Charities Shouldn’t Treat Unions as if They Were Lepers

To the Editor:

Something is clamorously missing from the detailed debate in The Chronicle about the juxtaposition of non-profit organizations with labor unions in the various “payroll protection” proposals floated in more than 20 states (“Muzzling Charities by Mistake?,” May 21; “California Vote: Losing Proposition for Charities?,” June 18; Letters, July 16 and July 30).

That something is the distance from unions that non-profits explicitly or subliminally express. The clear implication is that as far as non-profits are concerned, organized labor has bad breath, if not leprosy. God forbid that non-profits should be perceived as sympathetic to, much less in cahoots with, unions.

What’s going on here? Is ignorance of American history so deeply ingrained that non-profits are unaware that organized labor has fought for many of the same causes as voluntary organizations — decent housing, voting rights, access to health care, educational opportunity, the alleviation of poverty, etc.?

Sure, labor unions have had their share of corruption, but that is no more reason to ignore their towering contributions than it would be to disparage non-profits because of the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy and William Aramony, or the American government because of Teapot Dome, or business because of the savings-and-loan debacle.

Also, non-profits by now should be awake to the fact that their own ranks are becoming increasingly unionized — nurses and home-health-care workers, Red Cross staff, Legal Aid Society attorneys, arts and science museums, and innumerable social-services agencies. This may give some non-profit administrators indigestion, but others are beginning to recognize that workers who feel that their interests are well-represented are usually more productive.

The intellectuals (liberal and otherwise) who were estranged from unions after the post-World War II heyday have begun reuniting with the labor movement since the election of John Sweeney as president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in 1995. Labor teach-ins have been held at colleges and universities. Hundreds of college students have joined in “union summers,” as they did during the civil-rights movement of the 1960s.

Foundations, hardly bastions of radicalism, have recognized that although labor is smaller than it once was, it still represents some 40 million family members, trillions of dollars of assets, and is a growing force in securing the rights of immigrant and other exploited workers. More than 50 foundations of all sizes have established the Working Group on Organized Labor and Community, and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. itself has hired a full-time staff person to serve as liaison to foundations.

Isn’t it time that non-profits shed their coyness, abandon their affinity with the union bashers who broad-brush orga nized labor as a “special interest,” and explore the vast stretches of ground they hold in common?

Richard Magat
Visiting Fellow
Yale University Program on Non-Profit Organizations
New Haven, Conn.