates and officialsin the Democratic party.'*

Fourth and lastly, the Alliance sought institutional reform of theDemocratic Party to ensure the accountability of Party officeholdersfor enactment of the Party platform. The objective of "platform ac-countability" was the pivot of Fraser's conception of the DemocraticParty as a "responsible party," one that would be ideologically coherent,programmatically oriented, organizationally strong, and accountable

, to its members.^" At the 1980 Democratic National Convention the Al-

notes of Alliance staff planning meeting); memo from Edgar James to Stephen Schlossbergand Don StiUman, April 9, 1979.

"Progressive Alliance, "Democratic Credo: Economic Bill of Rights" (no date).^"Progressive Alliance, "Instructions for the Commissions," Jan. 14, 1979.^'Among the intelleauals recniited to serve on the Issues Commission were Marcus Raskin, Richard

Barnet, Robert Borosage, William Cannon, Wassily Leontief f, David Gordon, Leonard Rap-ping, Martin Camoy, and Hazel Henderson. Memo from Marcus Raskin and Jacob daymanto Issues Commission, May 19, 1980; Marcus Raskin, "Issues Commission Report" to theProgressive Alliance Executive Board, Oct. 29, 1980.

"Marcus Raskin, memo of April 9, 1980."Fraser himself was thinking along these lines, judged by his memo "Functions of the Progres-

sive Alliance.""On Fraser's and the Alliance's advocacy of "party responsibility" see Fraser, letter of invitation;

Fraser, "Revitalized left needed . . . "; and Progressive Alliance, "Statement of Principles."

LABOR HISTORY

liance submitted a "Resolution for a Commission on Party Account-ability" calling for establishment of a special Party committee to con-sider reforms which would "yield an effective and disciplined effortto implement the Platform of the National Democratic Party. "^' TheAlliance's "Resolution" was adopted by the Convention, and subse-quently the Democratic National Committee created a Platform Ac-countability Commission, one of whose chairpersons was TerryHerndon, a prominent member of the Alliance.̂ *

The success of the Alliance proved a hollow victory. The Commis-sion's final report was a mere two pages in length and confined to gener-alities. Of all the reform commissions created by the Democratic Partysince 1968, the Platform Accountability Commission was almost cer-tainly the least consequential." This outcome is unsurprising. TheProgressive Alliance was officially disbanded before the Platform Ac-countability Commission began its work, leaving the Commissionwithout an organized base of support in the Democratic Party. ̂ *

The willingness of Fraser and other leaders to disband the Alli-ance after they had secured establishment of the Platform Account-ability Commission apparently reflected the failure of this particularreform objective to enthuse, unify, and mobilize the various organiza-tions and constituencies that composed the Alliance. Platform account-ability and party reform were high priorities for a group of union leaders.Party activists, and intellectuals in the Alliance, but seem not to havebeen for other key groups in the coalition, including the civil rightsand feminist organizations and the citizen action groups.

The Progressive Alliance was ultimately without consequence as

Expositions of the doctrine of party responsibility may be found, among many other sourcesm Frank Sorauf, Party Politics in America (Boston, 5th ed., 1984), 341-344 and chapt. 16;and Richard L. Kolbe, American Political Parties: An Uncertain Future (New York, 1985)Part One. Fraser was influenced and supported in his advocacy of party responsibility bypolitical scientists who had participated in the 1977 meetings with the UAW leadership and/orwere recruited into the Alliance. (In addition to those named in note 15 above, this groupalso included Kenneth Prewitt and James Sundquist.) Some academic commentators on theresponsible party model have claimed that there is an affinity between it and parties of theleft or a preference for an interventionist state. Whether or not that is so. Alliance advocatesof party responsibility viewed it as a means to a more progressive (or even social democratic)Democratic Party.

"Progressive Alliance, "Resolution for a Commission on Party Accountability.""On the Platform Accountability Commission see Crotty, 37, 42-43, 107-109. Crotty's discus-

sion, however, fails even to mention the central role of the Progressive Alliance in the estab-lishment of the Commission.

"For an account of the final report of the Platform Accountability Commission, see the Na-tional Journal, May 26, 1984, 1026.

"Even had the Alliance remained in existence to support the Platform Accountability Commis-sion, it is doubtful that genuine platform accountability would have been achieved- at theleast, it would have encountered extremely formidable resistance. See Crotty, 107-109

COALITION POLITICS 409

a reform caucus in the Democratic Party. There is no evidence thatit significantly influenced the structure, agenda, or program ofthe Party.This was due not only to the coalition's brief life-span, but also to prob-lems in the Alliance's Party-caucus strategy that would have limitedits effectiveness even had the Alliance endured.

