America’s union leaders will be taking a very close look at their organizations when the AFL-CIO’s Executive Council meets in mid-February.

The meeting could be momentous, and could lay the groundwork for historic, profound changes in the structure of the AFL-CIO’s 65 international unions – including restructuring, union mergers and reallocation of resources.

Then again, maybe nothing will happen, or worse than nothing – labor may emerge further fractured, with unions choosing to go it alone rather than deal with other unions that don’t share their goals.

“We’ve had too many recommendations” for change, “which leaders have not adopted,” said Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern, who is a driving force behind the call to reorganize the house of labor. “We need to change the AFL-CIO now.”

Stern made his call for change before a Nov. 10 meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, issuing a 10-point plan that recommended a massive overhaul of the AFL-CIO. Although the meeting was held just after the presidential election – in which organized labor spent a record amount to support losing candidate John Kerry – talk of reorganization has gone on throughout 2004.

His plan includes spending $2 billion for organizing, ramping up a $25 million campaign to unionize Wal-Mart, a campaign for universal health care – details unspecified – and greater top-down direction, including mergers, ordered by the AFL-CIO to individual unions. And in a telephone press conference afterwards, Stern made clear that unless there is drastic change, his union, the federation’s largest, might leave.

Stern noted earlier this year that at the American Federation of Labor and Council of Industrial Organizations merger in 1955, one of every three U.S. workers was unionized, mostly in industry. Now one of every eight are unionists, with many of them working in the service sector. The SEIU makes up one-tenth of the entire AFL-CIO’s 13.1 million membership.

“Today, our employers have changed, our industries have changed and the world has certainly changed, ” Stern said, “but the labor movement’s structure and culture sadly stayed the same.”

But while the Service Employees International Union may be the AFL-CIO’s largest stakeholder, industrial unions and those that cover the building trades still have considerable muscle and have different thoughts on which direction the labor federation should take. For instance, the building trades may wonder if their needs are best served with more money going into organizing Wal Mart.

In an interview with Press Associates, International Association of Machinists President Thomas Buffenbarger sharply criticized the proposal to impose union consolidation. And in reality, consolidation cannot be imposed by the federation – international labor unions have the right to merge or not merge as their leaders and members see fit.

“We’ll defend ourselves if the AFL-CIO chooses to leave our people out of the equation, by focusing on the service sector and the public sector and leaving the manufacturing sector and the transportation sector out,” Buffenbarger said.

The building trades collectively have had a mostly solid relationship with the AFL-CIO in recent years – with the exception of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. The UBC broke away from the federation in 2001 in a disagreement over how the federation was structured and how it spent money on organizing.

Carpenters President Doug McCarron and Laborers President Terence O’Sullivan are among five union presidents who are on board with the SEIU’s Stern in an informal alliance called the New Unity Partnership.

In an article by the Construction Labor Report, nearly all the building trades leaders who were quoted echoed Frank Hanley, international president of the Operating Engineers, who said some of Stern’s ideas are valid, but he faulted him for “going about it the wrong way,” through the media.

Building trades unions collectively represent 1.18 million Hardhats, or 17.2 percent of all U.S. construction workers (using 2002 figures). That represents one of the highest unionization rates of all job sectors, behind transportation and public utility industries.

The largest International Union in the Building Trades Department is the IBEW, with 665,0091 members. The smallest: the Heat and Frost Insulators, with 17,545. (2002 numbers).

One union leader cautioned that consolidation is not always a good thing. He told the Construction Labor Report, “you can say that just because a union is small, it cannot be effective and should be merged.” He cited as an example the Elevator Constructors, which has 26,000 members but is 90 percent unionized in that trade specialty.

Embattled AFL-CIO President John Sweeney – whose four-year term is up for election in July – said the federation agrees with many of Stern’s goals, and he has started to implement some of them. He said the proposals “stimulate a good discussion about change.”
(Press Associates contributed to this report).