May Day Books Blog: The 1990s Labor Party

Thursday, February 27, 2025

The 1990s Labor Party

Panel on the Labor Party

Attended by over 1,000 people on-line, this 2/20/25 seminar by four former leaders of the Labor Party (LP) and Labor Party Advocates reflected back on what happened, and perhaps what could happen in the future. The LP was an attempt to build a labor-based Left electoral party in the 1990s. The warning by one of the founders of the LP, Tony Mazzocchi of OCAW, was repeated several times by the speakers. Mazzocchi said that if the LP didn’t succeed, workers would be drawn to right-wing populism. That has come true with the second Trump victory and the 2024 electoral collapse of the centrist Democratic Party. It reflects a well-known historical point that liberal or liberal-left weakness and ignoring the working-class encourages fascism and the Right.

The event was hosted by DSA’s National Labor Commission, the UE, UAW Region 9a, Socialist Register and Project Rank & File. The LP at one time encompassed about 1/3^rd of the U.S. union movement, along with community groups and local community chapters. The 1996 LP was formed in Cleveland partly in reaction to Clinton’s NAFTA deal. It is not to be confused with the 1973 “U.S. Labor Party” – a group of rightwing brown-shirt LaRouchites who still haunt the Left.

The host for the panel was Stephen Maher, an editor for Socialist Register. Presentations were made by Mark Dudzic, a former national organizer of the LP and member of OCAW, now leader of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare. He described the history of neo-liberalism, starting under Carter in the late 1970s, up to the present day. SUNY economist and former vice-chair of the NY LP Howard Botwinick discussed the successful writing of the pro-labor, social democratic program of the LP as a member of the program committee. Jenny Brown, an activist on abortion and workfare and former chair of the Alachua LP, who now seems to be in DSA, talked about how to work with differences in united fronts. This centered around having ‘the right to abortion’ in the LP program, though without mentioning the term ‘abortion’ as a concession to Catholics in the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. Carl Rosen, president of UE, quite rightly reflected on the mistakes of the LP and a possible way forward for labor.

My takeaway from the experience, as I was part of a Twin Cities LPA/ LP chapter, was that the LP failed to run candidates. Our group of many unionists, ex-unionists, retired unionists, leftists and supporters were instead directed to door knock for single-payer. This was a useless project which petered out like a dying swan. Rosen in his analysis made the same point about the LP’s failure to run candidates. Carefully choosing a weak point in the electoral system, perhaps an urban area that had a strong labor union base, and represented by a right-wing or weak Democrat or weak Republican, could have led to a breakthrough. Instead the LP put up too many barriers to running. Rosen thought that independent labor candidacies were still possible, citing a recent near-successful run by a pro-labor independent. Everyone called doing this by the wonky term ‘proof of concept’ – i.e. proving in the real world that an idea has legs.

Others on the panel, like Dudzic, said perhaps the LP was ‘premature.’ Botwinick thought perhaps things should have ‘moved slower.’ Rosen disagreed, especially now as things have gone past the point of Mazzocchi’s prediction coming true. He said we needed to “move faster,” in effect challenging the glacial, bureaucratic pace of the union movement and its addiction to Democrats. Some union leaders on the other hand, like the head of the Teamsters, have chosen to tail Trump’s anti-labor intentions and the flawed nomination of Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor Secretary, who has already back-peddled on the PRO Act.

The first working-class target: Federal workers and their unions. The second target: OSHA, NLRB, DOL and other labor agencies. The third target: Immigrant labor in the millions. The fourth: Private and local public sector unions and the whole U.S. working class. So… Occupy the Public Service parts of the Government!

A link to the 1.5+ hour podcast was given to attendees. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSpoJrmjp4Y

A link to an LP Reader .pdf is here: Labor Party Reader. National unions on board were: Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, United Mine Workers, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, American Federation of Government Employees, Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, California Nurses Association, Farm Labor Organizing Committee.