Employees of the nation’s largest labor union federation, the AFL-CIO, got a taste yesterday of a grim phenomenon now commonplace in corporate America: massive downsizing and layoffs.

During meetings at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, more than a third of the federation’s 424 employees learned that their positions were being eliminated as part of a restructuring drive aimed at reversing the declining influence and membership rolls of the labor movement.

“It’s absolutely devastating,” said Lori Calderone, an official with the Newspaper Guild, a union that represents nearly 200 AFL-CIO staffers. She attended sessions yesterday where about 100 of the guild’s members were told their positions are being “defunded.” In all, about 167 AFL-CIO workers will lose their jobs through layoffs, early retirement, or attrition, she said.

Ms. Calderone said almost all of her union’s members wore black yesterday in mourning for the staff who will be forced out. “It was a very strong show of solidarity,” she said. “Everyone knew this day was coming.”

The job cuts are part of a high-profile power struggle within the labor movement. The president of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney, is facing an aggressive challenge from five large unions that contend the labor federation has become top-heavy and is doing too little to recruit new members.

In response, Mr. Sweeney has proposed focusing more resources on organizing and politics. He has proposed a new fund of $15 million devoted to those endeavors.

“There’s lots of budget shifts, staff shifts, and staff cuts,” Lane Windham, an AFL-CIO spokeswoman, said yesterday. “A number of programs are being merged and streamlined.”

The federation’s political and field mobilization divisions are to be merged into one, as are its policy, safety and health, and legislative departments. “There’s obviously a lot of overlap,” Ms. Windham said.

Ms. Windham acknowledged that the looming cuts have hurt morale at the labor group’s headquarters. “A lot of people felt uncertain,” she said. “It’s a very difficult day. So many people here have done terrific work for the union movement.”

Ms. Windham stressed that the restructuring calls for 61 new positions to be created, primarily to boost organizing campaigns. The net loss of jobs will be about 100, or roughly a quarter of the federation’s staff, she said.

Ms. Calderone said severance negotiations are continuing. “We expect and hope they will fund incentive packages that will help make this humane,” she said.

Mr. Sweeney’s leading critics were largely quiet yesterday as the ax fell at AFL-CIO headquarters near the White House.

The best known of Mr. Sweeney’s opponents, Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union, declined to comment yesterday. However, after the broad outlines of Mr. Sweeney’s plan were presented to reporters last week, Mr. Stern said it didn’t go far enough.

“You don’t find real teeth or specifics,” Mr. Stern complained Friday in a blog frequented by AFL-CIO critics. He said even if the federation’s 57 unions were to agree on a reform plan, “this AFL-CIO leadership team would not be the right group to carry it out.”

Mr. Sweeney, 70, has headed the AFL-CIO for a decade and is up for reelection at a union convention in July. Some dissenters are urging a top official at a large union of hotel, restaurant, and laundry workers, John Wilhelm of Unite Here, to make a bid for the top AFL-CIO job.

Mr. Wilhelm has been vocal in his criticism of the current federation leadership, but he has declined to comment on a possible challenge.

As AFL-CIO officials held emotional meetings yesterday with staff members affected by the layoffs, Mr. Sweeney was in Paris attending a conference sponsored by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development. The labor chief spoke at a panel discussion titled “Globalization, Outsourcing, and Structural Adjustment.”

Mr. Sweeney called for stronger labor standards in developing countries and in free trade agreements. “One way to stop the race to the bottom is to eliminate the bottom. Another way is to simply block off roadways that take us there,” he said.

When an audience member accused Mr. Sweeney of advocating protectionism, the labor leader replied, “If that’s protectionist, then Sweeney’s happy to be a protectionist.”

While in Paris, Mr. Sweeney also briefly joined union picketers outside a stockholders meeting for a minerals company that has been accused of anti-union activity, Imerys.

Ms. Windham said she had no details about Mr. Sweeney’s travel schedule.

Told of the Paris trip, Ms. Calderone of the Newspaper Guild said, “You’re kidding?” She said Mr. Sweeney had been invited to address a gathering of the guild members on the AFL-CIO’s staff. “We’ve asked him to come speak to the rank and file. We’re not holding our breath,” she said.