First, the Alliance's Party-caucus strategy was weakened or evenundermined by a self-imposed prohibition on direct electoral activityby the coalition." This prohibition prevented the Alliance from en-hancing its leverage over the Party's elected officials, either by presentingits own candidates or by extending or withholding support for self-declared candidates, and from making use ofthe opportunities affordedby primary elections to promote its agenda and program and to mobi-lize the Party electorate behind it. The electoral prohibition was im-posed in order to defuse a potentially explosive division in the Alliancebetween supporters of President Carter and supporters of Senator Ed-ward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic Presidential nomination."" Afull-fledged Party-caucus strategy required concerted participation inthe Party's candidate nomination processes; but as a large and diversecoalition the Alliance was exposed to candidate rivalries and dividedcandidate preferences, so that intra-party electoral activity held a sig-nificant potential for disruption of the coalition. Second, the Alliance'sParty-caucus strategy did not directly address one of the most fun-damental sources of the waning power of liberal and progressive polit-ical forces in the Democratic Party: low, declining, and class-skewedrates of voter turnout in both primary and general elections."' Theseand related problems, such as voter registration laws, were formallyincluded in the agenda of the coalition's Political Process Commis-sion."^ In fact the Alliance never attended to these issues, which weresubordinated to the drive for platform accountability. Progressive re-

"When the Progressive Alliance incorporated, it obtained a tax-exempt status that imposed aformally nonpartisan role on it and proscribed direct electoral activity.

"Although disencbantment witb Carter was widespread in the Alliance, some of its member or-ganizations eitber favored Carter's renomination—a prominent example was the NationalEducation Association, which was bound to Carter and Mondale for establishment of theDepartment of Education—or at least were disinclined to challenge an incumbent eligiblefor reelection. Douglas Fraser, "Functions of the Progressive Alliance"; Fraser, telephoneinterview, April 8, 1987; Terry Herndon, telephone interview, April 15, 1987; Newsweek,Oct. 30, 1978, 31.

"See Walter Dean Burnham, The Current Crisis in American Politics (New York, 1983), PartsII and IV; Edsall, cbapt. 5; and Francis Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Why AmericansDon't Vote (New York, Pantheon Books, 1988).

••"Political Process Commission, "Mandate for the Subcommission on Voter Registration andCongressional Reapportionment," January 16-17,1980; Political Process Commission, "Man-date for the Subcommission on Citizen Participation," Jan. 16-17, 1980; Bill Dodds, letterto members of the Political Process Commission, April 1, 1980.

'*1° LABOR HISTORY

form in and of the Democratic Party, if it was possible at all, requireda vast expansion of the active electorate through mobilization of thegrowing and class-concentrated ranks of non-voters, but this was notan immediate desideratum of the Alliance.

Shortly after the Progressive Alliance formed, Douglas Fraserdeclared corporate wealth and power the chief obstacles to equality,justice, and democracy, and "misuse of corporate power" the commonenemy of all the classes and groups in the coalition. He advocated thatthe coalition conduct a "broad yet targeted anti-corporate offensive"in order to recast public debate around the proposition that "corporateirresponsibility is the problem" and to mobilize public support for "cor-porate accountability.""' As a result the Alliance initiated three projects.

The first anti-corporate initiative focused on the role of corporatemoney in politics, and was stimulated by the explosive growth of cor-porate and trade association political action committees (PACs) after1974. The Alliance's Political Process Commission planned to conductresearch into the scale and significance of corporate investment in elec-toral politics, to publicize the issue of corporate campaign money, andto propose changes in the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA).""In early 1980 the Alliance published its research on corporate PACs,"*but thereafter the Alliance was inactive on the issue, and no legislativecampaign to amend FECA was ever mounted.

