Keep it up, I love it: Infighting Distracts Unions at Crucial Time

From The New York Times:

With their allies controlling the White House and Congress, the nation’s labor unions should be making hay. Instead many unions are making war — largely with one another — in the biggest, nastiest surge of labor fratricide in decades.

With some union leaders condemning other leaders as dictators and Darth Vaders, business leaders are smiling. Every million spent by unions to bash one another depletes their coffers for battling corporate America and Republican political candidates.

“The other side doesn’t have to take any shots at us,” said Amy B. Dean, a longtime union leader and an author of a new book on reinvigorating organized labor. “We’re killing ourselves.”

Many union officials acknowledge that the infighting is undercutting two of labor’s biggest objectives: having Congress enact pro-union legislation and organizing millions more workers to reverse labor’s long decline.