(The following article by Richard A. Ryan was posted on the Detroit News website on December 9.)
WASHINGTON — Teamsters President James P. Hoffa called Wednesday for dramatic changes in the operations of the AFL-CIO to reverse a long decline in union membership and restore labor’s once feared political clout.
The Teamsters want member unions of the AFL-CIO to escalate organizing efforts and concentrate political action on key political battleground states that decided this year’s presidential election.
The future of the labor movement may depend on how the federation and John Sweeney, its 70-year-old president, respond to the growing pressure for change.
Several major unions now are reconsidering their relationship with the nation’s largest labor group following their defeat in last month’s election, when President Bush won a second term and Republicans gained strength in both the U.S. House and Senate despite a massive labor movement campaign to unseat them.
The 1.7 million member Service Employees International Union has even threatened to withdraw from the AFL-CIO if its demands are not met. Other unions would likely follow its lead.
Under the Teamsters proposals, adopted by the union’s executive committee, the 13-million member AFL-CIO, which includes the UAW, would:
o rebate half of the $6.84 cent annual per capita tax — a total of about $45 million — to affiliate unions with a plan to organize in their core industries
o encourage mergers between large and small unions
o streamline the federation’s operations and cut its executive committee from 25 to no more than 15
o develop a new plan to gain growth and political power in key swing states.
“This is Jim Hoffa’s effort to make a contribution to rebuilding the American labor movement,” said Greg Tarpinian, a labor consultant who works with the union.
The movement to reorganize the AFL-CIO gained steam when Sweeney asked member unions to submit plans for rebuilding organized labor that can be considered at the federation’s executive committee meeting in March and, perhaps, adopted at its convention in July.
“Obviously the next four years will be ones of incredible challenge for America’s working families and for America’s union movement,” Sweeney wrote in a letter to union presidents. “How we respond to this challenge will determine the long-term future for working people and for the trade union movement.”
Hoffa said he hopes the Teamsters efforts “will allow us to build a more unified and more effective labor movement as we head into the coming AFL-CIO convention.”
AFL-CIO spokesperson Lane Windham said the Teamsters action represents “exactly the kind of discussion and proposals President Sweeney is seeking. It seems as if the Teamsters have a lot of thoughtful ideas. Every one of the issues they raise is something that ought to be up for fair discussion.”
But Hoffa’s suggestions fall short of what Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, has demanded.
Stern wants to eliminate 40 unions from the AFL-CIO, cutting membership from 60 to 20 unions, and has said he is prepared to withdraw his union from AFL-CIO membership if he is not satisfied by Sweeney’s response.
Stern has been joined by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union in forming the New Unity Partnership.
Tarpinian said the AFL-CIO does not have the power to eliminate smaller unions but the same goal might be achieved by the Teamsters plan of encouraging mergers and offering financial incentives to larger unions to organize new workers.
“We are hoping that, if adopted, our proposals will keep SEIU and other unions in the AFL-CIO” Tarpinian said.
Sweeney intends to seek re-election as president at the July convention. By then, he will have served 10 years as AFL-CIO president. He previously served as SEIU president. So far, no one has emerged to challenge Sweeney or the other AFL-CIO leaders, Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, and Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson.
Union membership has been hurt by the loss of millions of jobs that have gone overseas. In the United States, union workers also have struggled with stagnant wages, the loss of pensions and health insurance, and an anti-union attitude among an increasing number of employers. Organized labor invested millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man hours in support of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in the November elections only to lose by 118,000 votes in Ohio.
“John Kerry’s inability to win key battleground states and the closeness of the election in others is a direct reflection of the decline of our movement,” the Teamsters said in a publication detailing its proposals. “While we produced better than ever in many of those states, we were simply too small to produce the desired results.”