Chicago Tribune, July 26, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune

July 26, 2005 Tuesday
Chicago Final Edition

SECTION: BUSINESS ; ZONE C; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: Unions' exit fuels fears in AFL-CIO;
Hoffa: `We are going to do something new'

BYLINE: By Stephen Franklin and Barbara Rose, Tribune staff reporters

BODY:
Throwing the nation's already troubled unions into an era of uncertainty, the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union walked out of the AFL-CIO on Monday, accusing the labor federation of falling behind the times.
"What was being done at the AFL-CIO was not working, and we are going to do something new," said Teamsters President James P. Hoffa as he and SEIU President Andy Stern explained their unions' departure at the start of the AFL-CIO's four-day convention in Chicago.
From high-ranking AFL-CIO officials to heads of local union labor councils, the departure of the two powerful unions and the precedent-setting rift among unions brought anger, frustration and fears that their exit will lead to a heap of problems.
Together, the two unions account for $20 million, or about one-fifth, of the dues collected annually by the AFL-CIO. The federation will lose 3.1 million members, falling to just below 10 million rank and file.
Looking ahead, AFL-CIO leaders and union officials said the growing division in their ranks could drain the federation's finances and complicate everyday union activities, from lobbying in Washington to bargaining and working on the job.
"I am going to do what I can do to make sure we can keep a united labor front," said Dennis Gannon, head of the 450,000-member Chicago Federation of Labor, the nation's second-largest local labor group and one of the oldest.
Without the two unions, the CFL will lose 147,200 members and $1.2 million in annual support, funds that Gannon said would be hard to replace.
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, who had tried to reach a deal with the reform-minded dissidents, called the unions' exit "a grievous insult" and added that he was "deeply disappointed" that the SEIU, which he once led, had taken that step.
The unions' departure along with two other dissident unions' boycott of the convention has cast a pall over a gathering meant to celebrate the federation's 50th anniversary and its first-ever meeting in Chicago.
Organized labor has not witnessed such a breakdown in solidarity since union leaders, impatient with the conservative ways of the American Federation of Labor, broke away in the 1930s to form the Congress of Industrial Organizations to represent unskilled workers.
The current crisis, which had been brewing for some time, came to a boil Sunday when the Teamsters, the SEIU, the United Food and Commercial Workers union and Unite Here, the merged union of the hotel workers and garment workers unions, said they would not take part in the gathering.
The SEIU was the AFL-CIO's largest union, with 1.8 million members.
The dissidents now will belong to a seven-union coalition, which plans its founding convention this fall. Other members of the coalition are the United Farm Workers union, the Laborers Union, and the Carpenters, which quit the AFL-CIO four years ago after growing frustrated over the federation's failure to stop organized labor's steady decline.
Currently, the nation's unions represent less than 8 percent of the private workforce, a modern-day low.
So far, only the 1.3 million-member UFCW has indicated it also might quit the AFL-CIO, but union officials and labor experts predicted that the momentum created by the SEIU and Teamsters might draw others down the same path.
The dissidents say unions need to spend more money on organizing, to merge so smaller unions can maximize their strength, and to focus their organizing drives on core industries rather than scooping up any available workers.
Sweeney has come back with proposals that mirrored many of their concerns. But he did not agree to a Teamsters proposal to give back to unions up to 50 percent of their annual dues so they could bolster their own organizing. Such a rebate plan, AFL-CIO officials said, would bankrupt the federation.
Sweeney also has pushed for stepped-up spending on politics, a move discounted by the dissidents as a failed strategy. Still, the SEIU is a major contributor to politicians and campaigns.
The two sides also differ on how much strength the labor organization should have.
Over the last five decades the AFL-CIO has tried to bind together its members. But the dissidents say they want a much stronger central organization.
For their own newly launched effort, Hoffa said the coalition would start collecting dues and hiring a staff. In the case of the Teamsters, he said $5 million of the $10 million in dues money earmarked for the AFL-CIO would go to the new coalition.
Similarly, Stern said he hoped that warfare would not erupt between the dissidents and the AFL-CIO and its members. "We may disagree, but we have no intention of being disagreeable," he remarked.
Cornell University labor expert Harry Katz predicted that the dissidents and the AFL-CIO would probably mend their differences down the road. But, he added, such peacemaking would probably not take place any time soon because of the angers raised.
As for the effect of the unions' departure and the creation of a rival group, Katz said that such moves might help the nation's badly troubled unions. "It adds an element of experimentation and vibrancy," he suggested.
Instead of the new opportunities, however, CFL director Gannon was worried Monday what would happen to his organization, which plans a new $8 million building in Chicago.
AFL-CIO rules require local groups like his to expel unions that no longer belong to the federation, but union officials said the AFL-CIO may try to increase the funding for local councils to make up for their losses.
"We have to evaluate what we want to do," Gannon said.
The challenge for organized labor now, said Terry O'Sullivan, president of the Laborers union, which belongs to the dissidents group but which has also vowed to stay in the AFL-CIO, is "to find out how to pull this ballgame back together again."
"The longer it takes, the more difficult it becomes," he said.
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Key dates in the labor movement
1866: National Labor Union is founded.
1886: American Federation of Labor (AFL) is founded.
1919: One out of every five workers walks out in a major strike wave, involving national clothing, coal and steel strikes, a general strike in Seattle and a police strike in Boston.
1926: Railway Labor Act sets up procedures to settle railway labor disputes and forbids discrimination against union members.
1935: National Labor Relations Act and Social Security Act are passed. Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) is formed within AFL.
1938: Fair Labor Standards Act establishes first minimum wage and 40-hour week. Congress of Industrial Organizations forms as an independent federation.
1943: CIO forms first political action committee to get out the union vote for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1947: Taft-Hartley Act restricts union members' activities.
1955: AFL and CIO merge. George Meany becomes its president.
1962: President John F. Kennedy's order gives federal workers the right to bargain.
1979: Lane Kirkland is elected president of AFL-CIO.
1981: President Ronald Reagan breaks air traffic controllers' strike. AFL-CIO rallies 400,000 in Washington on Solidarity Day.
1988: Teamsters rejoin AFL-CIO after being expelled in 1957.
1995: John Sweeney is elected president of AFL-CIO.
2005: Two major unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union, break away from the AFL-CIO in a dispute over declining U.S. membership and the direction of organized labor.
Source: AFL-CIO
sfranklin@tribune.com
berose@tribune.com

NOTES: STATE OF THE UNIONS: THE CHICAGO CONVENTION