When the Democratic National Committee chose Charlotte, North Carolina as the site for its 2012 DNC Convention, some union bosses’ eyebrows were raised (as well were those on the extreme Left) with the DNC’s decision to go union-free. While the underlying issue of the Charlotte choice may be a union rift playing out between AFL-CIO unions and the C2W union because Charlotte is becoming a big pain in the ass donkey for Democrats.
Now, it seems the AFL-CIO’s Building & Construction Trades Division, which comprises the majority of construction trades unions and their 2.5 million members, will be sitting out of the union-free convention.
[Via the Associated Press]
About a dozen trade unions plan to sit out the 2012 Democratic convention because they’re angry that it’s being held in a right-to-work state and frustrated that Democrats haven’t done enough to create jobs.
The move could pose a larger problem for President Barack Obama next year if an increasingly dispirited base of labor activists becomes so discouraged that it doesn’t get the rank-and-file to the polls in the usual strong numbers.
The unions — all part of the AFL-CIO’s building and construction trades unit — told party officials this week they are gravely disappointed that labor was not consulted before Democrats settled on Charlotte, N.C., where there are no unionized hotels.
“We find it troubling that the party so closely associated with basic human rights would choose a state with the lowest unionization rate in the country due to regressive policies aimed at diluting the power of workers,” Mark Ayers, president of the building trades unit, wrote in a letter to Democratic Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
While Charlotte was picked over six months ago and the unions waited so long to decide to boycott—which leads one to believe there may be some other reason than the one cited by Ayers—the DNC really, really blew it when they didn’t check with their corporate union sponsors before deciding on Charlotte.
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