AFL-CIO Leaders Approve Plan To Draw Members
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CHICAGO – AFL-CIO leaders passed a resolution yesterday to increase union organizing and political action across the country – issues that drove two major unions out of the organization a day earlier.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka declared that the country’s largest union was making “historic changes.”
But representatives of the two unions that dropped out said it was too little, too late. When the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union left Monday, they took 3.2 million of the AFL-CIO’s 13 million members with them, and labor officials say other unions may soon follow.
The resolution approved by voice vote yesterday earmarks $22.5 million for affiliates to use in organizing. It also calls for training 100,000 union stewards on work sites and shifting the focus of political work from get-out-the-vote efforts during election cycles to year-round politicking at all levels of government.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney – whom the dissident unions wanted replaced – was defiant in his opening remarks at the group’s convention yesterday. “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,” Mr. Sweeney said. He is expected to be re-elected tomorrow.
The Teamsters and SEIU had complained that the AFL-CIO had 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 competing labor group to reverse labor’s long decline.
They already are part of the Change to Win Coalition. Four of the coalition’s seven unions boycotted the 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 yesterday lacked substance, and Teamsters spokeswoman Leigh Strope said that “it’s not enough and it’s too late.”
