(The following article by Thomas B. Edsall was posted on the Washington Post website on May 17.)
WASHINGTON — A coalition of dissident unions yesterday issued proposals for a reorganization of the AFL-CIO — including a major shift of money and resources into organizing new workers — to test whether support for change is adequate to justify a challenge to John J. Sweeney, president of the national labor federation.
The Teamsters union, the Service Employees International Union, the Laborers’ International Union and Unite Here issued the report titled “Restoring the American Dream: Building A 21st Century Labor Movement that Can Win,” calling for fully half of the AFL-CIO’s $120 million annual budget to go to organizing and growth incentives.
John W. Wilhelm, president of the hospitality division of Unite Here and the most likely challenger to Sweeney, charged that AFL-CIO’s proposals for modest change amount to an affirmation of “the status quo. . . . If a majority of the unions conclude by the time of the [AFL-CIO July] convention that substantial reform is needed, there will have to be a leadership change.”
Sweeney, who is running for reelection, shot back:
“The ideas in this proposal are quite similar to those we issued a couple weeks ago, and it’s hard to imagine why they would be the basis for dividing and weakening the labor movement. At a moment when workers are under severe attack, it’s time to work together as never before. . . . The rhetoric of divisiveness should end.”
Sweeney and his allies are pressing for relatively modest increases in spending on both political mobilization and organizing new members. The dissidents would invest more money altogether and put it all the new money into organizing.
At the moment, both Sweeney and his critics say that he has the votes to win another term. The dissident group, which includes the United Food and Commercial Workers and might pick up the United Auto Workers, represents roughly 40 percent of the vote cast at AFL-CIO conventions.
Looming over the internal struggles within the AFL-CIO and its 58 member unions is SEIU President Andrew L. Stern’s threat to withdraw his union from the federation. The membership of the SEIU is more than 10 percent of the entire 13 million membership of the AFL-CIO.
There is some ambivalence among the dissidents over how strongly their campaign should be directed against Sweeney. An early version of their proposals declared that “the current AFL-CIO leaders have shown that they should not be candidates for reelection.” That was changed yesterday to read: “Our unions will support leaders who aggressively support fundamental change.”
Sweeney, who first won election in 1995 as an insurgent, faces many of the same charges that he used against incumbent leaders of the AFL-CIO a decade ago: that union membership has been in steady decline and that leaders of the labor movement have failed to stop the bleeding. Last year, union membership fell to new lows: 12.5 percent of the overall workforce and just 7.9 percent of private sector workers.
Over the past year, Sweeney has argued that he and his critics share the same goals and that he either supports, or has already initiated, most of what the dissident faction is calling for.
The challengers countered that their proposals call for a strengthened AFL-CIO to oversee activities of member unions, for the return of $44 million in annual dues to unions with strong organizing programs and for the aggressive encouragement of mergers of unions working in the same industry.