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Time will tell: Labor splits may forge a 'new and more powerful' union movement

Date Posted: March 3 2006

One of the monumental junctures in U.S. labor history was when two enormous union groups, the American Federation of Labor and the Council of Industrial Organizations, merged at the zenith of organized labor's 20th Century influence in 1955.

Last summer, in another pivotal event, two of the AFL-CIO's largest member unions and a host of smaller unions broke off to form another union federation, the Change-to-Win Coalition, which wanted to adopt different strategies to increase market share and influence for unions. Now the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department is experiencing its first major split in nearly a century.

Scholars who study the history of organized labor suggest that unions may have the reputation for being stagnant and slow to change - but the reality is much different, and what's going on in the labor movement is fairly normal.

"History is filled with labor unions and labor federations that have had their day in the sun, and then disappeared," said Dr. Dale Belman, associate professor with Michigan State University's School of Labor and Industrial Relations. "People said last year that they couldn't believe the AFL-CIO was coming apart. The real story is how they held together for 50 years, which is a remarkable run."

The Knights of Labor. The Conductors Protective Association. The Cigarmakers Union. Those are just a few of the hundreds of American labor organizations that have fallen by the wayside over the years, and they reflect the rise and fall of American industries like cigar-making and train travel.

The jury is still out on what role the Change-to-Win Coalition, which now includes the Service Employees, United Food and Commercial Workers the Teamsters, Carpenters and Laborers, will play in U.S. labor history. Those unions formed that alliance after breaking from AFL-CIO last summer. Now the formation of the National Construction Alliance, splitting off from the Building Trades Department last month, is the latest upheaval for organized labor, altering the traditional structure of the nation's construction unions.

Belman said the new coalition by the Bricklayers and Allied Crafts, Carpenters, Iron Workers, Laborers, Operating Engineers and Teamsters roughly mirrors how the building trades
first organized themselves a century ago. He said he wouldn't be surprised if forming the coalition finally brings long-simmering jurisdictional issues to the surface for resolution - and that it raises the odds that union mergers are in the offing.

However, fixing the split in the building trades, and even in the AFL-CIO, is hardly out of the question in next three to five years, Belman said, although the structures may be different than they have been in the past.

"I think in the end, there are just too many common issues out there for everybody to be going in different directions," Belman said. "I mean, how many owners are going to want to go to two different building trades councils to initiate a project labor agreement?"

Robert Reich, President Clinton's first Labor Department secretary and now a professor of public policy at the University of California, suggested after the Change-to-Win Coalition broke away from the AFL-CIO that, "at first glance, the walkout looks like a major blow to organized labor, whose watchwords have always been 'in unity there is strength.'

"Yet the union movement may be stronger disunited. The dissidents are pushing a different strategy and mission for organized labor. If they're right, their walkout could mark the start of a new and more powerful union movement. After all, the history of organized labor in America has been one of upheaval and rebirth, reflecting changes in the structure of the American economy…"