A second initiative involved the development and promotion ofprogressive alternatives to the economic strategies and policies advancedby corporate and conservative interests in response to the stagflationaryeconomy of the 1970s.'" This task fell to the Alliance's Issues Commis-sion, which established an Economic Policy Subcommission headedby prominent liberal and left-wing economists."^ The Subcommissionmanaged only to produce a few discussion papers and pamphlets, duein part to problems arising from the divergent theoretical and practicalorientations of the economists who directed it."* It is noteworthy, how-ever, that research originally commissioned by the Alliance led to oneof the most important analyses of stagflation and critiques of cor-porate/conservative economic strategies written by left economists in

"Douglas Fraser, "Progressive Alliance Organizing Projects," memo of May 7, 1979."Political Process Commission, "Mandate for the Subcommission on Political Parties "«Edgar James, interview, Washington, DC, July 16, 1986; Bill Dodds, memo of April 1, 1980."Fraser, "Progressive Alliance Organizing Projects"; Fraser, "Revitalized left needed . . . "; David

M. Gordon, "Toward a Progressive Strategy on Economic Issues for the 1980s," Jan. 1980(paper prepared for the Issues Commission of the Progressive Alliance).

"The Economic Policy Subcommission was headed by Wassily Leontieff, David Gordon, GarAlperovitz, and Leonard Rapping. Memo from Marcus Raskin and Jacob dayman to IssuesCommission, May 19, 1980; David Gordon, telephone interview, April 17, 1987

•"David Gordon, telephone interview, April 17, 1987.

COALITION POLITICS 411

the 1980s: Beyond the Waste Land: A Democratic Alternative to Eco-nomic Decline, by Samuel Bowles, David Gordon, and ThomasWeisskopf' developed a strategy of wage-led growth that the Alliancemight have promoted as an alternative to pro-business programs. Itshould also be mentioned that in March 1980 the Alliance sponsoreda well-attended conference in Washington, DC, to examine the cor-porate/conservative attack on social regulation and to devise strategiesfor the maintenance and extension of occupational, envirormiental, andconsumer health and safety protections.*"

The third anti-corporate initiative was carried further and conductedrather more vigorously than the other two. Prompted by influentialstaff members, Fraser and the Alliance's Executive Board early on com-mitted the coalition to a campaign against the economic dislocationsgenerated by plant closings and the mobility of private capital." Whilethis campaign was never governed by an articulated strategy, it cameto have several elements.

The first step was to promote public awareness of the causes andconsequences of plant closure. For this purpose the Alliance commis-sioned a comprehensive study of plant closures and relocations by BarryBluestone and Bennett Harrison and published the resultant report in1980 under the title Capital and Communities: The Causes and Conse-quences of Private Disinvestment.^^ Demand for this study was suchthat the Alliance reprinted it three times within six months and thenpublished a condensed edition to widen its accessibility." (Bluestoneand Harrison's report for the Alliance was later published commer-cially, in revised and expanded form, as The Deindustrialization ofAmerica.^'^ The Alliance also produced a radio documentary and othermedia projects to publicize the issue of plant closings.

"Samuel Bowles, David M. Gordon, and Thomas E. Weisskopf, Beyond the Waste Land: ADemocratic Alternative to Economic Decline (Garden City, 1984). Originally published 1983.See page vi for reference to the Progressive Alliance; also, David Gordon, telephone inter-view, April 17, 1987.

'""The Progressive Alliance," undated brochure; Progressive Alliance, "Regulatory Controversy:The Case of Health and Safety," Mar. 7 and 8, 1980 (packet of conference materials). Theconference was partially funded by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

"Fraser, "Progressive Alliance Organizing Projects." Don Stillman and Edgar James were theAlliance staff members who urged Fraser to pursue a campaign on plant closings and "run-away shops." Stillman had previously published a paper on the issue: Don Stillman, "TheDevastating Impact of Plant Relocations," Working Papers, 5, no. 4, July-August 1978,reprinted in Mark Green, et al, eds.. The Big Business Reader (New York, rev. ed., 1983),137-148.

"Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, Capital and Communities: The Causes and Consequencesof Private Disinvestment (Washington, DC, 1980).

"Raskin, "Issues Commission Report." The condensed version was Barry Bluestone, BennettHarrison, and Lawrence Baker, Corporate Flight: The Causes and Consequences of Eco-nomic Dislocation (Washington, DC, 1981).

"Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America- Plant Closings,

412 UBOR HISTORY

A second part of the campaign was the organization of a new labor-community coalition to combat plant shutdowns and relocations inPennsylvania. In late 1979 the Alliance placed a UAW official inPhiladelphia to organize a Delaware Valley Coalition for Jobs. The Coa-lition was successfully organized and was active in the Philadelphiaarea and at the state level." For whatever reasons, the Alliance did notattempt to replicate this Coalition in other communities or states.

