The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 69/No. 26           July 11, 2005  
 
 
AFL-CIO faction fight may split labor federation
(feature article)
 
BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
AND SAM MANUEL
 
The factional struggle in the top AFL-CIO officialdom over how to reverse the decline in the dues base of its affiliates appears headed toward a split in the labor federation. On June 15 five international union presidents announced that their organizations had formed a bloc outside the AFL-CIO. This “Change To Win Coalition” includes the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Laborers, and UNITE HERE, which account for about 35 percent of the AFL-CIO’s membership.

A few days earlier, the executive boards of the UFCW, SEIU, and UNITE HERE authorized their officers to quit the federation. UFCW president Joseph Hansen indicated they would first mount a fight against AFL-CIO president John Sweeney’s reelection bid at the federation’s July convention in Chicago. Sweeney, however, is expected to have enough votes to win another four-year term.

Leaders of the new grouping blame the current AFL-CIO leadership for not putting enough resources into organizing new members. In 1995 Sweeney, then head of the SEIU, was elected president of the federation on the pledge to reverse the membership drop. The slide has continued, however. In 2001 the half-million-member Carpenters union walked out of the AFL-CIO, complaining that “despite the strong words” the leadership had failed to stem the losses.

Union membership in the United States stands at its lowest in decades—12.5 percent of the workforce. At its high point in 1955, when the American Federation of Labor merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, union membership was 33 percent of the workforce. Today the rate stands at 13 percent in manufacturing, and 8 percent in privately owned companies as a whole.

While presenting itself as more responsive to the needs of workers, the Change To Win group, led by SEIU president Andrew Stern, a former Sweeney protegé, proposes the same basic course as the current AFL-CIO leadership.

The new group’s platform calls for spending $60 million, half the federation’s budget, on union-organizing efforts. With that money it proposes the AFL-CIO “rebate” half of the dues paid by its affiliates to be used for organizing drives.

The new formation also advocates accelerating the move toward union mergers. Recent examples of this trend are the fusion of the United Steelworkers union with the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE), and the merger between UNITE—which organized garment and textile workers—and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union (HERE).

The AFL-CIO issued a statement noting that its proposals and those of the rival grouping “are more alike than different in their goals and principles.” It said the federation’s plan includes a “strategic organizing fund” providing so-called rebates to affiliates.

If rival union federations come into being, the two formations may raid each other for members. Officials on both sides have made such threats, the May 19 Business Week reported.

At the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) convention in late May, where he was a featured speaker, Sweeney said the defecting unions were “dividing and weakening” the union movement, and cited CBTU president William Lucy’s opposition to the disaffiliation move.

Presenting himself as a champion of “diversity,” he condemned the proposal by the Stern-led group to cut back the AFL-CIO Executive Council from the current 54 to 13 or 16 members—to include only the heads of the largest unions, which would reduce the number of Blacks and women on the body. Sweeney announced that the AFL-CIO would host a national “summit on diversity” before its July convention.
 
 
Related articles:
Behind rift in AFL-CIO  
 
 
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