A million union members plan changes

By Stephen Franklin
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 14, 2006, 7:56 PM CST

In another tug at organized labor's shrinking solidarity, two large construction unions said Tuesday that effective March 1 they will quit the AFL-CIO's building and trades arm and form a competing organization.

The 400,000-member Operating Engineers Union will join the 600,000-member Laborers Union in setting up a new organization called the National Construction Alliance, union officials said.

Others labor groups expected to join the new organization are the Teamsters, Bricklayers, Carpenters and Iron Workers Unions.

The Laborers played a key role in last summer's break-up of the AFL-CIO, joining a seven-union group with 5.4 million members known as the Change to Win Federation. Their departure left the AFL-CIO with about 9 million members.

Though the Laborers have remained with the AFL-CIO, officials from the union suggested that the group would soon announce its departure from the umbrella labor federation that long was organized labor's sole voice.

"The real question is not whether our action today is good for any particular institution, but is it good for millions of hard-working men and women," Laborers' Union President Terry O'Sullivan said at a press conference in Washington, D.C.

The Operating Engineers still belong to the AFL-CIO.

The AFL-CIO's building and construction trades department, and local building trades councils play a critical role for unions. They lobby on the unions' behalf on the state and local levels and bring them together on policy and contract issues.

There are more than 20 unions labor groups involved the Chicago-area's construction industry.

Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, was upbeat about the new organization.

"I think we are going to be able to do the same things as we've done in the past," said Gannon, a former local business agent for the Operating Engineers union. "Chicago unions will work together."

AFL-CIO officials in Washington, D.C., declined comment, saying it is unclear what impact the change will have on the federation and its members.

The heads of the two unions at the Washington, D.C. conference said the failure to reform the AFL-CIO's building and trades arm led to the creation of the new group. They noted that unions accounted for 40 percent of the nation's construction workers in 1973, but only 13.1 percent in 2005.

Sfranklin@tribune.com