The third component was to assist and coordinate existing stateand local coalitions that were seeking to control or remedy plant closingsthrough community action, legislation, or collective bargaining. Thusthe Alliance convened regional conferences on the problem of plantshutdowns and migrations in Columbus, Ohio in April 1979, in Bostonin January 1980, and in Portland, Oregon in April 1980. All three con-ferences were heavily attended and appear to have galvanized and uni-fied local and state-wide campaigns against plant closings in the rele-vant regions. Demands for more of these conferences outstripped thecapacity of the Alliance to provide them." Also, in January 1980, theAlliance and the Conference on Alternative State and Local Policiesjointly published a "Plant Closings Strategy Packet" designed to aidand coordinate citizen-labor coalitions across the country by providingdetailed information on the status and content of federal and state plantclosing laws and bills, in state and local groups active on plant closureissues, and on resources available to such groups."

The fourth and final element of the Alliance's campaign comprisedinitial steps to promote national legislation to regulate plant closings.The Alliance released the report Capital and Communities in its en-tirety to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and to the Houseand Senate Labor Committees, and Professors Bluestone and Harrisondelivered extensive testimony to the House Committee on Small Busi-ness in early 1980.** The Alliance advocated national plant closing legis-lation. Had the Alliance proceeded further with a national legislative

Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York, 1982). Seepage ix for the author's acknowledgment, though not by name, of the Progressive Alliance.

""The Progressive Alliance" (brochure); "Plant Closings Strategy Packet," edited by WilliamSchweke and published jointly by the Progressive Alliance and the Conference on Alterna-tive State and Local Policies, Jan., 1980, 6.

"Raskin, "Issues Commission Report"; "Notes of 4/23/79 Meeting"; "The Progressive Alliance"(brochure); and "Plant Closings Strategy Packet." The former Executive Director of the Al-liance has judged its plant closings conferences to have been very successful and of consider-able impact; Bill Dodds, telephone interview, June 18, 1987.

"Ibid."Statement of Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison before the House Committee on Small

Business, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Feb. 12, 1980.

COALITION POLITICS

campaign, it could have proposed the controls and remedies recom-mended by Bluestone and Harrison."

Although the Alliance's campaign against unregulated plant closuresand capital mobility was limited and inchoate, it was arguably the mostsignificant and successful activity of any kind undertaken by the Alli-ance. No other Alliance activity generated an equivalent level of out-side interest and response or served as well to relate the Alliance toemergent concerns and mobilizations at the grass roots. Moreover, asa broad coalition of national organizations, most of which had stateand local affiliates, the Alliance was well-suited both to encourage thefurther formation of grass roots coalitions and then to coordinate andlead a national campaign for plant closing legislation. Promising ifhalting steps in this direction were taken by the Alliance before its demise.

The Progressive Alliance aimed its anti-corporate initiatives at im-portant components of business power but they were clearly limitedin design and execution. It is doubtful that the Alliance would havehad the will or capacity to sustain and expand its "anti-corporate offen-sive" had it survived. For even as the Alliance was conducting its anti-cor-porate politics, powerful economic pressures were driving its dominantunions away from the coalition's anti-corporate and reformist orienta-tion. The stagflation, foreign competition and import penetration, andmassive job loss in key sectors that characterized the late 1970s andearly 1980s increasingly turned Alliance labor leaders toward coopera-tion and tactical alliances with employers in order to preserve jobs andmaintain the institutional viability of unions.

An early instance ofthis process, with special relevance for the Al-liance, was the case of Chrysler, which was hurtling toward bankruptcyin 1979, endangering the jobs of 140,000 direct employees and unionmembers. This prospect led Fraser and the UAW to lobby jointly withChrysler to secure Federal loan guarantees, to negotiate major wageconcessions to the firm, and to assume a seat on the Chrysler boardof directors.*" According to one Alliance leader, this pattern of UAW-Chrysler cooperation, however necessary, served to moderate or evenreverse the anti-corporate rhetoric that had pervaded Fraser's inaugu-ration of the Progressive Alliance."

While the Chrysler case was unique in many respects, two otherexamples illustrate the general tendency of foreign competition and im-

"Bluestone and Harrison, Capital and Communities, chapt. 8.'»See Robert B. Reich and John D. Donahue, New Deals: The Chrysler Revival and the American

System (New York, 1986)."Bill Dodds, interview, July 14, 1986, Washington, DC. For a different view see 'UAW seat on

Chrysler Board: What It Means for Workers," Solidarity, Nov. 19, 1979.

