AFL-CIO addresses issues behind the split

Tara Burghart

Wednesday, July 27, 2005 | 9:41 a.m.

CHICAGO -- AFL-CIO leaders have trained their attention on two issues that splintered the labor coalition, passing a resolution that gives locals $22.5 million for organizing efforts and mandates a shift from get-out-the-vote campaigns to year-round politicking.

The resolution, approved by voice vote at the group's convention Tuesday, also calls for training 100,000 union stewards on work sites. The measures are similar to those demanded by the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union before they bolted Monday, taking 3.2 million of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members with them.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka declared that the country's largest union was making "historic changes," but Teamsters and SEIU representatives said it was too little, too late.

The Teamsters and SEIU had complained that the AFL-CIO failed to stop a steep drop in union membership. They wanted more money for organizing, power to force smaller unions to merge and other reforms aimed at adapting to changes in society and the economy.

Now they say they intend to form a coalition to reverse labor's long decline.

The groups already are part of the Change to Win Coalition. Four of the coalition's seven unions boycotted the AFL-CIO convention: the Teamsters, SEIU, United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE, a group of textile, hotel and restaurant employees.

Change to Win Coalition spokesman Eric Hauser said the AFL-CIO resolution Tuesday lacked substance, and Teamsters spokeswoman Leigh Strope said that "it's not enough and it's too late."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, whom the dissident unions had wanted replaced, was defiant in his opening remarks at the convention, which ends Thursday.

"Nobody outside this hall is going to decide our future. We're going to take our challenges, we're going to grow stronger and nobody is going to change that," said Sweeney, who is expected to be re-elected.

AFL-CIO delegates also authorized holding a special meeting soon to discuss how to handle the defections, including the loss of about $18 million a year the two unions had contributed.

The convention marks the 50th anniversary of the merger of the AFL and the CIO at a difficult time for organized labor.

When the AFL-CIO formed, union membership was at its height, with one in three private-sector workers belonging to a labor group. Today, fewer than 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized, and the cloud of the defections hung over the convention.

Several speakers have made passing reference to the dispute.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Tuesday issued a call for reconciliation.

"We must do a difficult thing and agree to disagree and still negotiate operational unity within our own family," he said.