WASHINGTON (PAI) - Many in organized labor are seeking to change the mission and the structure of the AFL-CIO and its affiliate unions.

AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney - whose job is up for re-election later this year - has acknowledged the calls for change and is seeking input from affiliates.

"We need to be humble enough to recognize we do not yet have the answers, but we need the determination to seek those answers and make extremely hard decisions," about labor's future, he said in an open letter last month, outlining topics for the federation's 50th-anniversary convention, to be in Chicago in late July 2005.

Sweeney said the federation's Executive Council would offer its own revamp plans prior to the convention. It expects to discuss those plans at its meeting in Las Vegas, March 1-3.

One group offering answers is the Teamsters. Press Associates said the Teamsters can be added "to the list of unions that want to shake up the AFL-CIO - and add them to the list of those who want union mergers."

On Dec. 8, the Teamsters Executive Board weighed in with a re-organization plan in a resolution that said, "the AFL-CIO is spread too thin in its mission and functions and therefore is not as effective as it could be in utilizing its resources."

In the latest move in the debate over the federation's future, touched off by Service Employees President Andrew Stern last summer, the Executive Board of the 1.4-million-member IBT weighed in with its own AFL-CIO reorganization plan on Dec. 8.

Like a plan from the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters are calling for union mergers to maximize strength in targeted sectors or regions. Unlike SEIU, the Teamsters would not force mergers. It wants to shrink the federation's executive committee from 25 members down to 15, and urge leaders of the largest unions to urge mergers.

But the Teamsters also hold out a financial carrot to encourage mergers. They would rebate half of any union's AFL-CIO dues if the union commits at least 10 percent of its income, or $2 million, whichever is larger, to direct organizing in "core industries" and if it creates a strategic plan to do so.

Smaller unions, the Teamsters said, would thus have an incentive to join larger ones that created such organizing plans.

"While it does not make sense for all small affiliates, simply by virtue of size, to merge, it does make sense for many that share jurisdictions with larger affiliates and which, on their own, are simply unable to effectively advance their members' interests in the face of powerful economic and political forces, to do so," the Teamsters said.