^ LABOR HISTORY

port penetration to turn many Alliance unions toward protectionismand political coalitions with business on trade issues. First, after 1978the UAW entered into a lobbying coalition with the Big Three domesticautomakers to obtain quotas on Japanese auto imports; by 1981 thisjoint effort had led to "voluntary restraint" by Japan." In search ofa more long-term solution, for several years after 1980 the primary legis-lative objective of the UAW was "domestic content" legislation to re-quire that a percentage of all cars sold in the U.S. market be composedof American-produced parts." Second, in 1980 eight of the leadingunions in the Alliance also joined the Labor-Industry Coalition forInternational TVade (LICIT), an alliance of large firms and unions inbasic industry that sought more aggressive trade policies, trade law en-forcement, and Federal assistance to industry in order to advance thecompetitive position of U.S. business." A 1983 LICIT report declaredthat". . . cooperative efforts by industry and labor, such as the Labor-Industry Coalition for International TVade, have convinced those ofus involved that an often surprisingly broad range of consensus exists(or can be developed) among labor, management, and government onissues affecting the future of American industry.""

Furthermore, stagflation and deindustrialization also led many Al-liance and other labor leaders to favor the development of corporatistarrangements for management of the political economy. In order tocontrol the burst of inflation in the later 1970s, Alliance labor leaderslike Fraser and William Winpisinger, President of the Machinists union,called for a national incomes policy in which wages, prices, and all typesof income would be subject to controls negotiated among business,labor, and government; admitting that business might not be preparedto accept the new "social contract" entailed in such an incomes policy,Fraser indicated that "if [industry] were willing to take that step, I'dbe willing to work with them."" In the 1980s most labor leaders advo-cated a national industrial policy in which representatives of business,labor, and government would in concert plan microeconomic and cap-ital allocation policies to shape the pace and direction of industrialdevelopment. For organized labor such an industrial policy seemed tohold the promise of preserving jobs in unionized manufacturing sectors

"Reich and Donahue, 244-245."Edsall, 171; I.M. Destler, American Thide Politics (Washington, DC and New York, 1986) 72-73"On LICIT see Kevin P. Phillips, Staying on Top: Winning the Ttade War (New York] 1986)

30-33, 70-71, 149. '"Ibid., 101.""Interview: Douglas Fraser," Challenge, Mar.-April 1979,33-39; "Interview: William Winpisinger "

Challenge, Mar.-April 1978, 44-53.

COALITION POLITICS 415

and of enhancing labor's control over the industrial process even withoutincreasing union coverage of the work force."

The movement of the Alliance's core unions in these latter direc-tions almost certainly weakened their commitment to the strategy ofanti-corporate reformism and contributed to the dissolution of the Al-liance. Thus the critical limitation on the Alliance's prospects as ananti-corporate, reformist coalition was the weak, defensive, and be-leagured position of the labor movement at the time. The most imper-ative pressures on Alliance and other unions in this period were to pro-tect unionized industries, preserve jobs, and maintain their owninstitutional viability, and the most expedient means to these defensiveends were (or were thought to be) alliances with business, protectionism,and corporatist planning arrangements.

However, if such strategies were expedient or even dictated in theshort-run, in the longer run they were unlikely to lift labor out of itsweak and defensive position, for they held little or no potential to re-verse the two most crucial determinants of labor's limited and waningindustrial and political power: the low and declining rate of unioncoverage of the labor force, and the political demobilization of theworking class.**

On April 15, 1981, two years and six months after its foundingmeeting, the Executive Board of the Progressive Alliance officially dis-solved the coalition. In a letter announcing the decision Fraser explainedthat "It did not seem possible . . . to sustain an appropriate level ofinterest and funding for the continuation of the Alliance."" The Ex-ecutive Board's action was foreshadowed several weeks earlier whenFraser decided that he could not continue as chair of the Alliance.^"Indeed, since the Alliance had already been inactive for some months,the Board's decision seems merely to have confirmed that the Alliancewas a defunct organization.

Yet, it might have been possible to salvage the Alliance at the timethe Executive Board acted. Prior to the Board's decision, a plan hademerged whereby Terry Herndon, Executive Director of the NationalEducation Association, would succeed Fraser as chair ofthe Alliance.The plan had Fraser's approval, at least initially, and many members

"Edsall, 237-238."On the first of these problems see Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff, What Do Unions

Do? (New York, 1984); and Michael Goldfield, The Decline of Organized Labor in the UnitedStates (Chicago, 1987); on the latter see especially Piven and Cloward.

