WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leaders of the largest U.S. union federation are set this week to unveil plans to elect worker-friendly lawmakers, recruit nonunion workers and show their power, despite a split in the American labor movement.þþThe AFL-CIO's policy-setting executive council also plans to use its annual winter meeting in San Diego to welcome new unions, showing that the door to the 52-union federation swings both ways after five dissident unions walked out last year.þþ``We have to stay focused on working to build unity rather than letting people drift,'' said one executive council member.þþFaced with a rival labor federation, employer attacks on workers' health and retirement benefits, stagnant union membership and an inhospitable political landscape, the pressure will be on the AFL-CIO leaders to show they can defend their members' working conditions, one labor expert said.þþ``I think that (AFL-CIO President John) Sweeney will have to make a strong statement about the AFL-CIO and how it's strong and still relevant,'' said Gary Chaison, a labor relations professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.þþThe AFL-CIO's relevance, or the lack of it, was one complaint of the dissident union leaders who founded the Change to Win federation, which claims 6 million members. They said the AFL-CIO had not done enough to encourage affiliated unions to organize nonunion workers and had devoted too many resources to trying to elect Democrats unconditionally.þþ``I suspect that there's probably some truth to that -- that Sweeney and the others have been too quick to support Democrats without extracting any commitments from them,'' said Chaison, whose book ``Unions in America'' was published this year. þþPOLITICAL PUSHþþBut the executive council on Monday is expected to unapologetically approve an all-out strategy for trying to win the House of Representatives and the Senate for Democrats by sending volunteers and paid workers to key districts where incumbent Republicans may be vulnerable in November.þþ``This is going to be, if not the most ambitious, one of the most ambitious political programs we've ever had in a midterm election,'' said one labor official.þþWhile labor failed to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004 despite a massive turnout of voters from union households, union leaders are taking credit for helping elect Democratic governors in New Jersey and Virginia last year.þþAlso on Monday, AFL-CIO leaders are expected to announce formally that the 2.8 million-member National Education Association, the largest U.S. union, has allowed its 13,250 local affiliates to join the AFL-CIO individually. The teachers locals could be a welcome boost for the AFL-CIO, whose remaining unions have 9 million members.þþTwo other independent unions, the United Transportation Union and the California Nurses Association, also are ready to affiliate with the AFL-CIO, a labor official said.þþOne union president who won't be attending is Terry O'Sullivan of the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), which is in both federations -- but not for long.þþLIUNA will leave the AFL-CIO ``in the very near future'' but stay with Change to Win in hopes of reversing its thinning ranks in construction work, O'Sullivan said.þþ``If we continue doing what we're doing, we're going to continue to be irrelevant,'' he said.þþThe executive council plans to map out a nurses' organizing campaign on Tuesday by approving an ``industry coordinating committee'' that will enable eight unions that already represent nurses to work together to recruit more nonunion nurses.þþFor the first time in six years, the number of workers belonging to unions rose last year, growing by 213,000, but the union share of the workforce was unchanged at 12.5 percent.þþ
Source: NY Times
