Unions to boycott AFL-CIO

In a mark of organized labor's badly broken solidarity, four major unions Sunday said they would boycott the AFL-CIO's constitutional convention in Chicago, and three appear poised to bolt the federation that has loosely bound most of the nation's unions together.

Officials from the 1.3 million-member Teamsters and the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO's largest union and the spark behind the reform-minded rebellion, said they would meet Monday and announce their plans.

Joe Hansen, president of the 1.3 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers Union, one of six dissident unions that have formed their own coalition, said he was inclined to pull his union out of the AFL-CIO, but he needed time to talk with UFCW leaders.

"If nothing changes, there is no sense staying," said Hansen on a day of emotion-filled rallies and last-minute planning by leaders gathered for the labor federation's four-day conference, its first in Chicago, which starts Monday.

The boycotting unions make up about one-third of the federation's 13 million members.

The dissidents say they want unions to put more money into organizing, more controls over union squabbles and organizing efforts, and more mergers to concentrate unions' strengths. They also call for up to half of unions' dues to be returned to unions for their own organizing drives.

Rather than a celebration of the federation's 50th anniversary and its 56 unions, the AFL-CIO gathering now seems more likely to be remembered for the first steps of the rival group set up by the dissidents and an unprecedented outpouring of acrimony and blame.

"Not to attend the convention--especially when the differences that remain between our proposals are so narrow--is an insult to their union brothers and sisters and to all working people," said AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, who is up for re-election this week.

The schism puts organized labor in an uncharted area that experts say could either revive it or unleash a civil war, further weakening it.

Unions represent less than 8 percent of the nation's private workforce today, a number not seen since the dawn of the last century.

The rift in labor's ranks "creates a greater likelihood there will be animosity and competition between unions in organizing, bargaining and politics," Cornell University labor expert Rick Hurd said.

But Robert Bruno, a labor expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said it could stir "a new beginning" with "increased dynamism in both political activity and organizing."

"A bridge could still be built 10 or 15 years down the road, and you will have built a new unionism for the 21st Century," Bruno said. "It's hard to imagine that having happened if things had continued on with just modest changes" to the AFL-CIO.

Playing down the discord, Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the SEIU and head of the dissidents' coalition, predicted their actions would be "remembered as the rebirth of union strength in America" and that the union leaders had no choice but to "walk our talk."

Besides the Teamsters, SEIU and food workers union, Unite Here, the merged union of the hotel workers and garment workers unions, also will boycott the conference.

Laborers Union President Terry O'Sullivan said his union, which also belongs to the dissident coalition, decided some time ago to take part in the meeting and not bolt from the federation. But, he added, that is not a sign of division among the dissidents.

The United Farm Workers union joined the dissident coalition Friday. Its president, Arturo Rodriguez, said it's too early to decide whether his union should withdraw from the AFL-CIO.

In addition to the boycott, all of the dissident unions' top officials will not hold any elected AFL-CIO positions, Burger said. Union heads and their organizing directors also would begin on Monday to chart joint strategies, she added.

Triggered by SEIU President Andy Stern's threat last year to pull his union out of the AFL-CIO, the debate over how to save labor soon became a personality-driven civil war.

Sweeney, 71, who got his job a decade ago on a drive to reform the AFL-CIO, became the target of the dissidents' discontent with labor's woes.

Unions to boycott AFL-CIO
Teamsters, others break ranks before Chicago talks

By Stephen Franklin and Barbara Rose
Tribune staff reporters
Published July 25, 2005

While Sweeney has agreed to increase funds for organizing and national campaigns to target foes like Wal-Mart, he also has called for more money to be spent annually on politics, a high priority for some unions. His supporters say the dissidents' proposals would bankrupt the AFL-CIO.

"We are not trying to divide the labor movement," Stern said Sunday. "But when you are going down the road and it is headed in the wrong direction, you have to get off of it."

In reply, Rick Sloan, a Machinist union spokesman, seemed to sum up the mood of Sweeney's supporters.

"My old water polo coach told me, `Quitters never win, and winners never quit,'" he said.

Hundreds arrived from around the Midwest for a rally Sunday at the Sheraton Hotel, where Sweeney's allies hooted their dislike for the Republican White House, for their corporate foes and for members of the dissident coalition.

With his arms raised high, Steelworker President Leo Gerard told the crowd that he had clung to hopes for a last-minute compromise. But that's not what happened, he said.

"When I woke up, I felt my heart torn out from me," he said.

Steelworkers were among the bigger contingents at the hotel, disgorging four busloads from Gary and Chicago's West Side.

One of them, retiree Victor Storino, 64, former president of United Steelworkers Local 1033 in Chicago, was having trouble believing the federation would split over a dispute that he didn't "know too much about."

"I'm still trying to find out" what's happening, he said, sporting a red Steelworkers Solidarity Forever cap. "A union is supposed to unite. I do believe there's strength in unity."

Harry Zell, a glazier with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, carried his sleepy 8-year-old daughter through the noisy crowd after having left home at 5:30 a.m.

The dissidents "ought to be working to change it from within," he said. "To divide it to try to make it better just doesn't make sense to me at all."

Mary Goulding, a clerical worker from Green Bay and president of Local 3055B of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, called it a sad day.

"You know where it's really going to hurt? In our communities where we work, where had built solidarity," she said. "When we have a fight in our communities, we need each other. That's why it's called a labor movement."

But for many, the schism failed to dampen spirits.

Frances Buie, a mail processor in suburban Carol Stream, was happy to be attending her first AFL-CIO rally.

"I'm not too worried," she said. "I think we'll be OK."

Nancy Hansen of Macomb, Ill., also a member of the American Postal Workers Union, said she would go home feeling rejuvenated.

"A lot of times you lose the sense of solidarity," she said. "Having the opportunity to participate in something like this reminds you we're part of something much larger.

"It gives you such a sense of pride."

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sfranklin@tribune.com

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