Chicago Tribune, July 28, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune

July 28, 2005 Thursday
Chicago Final Edition

SECTION: NEWS ; ZONE C; Pg. 18

HEADLINE: John J. Sweeney;
Despite the exit of 2 key unions from the AFL-CIO, the federation's leader remains the same soft-spoken, unruffled conciliator

BYLINE: By Stephen Franklin, Tribune staff reporter.

BODY:
On the walls of the AFL-CIO's executive offices in Washington, there's a small painting that clashes wildly with the upbeat, modern decor. It's a dark, gloomy Depression-era portrait of three raggedy guys.
The first time John J. Sweeney saw it, he recalls doing a double take, and insisting that it stay. He liked it because it stirred memories of decades ago when he was starting out as a union worker in New York City.
"I said, `Oh, my, they reminded me of the people sitting outside of my office,'" Sweeney recalled recently. "And it reminded me of how much I was able to do for some of them."
Now the question is how much he can do for the AFL-CIO.
On Wednesday, Sweeney, 71, won another four years as president of the labor federation that now appears to be a deeply wounded institution besieged from within and without.
Four unions boycotted the convention in Chicago while two of them, in dramatic fashion, quit and will form their own group, the better, they say, to deal with the challenges facing a labor movement that appears in inexorable decline.
From stepping up the federation's fight against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to finding money to help local labor groups hurt financially by the unions' departure, Sweeney vowed Wednesday to keep his organization moving forward and described the dissidents' effort as a failed "power grab."
Ever the optimistic mediator, however, he hoped that they would return. And he predicted that the 54 unions in the loosely linked federation would embrace the reforms laid out this week.
"We are very enthusiastic about implementing the changes we've talked about," he told reporters. "I think we really have to think positively about building a stronger labor movement."
Times, indeed, may be different for organized labor since Sweeney's first union days. But he remains, say those who know him, the same soft-spoken, unruffled conciliator, someone who more resembles a cuddly grandfather with a soft Bronx Irish accent.
Even during this week's convention, when the AFL-CIO's 50th anniversary turned into a divorce proceeding, Sweeney seldom stoked the sense of betrayal that hung over the sessions at Navy Pier.
His acceptance speech barely touched on the exit of the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union, and their 3.1 million members. Several other like-minded unions, which have set up a rival organization to the federation, are expected to also quit the AFL-CIO.
"Through all the harsh words and the turmoil, I was actually thinking how very lucky I am, not only to have my supportive family at home, but also to have the support of my union family," he told the delegates.
The reluctant candidate
Such a crisis might have seemed unlikely 10 years ago when Sweeney took office.
He was a reluctant candidate in a palace coup of union leaders who said labor badly needed to change and oust AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland.
It was the federation's first contested election ever. Until then all of its leaders had died or retired from office. This week, too, Sweeney did not face a challenger.
Sweeney, who was the head of the SEIU, was portrayed by foes as a radical who would plunge labor into nasty street battles. With unions deeply divided, he barely won.
His strength as SEIU president, said Cornell University labor expert Rick Hurd, was building bridges between old and new labor leaders and opening the way for young militants like Andy Stern, the SEIU's current president, to bring new ideas to the union.
So, too, after his AFL-CIO victory, Sweeney laid out ambitious organizing and political plans, hired staff to carry them out and opened federation meetings to workers, something never done before. A deeply religious man, he urged unions to work closer with clergy on workers' issues.
Ironically, Sweeney was a reluctant candidate again, agreeing to stay in order to keep the federation together, according to those close to him.
As unions bucked or sidestepped some of Sweeney's efforts in the late '90s, he pulled back, say critics like Anna Burger, a longtime SEIU official, who ran Sweeney's 1995 campaign. Today, she heads the seven-union dissident coalition.
Another critic is Stern, who sparked the dissident unions' rebellion and several months ago said Sweeney had to step down so reform could take place in the AFL-CIO.
"[Sweeney's] personality and style isn't suited to anything other than managing success," Stern said this week.
The two had not talked privately since Stern called for Sweeney's ouster, and Stern said he tried to call him Monday, just before announcing the SEIU's departure. But they never connected. "I felt I owed him a call," Stern explained. "There is no person who loves his family, his God, and his union as much as he does."
A union man from the start
Unions clearly have been stepping stones in Sweeney's life. The son of Irish immigrants--his mother was a maid and his father a New York City bus driver--he often tagged along with his father to union meetings as a youngster, and once stepped in for him at a union-sponsored street political rally.
He got involved in local Democratic Party politics, and that is how he met his wife, Maureen, a former New York City schoolteacher. She had volunteered to help with a campaign, and they spent their first date, according Ray Abernathy, Sweeney's longtime speechwriter, at a union dinner. The night Sweeney became AFL-CIO president, they went to a union dinner too.
Sweeney, who picked up the nickname "the Pope" at the SEIU local in New York where he built his power base, has few close friends, preferring to spend time with his family and to golf with his daughter, Trish.
"He is the most self-confident man I've ever met in my life," said Abernathy.
Asked about his mood late one day in Washington several weeks ago as the federation seemed headed for collision with his one-time protege and union, Sweeney calmly shook his head.
"As I used to tell my kids, there has hardly been a day for the past 48 years that I wasn't happy to go to work."
sfranklin@tribune.com
- - -
John J. Sweeney
- Born May 4, 1934, the Bronx, N.Y.
- Economics degree from Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
Married, two children.
- First union job was working with the International Ladies Garment Workers union as a researcher in New York.
- President of the Service Employees International Union from 1980 to 1995.
- President of the AFL-CIO since 1995.