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Consensus lacking among plans to revamp AFL-CIO

Date Posted: May 13 2005

WASHINGTON (PAI) - An AFL-CIO revamp plan, issued by its top three leaders, calls for more money for organizing and mobilizing, year-round issues campaigns, more coordinated strategic organizing and voluntary union mergers.

The 27-page plan, released April 28, will go before federation leaders at the Executive Council in June, spokeswoman Suzanne Folkes said.

The plan keeps the Executive Council intact but lodges more power over daily AFL-CIO operations in a smaller Executive Committee of 18: leaders of the 15 largest unions, the president and two others.

And the new plan also reiterates a prior federation standard that each union should spend at least 30 percent of its budget on organizing. That would produce spending of $500 million per year by international unions alone, it said.

The plan builds on debates that began last June after Service Employees President Andrew Stern called the AFL-CIO outmoded and too loose. He said it should be revamped or junked. The new plan is designed to revamp the federation and counter current anti-worker political realities, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said in its introduction.

"The narrow losses of Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 made it plain the labor movement's growing political effectiveness could not compensate for its loss of membership density," Sweeney said,

Stern later said in a statement that the new plan has holes, and that he and his allies wanted more than Sweeney offered. They lost a bid for more radical change - including rebates of half of any union's AFL-CIO dues to those unions that conduct strategic organizing - at the council meeting in Las Vegas in early March. They also wanted forced union mergers.

Stern and his allies - Presidents James Hoffa of the Teamsters, Joe Hansen of UFCW, Terry O'Sullivan of the Laborers and Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm of UNITE HERE - were not satisfied with the latest plan, either. Stern's union, the federation's largest, has a committee studying disaffiliation with the AFL-CIO.

"Uniting workers who are not yet in unions must be at the top of labor's agenda and is the key to once again realizing a vital union movement," Stern's group said in a statement, continuing their push to put organizing ahead of politics.

But Sweeney responded at the press conference that "we have managed to rearrange some programs and expenses to provide more resources for organizing and field mobilization."
Sweeney repeatedly refused to say how many of the AFL-CIO's 420 staffers would be let go, how the budget would be rearranged and which functions would be downgraded or dumped. He said the budget is not finalized.

Plans call for the AFL-CIO to rebate two-thirds of union dues to unions that create strategic organizing drives. A good chunk of money would also be allocated for national campaigns against large anti-union employers, such as Wal-Mart, Comcast, FedEx and Toyota.

Stern and his allies, whose unions said there are still many "unanswered questions," said "we continue to call on the Sweeney administration to provide complete information regarding its programming and operational budget."

Teamsters President James Hoffa previously said the federation has a $176 million budget, and the rebate to member-unions for enhanced organizing would cut its budget in half.

A key point in the federation's blueprint is to mobilize members year-round around political issues, such as the current campaign to defeat President Bush's Social Security privatization plan. The AFL-CIO also wants to install full-time political directors in key states, and target "consolidating and expanding our strength in union-dense states." Sweeney said other initiatives would be tried in the overwhelmingly non-union South, but the plan is silent on that point.

Other key points of the leaders' revamp plan include:

  • Creating industry coordinating committees "in employment sectors where AFL-CIO unions have significant membership," to support organizing and bargaining.
  • Encouraging and actively facilitating the voluntary mergers of unions, especially those with common core jurisdictions, in order to increase union bargaining power.
  • Working to build coalitions with the Latino community.
  • Restructuring state federations and Central Labor Councils with integrated budgets and planning and consolidation into larger, regional bodies. The plan also says the AFL-CIO would "set performance benchmarks and standards for state and local labor movements, and step in to enforce these standards as needed to ensure effective performance." It did not say how.