Plain Dealer (Cleveland), May 22, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

May 22, 2005 Sunday
Final Edition; All Editions

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. G1

HEADLINE: Torn alliances;
House of labor divided over strategies and styles

BYLINE: Alison Grant, Plain Dealer Reporter

BODY:
FACEOFF: The Chicago showdown could go several different ways. G4
With the AFL-CIO's convention just two months away, tensions are high between supporters of incumbent President John Sweeney and a dissident faction made up of five of the country's biggest unions.
The fight is rooted in shifts in the economy. Sweeney counts among his top supporters the old-line industrial unions, as well as government employees and teachers. He's opposed by a service-sector bloc led by Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.
The rift also involves leadership style: It pits the careful, consensus-building Sweeney against the impatient, go-for-broke Stern.
It involves an insider trying to hold on to some of the AFL-CIO's traditional departments and activities, versus an outsider saying the federation needs to chop off things that don't work.
Most of all, the split is a profound clash over the best strategy to revive a labor movement in desperate straits. Big labor's membership has sunk to 12.5 percent of the U.S. work force, and union leaders are looking for the most powerful gambit to turn things around.
Without dramatic change, organized labor is facing possible ruin, both sides agree. With no time to waste, and resources limited, each side has seized on what it considers its best chance at rebirth.
The dissidents - the SEIU, the Teamsters, laborers, food and commercial workers, and the merged union of hotel, restaurant and apparel workers - say the federation should zero in on organizing. They want the AFL-CIO to shift half its budget - $65 million - to enlisting new members.
The SEIU coalition lost that argument in a vote at a winter meeting of the AFL-CIO's policy-making Executive Council in Las Vegas. Last week, it took its case directly to 27,000 local unions and state federations across the country.
Along with a big organizing budget, the dissidents want to overhaul the labor movement to create a few large unions that focus on core industries or occupations; rules to make unions concentrate on organizing their core industries; and better enforcement of jurisdictional boundaries so unions don't raid one another.
For the first time last week, Stern also pushed for Sweeney's ouster and asked for help from other insurgents to accomplish it. Stern says he's not interested in the presidency himself, though. John Wilhelm, president of Unite Here's hospitality division, is weighing a challenge but has not announced he's running. The Unite Here union represents apparel, hotel and restaurant workers.
In an interview, Wilhelm said, "If the majority believes that reform is needed, clearly we would need a change in leadership, because Sweeney is attached to the status quo."
Sweeney, on the other hand, thinks he is the best man to lead - so much so that he decided to seek a third term despite a pledge when he took office in 1995 to leave after 10 years at most.
In late April, Sweeney, Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson answered the insurgents with dozens of recommendations.
Their proposal, "Winning for Working Families," calls for the federation's political fund to increase by $7.5 million to $30 million, out of an overall budget of $125 million. The goal is to elect union-friendly candidates and encourage a climate for union growth. The officers propose moving from biannual get-out-the-vote work to a year-round, nationwide mobilization of union members. The project's launch would be in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.
Their plan also calls for doubling, to 2 million, the membership of Working America, a program that lets nonunion allies help out with organized labor's political agenda.
It also seeks to increase spending on organizing by about $10 million, to a total of $22.5 million. The dissident coalition considers that too low.
Like the insurgents, the AFL-CIO proposes voluntary mergers of unions to increase bargaining power. It also would build an army of work site volunteers by extending education and mobilization training to 100,000 union stewards by 2008.
Other ideas have bubbled up in the self-examination that kicked off six months ago when Stern first threatened to quit.
The Laborers International Union of North America wants to consolidate the power of union financial institutions, including worker retirement assets that total more than $5 trillion. The idea is to build a single financial services organization that could be a war chest, dramatically expanding workers' financial power.
The American Federation of Teachers says labor should abandon narrow agendas and become a voice for all working people. Organized labor was founded to advance a workers' agenda, the AFT says, but increasingly is viewed as another special interest.
Wilhelm, from the hotel union, warns that unions have become a taken-for-granted "appendage" of the Democratic Party. And Firefighters President Harold Schaitberger argues that labor must connect with Republicans in an era of Republican dominance.
