Columnist Jeff German: Unions are anything but united

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 | 11:02 a.m.

The breakup of the 50-year-old AFL-CIO has created plenty of uncertainty about the face of organized labor in Nevada.

Officially, Nevada labor leaders predicted Monday that labor will be as united as ever in the state.

"Nothing's going to change for us here," said Culinary Union Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor, whose organization is the biggest and most dominant player in the Nevada AFL-CIO.

In spirit, Taylor is probably right, but his opinion oversimplifies what lies ahead for labor.

Change became a certainty Monday after two of the AFL-CIO's largest unions, the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union, bolted from the federation on the first day of its national convention in Chicago.

Taylor's national union, UNITE HERE, which is boycotting the convention, is also threatening to leave the AFL-CIO, along with another dynamic union, the Food and Commercial Workers.

These four unions, along with the Laborers, which doesn't plan to leave the AFL-CIO, have created a new national organization, the "Change to Win Coalition," dedicated to doing something the AFL-CIO has been unable to do for decades -- reverse labor's declining membership.

"Our goal is not to divide the labor movement but to rebuild it so that working people once again can achieve the American dream," SEIU President Andrew Stern said at a news conference in Chicago announcing the departure of his union and the Teamsters from the AFL-CIO.

Together, the five founding members of the Change to Win Coalition represent 35 percent of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members nationwide and a whopping 80 percent of the federation's 165,000 members in Nevada.

Both Stern and Teamsters President James P. Hoffa told reporters Monday that their unions intend to continue paying dues to the AFL-CIO's local labor councils and state organizations in the hopes of keeping those groups together.

But that effort may run into a big roadblock.

At the convention in Chicago, forces backing AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who is assured of being re-elected, expect to pass a resolution this week that would prohibit nonaffiliated unions like the Teamsters and SEIU from belonging to local and state AFL-CIO organizations.

That, as I reported Sunday, has left open the possibility that a new statewide organization outside the AFL-CIO's umbrella would have to be created in Nevada.

But nobody in labor circles here -- including Danny Thompson, executive director of the Nevada AFL-CIO -- has any idea how that would be accomplished.

"It's frustrating," said Thompson, who's attending the convention. "I have no control over any of this. It's a matter of waiting and seeing what happens."

Taylor Monday called the Sweeney-backed resolution a "suicidal" and "stupid" course of action for the AFL-CIO to take.

His boss, UNITE HERE Co-President John Wilhelm, a key strategist in the dissident campaign, urged Sweeney to "recognize the wisdom" of not letting that happen.

"If the AFL-CIO seeks to enforce division at the state and local level, the labor movement's political capacity will be destroyed," Wilhelm said.

Both Taylor and Wilhelm, meanwhile, are convinced that uncertainty over labor's future is better than the alternative.

Said Taylor: "If we keep doing what we've always been doing, we're destined to be in the dustbin of history."