WASHINGTON – The nation’s top labor federation, the AFL-CIO, announced yesterday it would allow rebel unions to retain ties to the broader labor movement at the state and local level.

The decision amounts to a reversal by the AFL-CIO’s president, John Sweeney, who had been seeking to exclude the breakaway unions from the labor movement.

Last month, two large unions, the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters, quit the national federation in a dispute over organizing, leadership, and union finances.

“It’s not these locals’ fault that their national unions left the AFL-CIO, and it’s not working people’s fault,” Mr. Sweeney said. “They shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of a decision by their leadership.”

As the Service Employees and the Teamsters announced their split from the AFL-CIO, leaders of the unions indicated they wanted to retain ties to local labor groups that provide lobbying, political, and strike-related assistance. In addition, many local labor leaders said they were eager to keep those relationships, as well as the dues the rebel unions contribute at local levels.

Mr. Sweeney’s concession was rebuffed as inadequate yesterday by the national leaders of the breakaway unions, who have formed a new group, the Change to Win Coalition.

“Faced with a revolt at the local level, the AFL-CIO has taken a position that uses the rhetoric of unity but is designed to provoke unnecessary division,” the coalition’s chair, Anna Burger, said.

Mr. Sweeney proposed that the unions who have left the national federation could join local labor groups, but would not be able to assume leadership roles. In addition, locals of breakaway unions would have to pay a 10% surcharge on top of the usual dues.

Ms. Burger described these as “poison-pill provisions” and said they were unacceptable.

However, a leader of New York’s central labor council said yesterday that local labor officials who are part of Ms. Burger’s coalition have embraced the AFL-CIO plan, at least in principle. “From all the Change to Win principals in New York I spoke to, it’s welcome news,” the president of the New York council, Brian McLaughlin, said. “If we’re this close, we can figure out a way to get there.”

If the unions that have quit the federation at the national level leave the New York body, it would lose about 20% of its members along with their dues, Mr. McLaughlin said. “We’d be okay. We’d get there, but not without pain.”

In a public show of solidarity, the AFL-CIO unions and the rebel unions will march side by side in the City’s Labor Day parade, he added.