"Douglas Fraser, letter of April 27, 198L"Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover, "Liberal Alliance Falls Apart at Strange Time," The

Washington Star, Mar. 23, 1981.

LABOR HISTORY

of the Alliance felt strongly that the coalition should be preserved. Thesuccession plan was nevertheless blocked, vetoed by some Allianceunions." Whatever the merits and potential of the succession plan,it is undeniable that by early 1981 the Progressive Alliance was in astate of disrepair and immobility, and that there was insufficient sup-port among Alliance unions to maintain the coalition. What explainsthe decay and dissolution of the Alliance?

To begin with, the history of the Alliance does not suggest thatits decline was a function of an inherent incompatibility of interestsamong its member groups. Certainly coalition-building was compli-cated by the social diversity, organizational autonomy, and specificityof interests of the main Alliance constituencies (e.g., labor, women,minorities), and some issues did prove, or would in time have proved,divisive in the Alliance. But with the partial exception of the Carter-Kennedy split, which was managed, there is no evidence that the Alli-ance was ever plagued by explosive conflicts of interest or principleor that its demise was a consequence of disputes over substantive issues."

A more signiflcant source of decay, according to some formermembers of the Alliance, lay in the unequal power relations amongthe key groups in the coalition. In this view, the dominant position androle of the unions impaired coalition-building; above all it reduced theinterest and participation of important non-labor groups, notably thecivil rights and some feminist organizations, by relegating them to atoken role and by limiting the coalition's agenda to labor's priorities."

Union dominance undoubtedly shaped the dynamics of coalition-building in the Alliance, and very likely weakened it. The Alliance unionsdid not use their controlling position to shape the coalition's agendaaround the speciflc institutional or segmental interests of labor; suchissues as US. trade policy or Federal labor law were never even raisedin the Alliance. However, while Alliance labor leaders sought to em-

"Terry Herndon, telephone interview, April 15, 1987; Bill Dodds, telephone interview, June 18,1987. Both Herndon and Dodds are of the opinion that it was the opposition of the topleadership of the AFL-CIO to Herndon and NEA that led a few Alliance unions to vetothe plan. The NEA was then and remains outside the AFL-CIO. Douglas Fraser has sinceargued that the Executive Board decision to dissolve the Alliance was the right thing to do,though he has freely granted that the decision was criticized and that many Alliance members,including some on the Executive Board, believed that the coalition should have been preserved.Douglas Fraser, telephone interview, April 8, 1987.

"Christopher Arterton argued persuasively in an interview that the history and demise of theAlliance were not most fruitfully approached in terms of divisions and conflicts of interestwithin the coalition. Christopher Arterton, telephone interview, April 3, 1987.

"Rademase Cabrera, interview, July 16, 1986, Washington, DC; Joann Howse, interview, July15, 1986, Washington, DC; see also Germond and Witcover, "Liberal Alliance Falls Apartat Strange Time."

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phasize the common interests of the coalition's partners, they definedthese in terms of traditional party and class/economic issues (hencethe emphasis on reform of the Democratic Party and on anti-corporateinitiatives), into which gender, racial, environmental, and other priori-ties were not fully assimilated. Thus the problem of union dominancewas not that it permitted labor to pursue particularistic interests butthat it permitted labor to deflne the coalition's general interests.

Insofar as it hampered coalition-building in the Alliance, uniondominance was an intractable problem because it was rooted in theunmatched (within the Alliance) financial resources of the coalition'sunions. A more equal distribution of power and decision-making inthe Alliance would have required a more equal distribution of the finan-cial costs of the coalition, but it is not clear that this could have beenachieved in practice.

On balance, however, the damage from unequal power relationswas limited, and was more a potential threat to the long-term viabilityof the Alliance than a direct cause of its actual collapse. As other formerleaders and participants in the Alliance have credibly argued, uniondominance was acceptable to most non-labor groups, who recognizedthe need for a broad progressive coalition, believed that they wouldbeneflt from it, and understood that only the unions possessed the re-sources necessary to sustain it. '̂'

In this light, the decisive source of the decay and dissolution ofthe Progressive Alliance lay in the shifting political objectives and strate-gies of its leading unions. l\vo types of programmatic and strategicreorientations among Alliance unions, both of which were occasionedby the declining economic and political situation of organized labor,initially undermined their ability to provide effective leadership to thecoalition and eventually deflected them from the very strategy ofcoalition-building with other social movements.