Leader is labeled 'boring white Irishman'
Much as this is a debate about strategy, it's also about personal styles.
Sweeney, 71, who preceded Stern as head of the service workers, came to power in 1995 in the first contested election in the federation's history. He had a reputation as something of a rabble-rouser, not afraid of bold tactics such as the "Justice for Janitors" campaign, in which union members blocked roads and bridges to draw attention to their fight to organize janitors.
Sweeney brought a sense of rejuvenation to the AFL-CIO, tackling politics harder than at any time in the federation's history. Even Sweeney's critics say he made great strides in powering up union political activity.
But in office, the soft-spoken Sweeney acted more as a conciliator than a firebrand. As union membership continued to slide, he was faulted for not moving more aggressively.
It didn't help that Sweeney, though universally liked, is regarded as an average public spokesman.
"As good a man as he is, a boring white Irishman is not the face of the labor movement that you want to put forward," said Jonathan Tasini, a New York political consultant and president of the Economic Future Group.
And now it's Stern, 54, who has emerged as a maverick, admonishing Sweeney publicly for not jolting organizing into high gear.
Stern is confronting his old mentor: In 1984, Sweeney, then head of the SEIU, had summoned Stern to Washington to be his organizing director. Stern helped run Sweeney's campaign when he ran for the federation presidency in 1995, then replaced him as SEIU president after knocking off a top Sweeney lieutenant.
In the next decade, Stern notched a series of wins. The SEIU added tens of thousands of members in the decade of his leadership, and Stern made a convincing case that he had smart tactics for turning labor around.
A long profile in the New York Times Magazine depicted him as a brash reformer, not afraid to step on toes. He was described as "charismatic," someone "done caring what the other bosses think."
Maintaining spirit of unity
As Stern rattled the rafters, Sweeney was intent on keeping the house of labor in one piece.
"Unity is labor's greatest asset," he has said.
Some outsiders agree. Kate Bronfenbrenner, a Cornell University specialist on organizing, said the future of U.S. labor depends on whether the SEIU can come together with the industrial unions, which are weaker than in years past but still have the global alliances in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia.
The SEIU-led uprising comes with something of a nuclear option, though. Unless Stern is satisfied with changes at the AFL-CIO, he vows to pull his 1.8 million-member union out.
"I think the best thing that can be said right now is that there's a lot in play and the ground is very shaky," Tasini said.
Sweeney's troubles mounted Tuesday when he got letters from federation workers bitter about the way his administration cut 167 jobs at its Washington headquarters and in the field. The abrupt layoffs came after criticism from the insurgents that the AFL-CIO was top-heavy and inefficient. The federation said it would create 61 positions that people could apply for.
The letter writers said they had been eliminated in a way that "we have come to expect from corporate America, not the house of labor. This is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by staff who have dedicated their lives to fighting against such behavior."
The AFL-CIO also is dealing with a jarring loss: Several of the insurgent unions told the federation to remove their members' names from its master political list because of a dispute over sharing information. The federation faces a blow to its envied ability to get out the vote unless the names go back on.
Amid the troubles, Terence O'Sullivan, president of the laborers, said all sides want their differences hashed out before a meltdown.
John Ryan, executive secretary of the Cleveland AFL-CIO Federation of Labor, is worried about what will happen to union alliances and joint political work in Northeast Ohio if the service workers or others split away. He said he made an awful mistake when the carpenters left the federation four years ago by not keeping informal ties with them.
"We will always abide by the constitution to protect our charter," Ryan said, "but we will also adapt methods to allow us to continue to have our tremendous unity in Greater Cleveland."
Tom Juravich, director of the labor center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, says Stern's ultimatum is part brinksmanship. The SEIU chief could have a fallback plan, he said.
But as time elapses without reaching common ground, the prospect of a split - into two federations, perhaps - grows stronger.
It would be a strange way of marking the 50th anniversary of the merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, when unions gather in Chicago for their July convention.
"Those that dislike the policies of the labor movement," said Trumka, the AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer, "it will be their victory."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: agrant@plaind.com, 216-999-4758