(Reuters circulated the following article on July 26.)
CHICAGO — AFL-CIO delegates voted on Tuesday to nearly double spending to recruit new members, a day after two of its key unions severed ties to the labor federation complaining about declining membership.
Delegates representing some 50 unions and 10 million members passed a resolution that will devote $22.5 million to organizing efforts, up from $12.5 million last year.
The measure also asks affiliate unions to spend 30 percent of their annual budgets on organizing and promote mergers of smaller unions to increase leverage on employers.
Defections by the Teamsters and service workers’ unions on Monday siphoned more than 3 million members and $18 million in annual dues from the parent AFL-CIO’s $125 million budget.
“It will hurt us,” said AFL-CIO treasurer Richard Trumka said of the defection by the 1.4-million-member Teamsters and the 1.8-million-member Service Employees International Union.
Trumka said union leaders will meet in two weeks to figure out how to raise the money for the organizing drive.
Three smaller unions — the Laborers union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the United Farm Workers — had previously joined with the Teamsters and service workers in forming a group aimed at changing what leaders called the AFL-CIO’s antiquated approach.
It was not clear whether the smaller unions would also leave the AFL-CIO during this week’s convention, a union spokesmen said.
The dissidents charge the AFL-CIO devotes too much of its resources to political lobbying and the central office.
Leaders of the two breakaway unions pledged to use more resources to organize and enroll workers.
“We should expect to see more organizing from those groups inside the AFL-CIO and those outside,” said Mike Asensio, a labor relations lawyer from Columbus, Ohio. “There will be a lot of competition and resources put out to go after nonunion employees.”
The internal rift comes amid what some analysts perceive as labor’s waning influence in both the workplace and the voting booth and uncertainty about the direction of the labor movement.
“This is good news for the corporations and political conservatives,” said Harvard University economist James Medoff. “A divided labor movement is a weaker labor movement and employers know this very well.”
But other labor analysts said the split could spark competition for union membership and revive the declining labor movement.
The AFL-CIO, led by John Sweeney, has condemned the dissidents’ departures at a time when organized labor feels under siege by what it views as an unfriendly Republican
administration and Republican-dominated Congress.
Since Sweeney assumed leadership of the federation in 1995, union membership has fallen from 15.5 percent of the U.S. work force to 12.5 percent. Reasons for the decline include the rise of anti-union giants such as Wal-Mart and the moving of jobs overseas.