(The following article by Steven Greenhouse was posted on the New York Times website on July 20.)
WASHINGTON — Leaders of several dissident unions warned yesterday that they might shun next week’s A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in Chicago unless the labor federation’s president, John J. Sweeney, agreed to some of their demands.
The possibility that those unions – the service employees, Teamsters, food and commercial workers and Unite Here – would boycott the convention signals that the four might carry out their threat to quit the federation, labor leaders said.
These threats represent the biggest rift in the labor movement in decades and come as Mr. Sweeney has sought to stage a triumphant convention celebrating his expected re-election as well as the 50th anniversary of the American Federation of Labor’s merger with the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The dissident unions, which include about one-third of the federation’s members, are unhappy that Mr. Sweeney seems certain to win a new four-year term at the convention.
“If things stay the same as they are, the likelihood of our union not being there, of not participating, is very good,” said Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers.
The dissidents are demanding that Mr. Sweeney promote more union organizing by rebating half of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s budget to individual unions for recruitment, a move Mr. Sweeney says would cripple the federation. Having failed to persuade him not to run again, the unions are pressing Mr. Sweeney, 71, to designate a successor to their liking should he decide to retire before his term ends.
Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, which represents apparel, hotel and restaurant workers, said, “If all the decisions have been made and we’re just going through an exercise at the convention, I don’t know whether it would be productive from the point of view of our union to participate.”
Dissident union leaders say they want Mr. Sweeney, with the convention’s approval, to choose as his successor either Terence O’Sullivan, the president of the laborers’ union, or John W. Wilhelm, the president of Unite Here’s hotel and restaurant employees division.
Several Sweeney supporters said the union leaders’ threat to boycott the convention might be designed to exact concessions from Mr. Sweeney. The dissidents have repeatedly told him that he does not want to preside over a fractured federation.
But Mr. Sweeney’s supporters blame the dissidents for any divisiveness.
“They’ve taken the attitude, if John Sweeney’s not going to go, then they’re going to go,” said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and a leading Sweeney supporter. “I think that attitude within the House of Labor – my way or the highway – doesn’t strike a positive chord.”
Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., a federation of 57 unions with 13 million members, said it would be bad for workers if the dissident unions shunned the convention or quit the federation.
“Right now the labor movement and working people face enormous challenges,” Mr. Trumka said. “The Bush administration is coming after Social Security. It’s trying to take away collective bargaining from one million federal workers. If we’ve ever learned a lesson, it’s united we stand, divided we fall.”
The dissident unions along with the laborers union and the carpenters union, which quit the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in 2001, have formed a competing group, the Change to Win Coalition. Anna Burger, the new coalition’s chairwoman and the secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, said: “Many unions have given their leaders authority to decide whether to participate in the A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention or disaffiliate from the federation. I think anything is possible.”
But Mr. McEntee said he was sure that the service employees, the largest union in the A.F.L.-C.I.O., planned to quit the federation. “I think they’ve made up their mind,” he said. “It’s only a matter of when.”
The dissident leaders are scheduled to meet in Chicago on Sunday, on the eve of the convention, to decide what to do. Mr. O’Sullivan of the laborers said his union would participate in the convention and remain in the federation.
Mr. Sweeney has said he has sought to meet the dissidents more than halfway, by, for example, increasing the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s spending on organizing. The dissidents say he has not gone far enough.
James P. Hoffa, the Teamsters president, said: “John Sweeney has not met us halfway. He hasn’t met us any of the way with regard to our agenda for new thinking at the A.F.L.-C.I.O.”