Leaders of the nation's 58 largest unions will gather in Las Vegas next week to talk about leadership, shrinking membership and ways to reinvigorate the AFL-CIO--the organization that has linked and strengthened them for the last 50 years.þþÿUnity is our greatest asset, and we shouldn't do anything to undermine it,ÿ said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, 70, who is seeking re-election.þþBut the Executive Council meeting he's walking into is not expected to be a model of harmony.þþWhile the official agenda includes wide-ranging discussions on job losses, health care, minimum-wage fights with high-profile corporate giants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and the battle to prevent the privatization of Social Security, there will likely also be contentious discussion about Sweeney's leadership.þþAnd whatever happens in Las Vegas won't stay there. It will set the stage for the AFL-CIO's three-day convention in Chicago in July, where 2,000 delegates will vote on a president and any changes to its structure.þþGrowing dissension in the union's ranks is threatening Sweeney who tried to undercut it Thursday with a pre-meeting press conference in Washington, where he emphasized that the union needs him and the stability he represents.þþBut factions of the AFL-CIO have become vocal in pushing for changes in response to membership declines and waning political and economic power.þþÿWe haven't grown enough,ÿ said Sweeney, who said he wants to cut membership fees and promised his team would escalate labor's political role to help Democrats in 2008. ÿWe have a detailed plan to get there and we bring a lot of assets to this effort from our 2004 political effort, which was our biggest and most aggressive in history even though we didn't win the White House.ÿþþIt is a twist of fate that finds Sweeney fending off complaints that the AFL-CIO is a bloated bureaucracy that ignores union leaders. Sweeney was first elected in 1995, succeeding Lane Kirkland, who was accused of losing touch with the rank and file and failing to stem labor's losses.þþThough Sweeney has stirred a number of reforms, and markedly boosted labor's ability to get its supporters to the polls, many unions are facing hard times.þþUnions today account for 7.9 percent of the nation's private workforce and 12.5 percent of all workers, a modern-day low. In the 1950s, one-third of all workers belonged to a union.þþIn another twist, Sweeney's greatest challenge comes from Andy Stern, who succeeded him as head of the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) when Sweeney took the AFL-CIO presidency.þþA major reason for labor's current pulse-taking was Stern's warning last fall that the SEIU, the nation's largest union, might quit the AFL-CIO unless it carries out major reforms.þþAt the time, Stern called for the merger of smaller unions, for giving the AFL-CIO power to oversee unions' bargaining and organizing and for unions to stick to their core industries rather than recruit new members wherever possible.þþHe envisioned the labor organization umbrella shrinking from its current 58 unions to about 20.þþIn reply, Sweeney issued a call for solutions from unions, union members, and anyone interested, and the ideas have flooded in--many of them posted on the AFL-CIO's Web site.þþSome urged a return to the freewheeling organizing days of the 1930s. Others said that today's unions need very different solutions. Some said there are too many unions, and others fumed at the idea of forcing unions to merge.þþSome wrote high-minded essays, and some penned blunt summaries of what's gone wrong for organized labor.þþÿAlmost all of them point out the ways in which the movement has failed,ÿ said Bob Bruno, a labor expert with the Chicago Labor Education Program of the University of Illinois.þþSimilarly, the proposals struck Bruno as exposing ÿhow little movement there is in the movementÿ and ÿhow little cooperation there is among unions.ÿþþOne proposal backed by the Teamsters Union and supported by several others seems to have gained ground and may become the boilerplate for some of the reforms offered by Sweeney.þþThis is a plan to cut unions' contributions to the AFL-CIO by up to 50 percent so they could put the money into organizing. Such a move would gut much of the AFL-CIO's work, however, leaving it largely in charge of labor's political and public relations work.þþThe goal of the plan, explained Greg Tarpinian, a consultant for the Teamsters who helped prepare it, is that unions would get their contributions rebated from the AFL-CIO only if they put the money into concrete organizing efforts.þþBut critics say such an effort would simply allow unions to cut costs, and would not force them into more cohesive organizing efforts.þþWhat's the chance of the SEIU going on its own?þþÿThey've worked themselves to the edge and they are going to be forced to jump off the cliff,ÿ suggested one high-ranking labor consultant and critic of Stern's efforts, who asked not to be named.þþThat, however, is not so clear.þþAt best, SEIU officials have publicly committed themselves to keeping their options open.þþAs Tom Balanoff, president of SEIU Local 1 in Chicago and the union's 107,000-member Illinois State Council, explained at a recent meeting with labor activists, his union is very much at the crossroads on its ties to the AFL-CIO.þþAfter hearing him explain the SEIU's proposals, several at the meeting on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago wondered out loud about the danger of making too many changes too soon.þþHow realistic is it, one activist asked, to expect unions across the U.S. to come together when that is not always the case in Chicago?þþBut Balanoff was adamant about the need for change, and dramatic change.þþÿFive years from now, I don't believe that half of you will be here,ÿ he said firmly, ÿthat's how fast things are failing apart.ÿþ
Source: Chicago Tribune
