Unions sedate after ‘05 revolt

The landscape of organized labor in the U.S. today is considerably more tranquil than Labor Day 2005, when weeks earlier the powerful AFL-CIO was rocked with the defection of several major unions.

The federation has come to accept the presence of the upstart Change to Win coalition, which includes former AFL-CIO heavyweights Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The two labor federations, which have a combined 15 million members, are cooperating on several issues, including get-out-the-vote campaigns for the 2006 midterm elections.

But while their stated missions are the same — to protect workers’ rights and increase union membership — each maintains a different approach to reaching those goals.

SEIU President Andrew Stern led the revolt last summer after accusing the AFL-CIO of spending too much time on politics in lieu of organizing.

U.S. union membership has fallen from 35 percent of the work force in the mid-1950s to 12.5 percent currently. About 8 percent of private-sector workers are in unions.

“The core activity we need to be undertaking is strategic organizing, and the AFL is working more through the political process,” Change to Win spokeswoman Carole Florman said. “We think that politics is important, and obviously, we’ll play a role in the electoral process … but we don’t have a stated goal [like the AFL-CIO] of electing a Democrat to Congress.”

Change to Win, with about 6 million workers, spends about 75 percent of its budget on organizing, federation officials say.

The federation’s seven unions, each with its own plan for growth, readily share those plans with the federation’s other member unions.

“We’re holding each other accountable, ” Ms. Florman said. “And that is something that is most unusual. In the old days, that would have been considered proprietary.”

AFL-CIO officials deny they’re obsessed with politics, saying that seeking reform through political channels is vital for the survival of organized labor.

“Politics is the most successful path to changing public policy in America,” said Stewart Acuff, the AFL-CIO’s organizing director. “To divorce politics from organizing is either silly or naive.”

Last week, the AFL-CIO kicked off its most ambitious get-out-the-vote campaign for a midterm election in its history, pledging to spend $40 million to remind its members to show up at the polls.

Mr. Acuff said the federation, which has 9 million members in 53 unions, doesn’t neglect its need to expand, spending 30 percent of its budget on organizing.

“It’s a major part of what we do,” he said.

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