Most Alliance unions focussed on job preservation and industrialrenewal and thus were diverted from reformist coalition-building tocollaboration with employers, protectionism, and corporatist planning.Here it need only be added that this type of reorientation was espe-cially pronounced in the case of the UAW, the founding and alwaysthe principal union in the Alliance. The looming collapse of Chryslerobviously commanded much of the UAW leadership's time and atten-tion from at least mid-1979." More broadly, the deteriorating state of

"Terry Herndon, telephone interview, April 15, 1987; Heather Booth, telephone interview. Mar.20, 1987; Michael Harrington, telephone interview, April 13, 1987.

"Reich and Donahue, 99.

LABOR HISTORY

the domestic auto industry at the time confronted the UAW with mas-sive membership losses: from 1979 to 1981, essentially the life-span ofthe Alliance, UAW membership declined from a bit over 1.5 millionto just over 1.2 million.̂ * These problems meant that Fraser's "own unionconstituents were relying on him to devote his full attention to the parlouscondition of the automobile industry"; a UAW official explained Fraser'sdecision to step down as chair of the Alliance by saying that "Our mem-bership was not going to understand any extracurricular forays.""

The second type of reorientation among Alliance unions was agrowing tendency toward "labor unity" and regroupment in the AFL-CIO. Once again the UAW most clearly revealed this shift. During thelast year of the Progressive Alliance Fraser was involved in negotia-tions with the AFL-CIO leadership (and with the leadership of his ownunion as well) for the reaffiliation of the UAW to the Federation. TheUAW approved reaffiliation through regional conventions held in April1981, the very month the Progressive Alliance was formally disbanded,and rejoined the Federation the following June.'* The temporal coinci-dence of the UAW's reaffiliation and the dissolution of the Progres-sive Alliance led some to see a direct causal relationship between thetwo; others have flatly denied this." While a direct cause and effectrelation is doubtful, the reaffiliation of the UAW epitomized largertendencies that drew Alliance unions away from coalition-building withnon-labor constituencies and toward a partial rapprochement with theleadership of the AFL-CIO.

By the early 1980s the Alliance unions, most of which had beenat odds with the Federation leadership for over a decade, had two keyreasons to restore "labor unity" and regroup inside the AFL-CIO. Thefirst was the escalating management and government offensive againstunionism, ty^pified by the decertification of PATCO and the conces-sion bargaining of 1982. The reaffiliation of the UAW to the Federa-tion was prompted by a desire on both sides "to strengthen labor's rolein American industry and politics at a time of economic distress andmounting conservative successes at federal and state levels.'"" Refer-ring to such problems, a UAW official explained reaffiliation as follows:"We decided we should do what unions always do, which is to be

"Leo Ti-oy and Neil Sheflin, Union Sourcebook (West Orange, NJ, 1985), 3-16, Table 3 71"Germond atid Witcover."See New York Times, May 1, 1981, B16, and July 2, 1981, A14."Bill Dodds, interview, July 14, 1986, Washington, DC; Stephen Schlossberg, telephone inter-

view. Mar. 26, 1987."New York Times, July 2, 1981, A14.

COALITION POLITICS 419

united."*' Generally, as one labor analyst noted in 1979,". . . now thatthe union movement is confronted with serious multiple problems, thereare more issues that pull it together than divide it."*̂

Second, the succession of George Meany by Lane Kirkland as Presi-dent of the AFL-CIO in 1979 provided further grounds for the reaffili-ation of the UAW and for the cessation or reduction of hostilities be-tween union leaders like William Winpisinger or Jerry Wurf, Presidentof AFSCME, and the top leadership of the Federation. The marginal-ized role in the Democratic Party to which Meany's leadership had con-signed organized labor since the late 1960s was one of the deepest sourcesof tension between the Federation leadership and the liberal wing ofthe labor movement. Kirkland's elevation alleviated that basic sourceof tension, for ". . . upon succeeding Meany in 1979, Lane Kirklanddefined his principal brief as the concentration of labor's resources torecapture a dominating position within the Democratic power struc-ture."*^ This newly common desire to restore the labor-Democratic al-liance served to partially reconcile the liberal unions with the new Fed-eration leadership.*"

