By Mark Gruenberg 
Press Associates Staff Writer

(PAI) - Declaring they want to devote three-fourths of their new group's money to organizing, leaders and representatives of seven unions formally established the Change to Win federation on Sept. 27 in St. Louis.

The federation's unions have more than six million members. They are the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, the Laborers, the Carpenters, UNITE HERE and the Farm Workers.

Of those, all but the Laborers - who will leave soon - and the Farm Workers are former member unions of the AFL-CIO.

The new group, to be headquartered in Washington, named SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger as its chair and Edgar Romney as its Secretary-Treasurer. SEIU's organizing director, Tom Woodruff, becomes Change to Win's organizing director - a key post - and Greg Tarpanian moves from the New York-based Labor Research Association to become Change to Win's full-time executive director.

Burger, who will chair the monthly meetings of the new group's 10-person board and serve as its public face, will keep her SEIU post. Woodruff will head its Strategic Organizing Center. The center "will lead federation-wide coordinated growth initiatives, leveraging the collective resources of its affiliates for growth" and "integrate their organizing plans," a Change to Win statement says.

At its first-ever convention, nearly 500 enthusiastic delegates from the unions ratified the organization's constitution and its goals and program by voice votes. Leaders said organizing the unorganized will be Change to Win's overriding goal.

Teamsters President James Hoffa declared Change to Win would spend $750 million on organizing. The Teamsters, on the international level alone, spend $40-$45 million and will add $5 million next year, Hoffa said.

UNITE HERE Co-President Bruce Raynor said his union (apparel, retail, hotel workers) spends 55 percent of its national-level budget - $35 million - on organizing. Change to Win leaders later explained the $750 million figure includes state, local and regional, as well as international, union organizing spending.

And they stated that their core industries - hotel workers, hospital workers, restaurant workers, textile workers, construction, transportation and others - have 50 million workers, but only six million are unionists. Workers they will pursue hold jobs that cannot be outsourced or moved overseas, they added. "We commit ourselves to the 50 million unorganized workers to rebuild the labor movement," Burger said.

Many of those jobs are held by minority group members, immigrants or both, and 
the convention showcased statements from African-American and Latino/Latina workers. Change to Win also demands full legalization of immigrants.

And SEIU President Andy Stern noted Change to Win is headed by a woman (Burger) and an African-American (Romney).

"We call ourselves the G-7, for growth in the labor movement," added Hoffa. "Some people say we're dividing the labor movement" - a contention by AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, among others. "But I say we're rebuilding the labor movement - the right way." Key concepts of Change To Win's program include:

• Concentrating organizing in each union's "core industries," such as transportation for the Teamsters, according to Hoffa. Change to Win, which Burger and the union presidents emphasize would be a small, coordinating body, would mediate and decide conflicts.
• Multi-union organizing campaigns, and multi-union support for each other's organizing drives, strikes and other action. That was clear when, in his fiery wrap-up speech, Laborers President Terry O'Sullivan declared: "For the Carpenters and the Teamsters, if somebody tries to take you on, they're going to have to go through the Laborers International Union, too!"
• Creating coordinating committees for organizing and bargaining in the specific core industries. The panels would develop joint plans and enforce provisions to ban individual unions from reaching contracts that undercut their colleagues' efforts.
• * Nationwide organizing drives against national targets, including DHL, Wal-Mart, Cintas, Smithfield, FedEx and possibly the Beverly Nursing Home chain. The 10-person council - each union president plus an additional member each, for diversity, from SEIU, the Teamsters and UFCW - will set more targets and flesh out plans at a Nov. 1 meeting in Washington, Hoffa said.
• Use of actions, including strikes, in other cities or metro areas to support demands for recognition and contracts in one area. Examples given at the convention included SEIU workers and Teamsters in Chicago in sympathy strikes against giant office building cleaning firms that hold contracts to clean buildings in Houston.
• Downgrading political action to link endorsements to organizing, and endorsing 
  only politicians who openly support the right to organize - even if those politicians oppose labor on other issues. That means, the leaders said, that linkage to the Democratic Party will be cut. It also means that any politicians who oppose the right to organize will find Change to Win campaigning against them. "Our political program must be about growth, about giving workers a genuine free choice to join unions," explained UNITE HERE Co-President John Wilhelm.
• Usage of labor's financial resources, such as money in health, welfare and pension funds, to further union organizing goals. The Laborers' O'Sullivan said that includes $200 million in so-called "Taft-Hartley" pension funds in the construction industry, and $2.6 billion in public employee pensions. "We have to use it to get hold of them (companies) around their ankles and then get our hands around the throats of the corporate barons," he declared.
• Making the areas of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama devastated by Hurricane Katrina a test case for a new union role: Not just immediate relief, but training area workers to rebuild communities. "It's an opportunity to present ourselves in the South," where the labor movement is weak and even unionists under national contracts, such as IBT master freight agreements, have lower wages, Hoffa said. That training aim, after immediate aid, differs from what the AFL-CIO is doing and from Bush administration awards of no-bid reconstruction contracts, without Davis-Bacon prevailing wage protections, to politically favored companies like Halliburton.
• *Use of the three-fourths of the $16 million that Change to Win will collect in per-capita assessments from member unions for planning and implementing joint organizing. Each union will pay 25 cents per member. They pledged the difference between that figure and the dues they would have paid the AFL-CIO would go to their own organizing drives.

Change to Win leaders confirmed contacts with other unions about joining their new federation, but said they are not actively soliciting them. A prime target mentioned was the 2.7-million-member National Education Association, the nation's largest union. Asked specifically if NEA would be asked to join, SEIU President Andrew Stern said no.