AFL-CIO using its muscle in stimulus debate

David Strow

Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2001 | 10:28 a.m.

Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the national AFL-CIO, calls the latest recession -- and its post-Sept. 11 deepening -- "the worst we've seen in decades."

The recession had already cost 1.1 million workers their jobs before Sept. 11, Trumka said; another 750,000 were put out of work following the terrorist attacks.

The blow of these layoffs, felt by households across the country, fell disproportionately on those workers represented by the AFL-CIO. Of the 750,000 post-Sept. 11 layoffs, union officials estimate at least 210,000 were their members. And officials acknowledge the true number of union layoffs is probably higher.

"It is a fact many employers are taking advantage of 9-11 with layoffs," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

The terrorist attacks themselves took the lives of another 630 AFL-CIO members.

The landscape isn't a heartening one for the AFL-CIO, as the national labor organization meets in Las Vegas this week for its 24th biennial conference. Yet the organization's top officials insisted Monday morning that organized labor is only growing stronger in the midst of crisis. Since the attacks, AFL-CIO-affiliated unions have organized 45,000 new workers, they said.

"What's going on will strengthen our organizing efforts," Sweeney said. "Hundreds of thousands of laid-off workers now understand the need for (job) protection. Maybe younger workers ... will realize they can't resolve this (labor-management issues) by themselves.

"If unions aren't there for working people in this nation, who will be?"

But what about the workers who lost their jobs after Sept. 11 despite union membership? Sweeney and other union officials pointed toward assistance programs organized by unions across the country, such as Culinary Union Local 226's "Helping Hand" center, which helped provide benefits to 10,000 laid-off Las Vegas workers. The number of workers being trained at the Culinary's job training center is up by a third since Sept. 11, Sweeney said.

The AFL-CIO is appealing to its members to unify for another purpose -- a political one. The union is embroiled in a political battle over the economic stimulus package now being debated by Congress, and hopes to bring its considerable political power to bear.

The AFL-CIO favors the Democratic version of the stimulus package -- a bill that focuses on extending unemployment benefits and insurance coverage for laid-off workers, worker training, and increased investments in public infrastructure and hard-hit local and state governments. The Republican version of the bill, already passed by the House of Representatives, focuses instead on tax relief for corporations, in an effort to stimulate business spending.

Not surprisingly, that prompted AFL-CIO members to launch a verbal broadside at the GOP leadership.

Trumka called the Republican measure "shameful and astonishing." Sweeney called the Bush administration "the most anti-worker administration in recent memory."

The AFL-CIO is trying to use its Las Vegas convention as a vehicle for increasing the pressure on Congress. The 1,000 attendees, for example, will have access to a phone and computer bank, allowing them to express their opinions to their congressmen.

Sweeney wouldn't rule out the possibility the AFL-CIO would try to mobilize its laid-off members to lobby Congress -- or even march on Washington, D.C.

"There is a very intense grassroots lobbying effort going on," Sweeney said. "We are working with Sen. Daschle and Congressman Gephardt, and hopefully we can achieve legislation that's a substantial improvement (over the House version).

"I don't think the Republican stimulus package in the House will be the one that's implemented."