It also probably sealed the fate of the Progressive Alliance. As muchas anything else, it was the felt need to escape labor's marginalized statusin the Democratic Party that prompted the liberal unions to coalescein the Progressive Alliance. Kirkland's political strategy for the labormovement thus undermined much of the rationale for the Alliance;when the AFL-CIO was again available as the institutional base forthe mobilization of labor influence in the Democratic Party, the utilityof the Progressive Alliance for its liberal unions was greatly diminished.**

The Progressive Alliance represented an attempt by the liberal wingof the union movement to establish an institutional, programmatic,and strategic framework for labor politics alternative to that providedby the AFL-CIO. The liberal labor leadership was unable to sustainthis alternative labor politics in a difficult economic and political situ-ation. Among most Alliance unions, the reformist and social democraticelements in the Alliance program yielded to a more narrow and defen-sive agenda of protectionism and industrial policy. Coalition-buildingwith liberal and progressive groups and movements gave way to alli-

"Ibid."Stanley Plastrik, "The State of the Unions," Dissent, Spring 1979, 147."Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the

US Working Class (London, 1986), 261."Ibid., 261-266; Plastrik, 147."For similar arguments about the demise of the Progressive Alliance, see Germond and Wit-

cover; and Davis, 261-266.

420 LABOR HISTORY

ances with employers, advocacy of corporatist bargaining, and regroup-ment in the AFL-CIO. It would be difficult to exaggerate the centralityof the Democratic Party in the political calculations of the liberal unions;particularly since the late 1960s, the problems and prospects of the labor-Democratic alliance have overarched virtually every political move ofthese unions, including both the formation and the dissolution of theProgressive Alliance.

Particular economic and political difficulties and pressures explainthe inability of the liberal labor leadership to sustain the type of laborpolitics represented by the Progressive Alliance. In general it can besaid that at the time organized labor was in too weak and defensivea position to provide leadership to liberal and progressive political forcesor to seriously promote a social democratic or reformist program. Butit is precisely in relation to the weak and defensive position of orga-nized labor that the Progressive Alliance must be evaluated as an alter-native framework for labor politics. Did the Progressive Alliance rep-resent a political strategy by means of which organized labor mighthave overcome its weak and defensive position?

For organized labor as a whole, several problems have for sometime underlain its economic and political weakness: (1) the low anddeclining overall rate of unionization of the workforce; (2) the geo-graphical and sectoral concentration of union membership and the con-sequent geographical and sectoral limitation of union influence; (3)the segmentation of labor markets and the stratification—by income,skill, race, and gender - of the wage-earning class; (4) the political dis-organization and demobilization of the working class; and (5) thebureaucratization of unions. These problems set limits on the powerpotential of the union movement; they are crucial because they beardirectly on the very bases of labor's economic and political power:numbers, organization, solidarity, militance, and money. Any signifi-cant recovery of labor's social role and political power requires the reso-lution of these problems."

However necessary and worthy the Progressive Alliance was on othergrounds, it did not address these critical sources of organized labor'seconomic and political weakness. In fact it is difficult to see how the

"For substantiation of the claims made in this paragraph, see Wilson, chapt. 8; Burnham, PartsII and IV; Edsall, chapts. 4 and 5; Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right TUrn: The De-cline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics (New York, 1986), chapts. 2and 7; Goldfield, Part I; Piven and Cloward, chapt. 5 and Epilogue; Davis, chapts. 2, 3,and 7; and David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, DividedWorkers: The Historical TYansformation of Labor in the United States (Cambridge, 1982),chants. 5 and fi anrt Fni'Inoncchapts. 5 and 6 and Epilogue.

COALITION POLITICS 421

political Strategy embodied in the Alliance could have contributedmaterially to the resolution of labor's specific problems, as some criticsrecognized at the time the Alliance was formed." Indeed, a major poten-tial pitfall of the pursuit of coalition politics by the liberal unions wasthat it might have been, or become, a substitute and compensation forthe difficult work of resolving labor's most serious internal problems.Instead, liberal labor leaders turned to the leaderships of non-labororganizations and formed a "leadership alliance" among the already-organized. In a word, the politics of the liberal labor leadership in thelate 1970s remained a politics of organizational elites rather than ofmass mobilization. Here lies the crucial limit of the political will andcapacities of progressive unionism.

"See the important articles by Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, "The State of the Unions,"The Nation, April 28,1979,462-465; and by Stan Weir, "Doug Fraser's Middle Class Coali-tion," Radical America, Jan.-Feb. 1979, 19-29.