Philadelphia Inquirer, July 26, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Copyright 2005 Philadelphia Inquirer
Philadelphia Inquirer

July 26, 2005, Tuesday

HEADLINE: Labor's big divorce

BYLINE: By Jane M. Von Bergen

BODY:

CHICAGO - Two of the nation's largest labor unions quit the AFL-CIO yesterday, a move that angered and disappointed hundreds of labor leaders gathered in Chicago for the labor federation's national convention.
The unions that left, the 1.7 million-member Service Employees International Union and the 1.35 million-member Teamsters, said they would respond to changing workforce conditions by pushing harder to organize workers in industries that can't be "digitized and outsourced easily."
"It's hard to take a truck driver, a construction worker, or a health-care worker's job out of the country," SEIU president Andrew L. Stern said. Many of the AFL-CIO's remaining 54 unions represent workers in manufacturing, which has seen a steady erosion in jobs as work has been moved to low-wage countries. Yesterday's split leaves the AFL-CIO with just under 10 million members.
Stern and Teamsters president James P. Hoffa have complained that the AFL-CIO has been reluctant to put sufficient resources into organizing new members. "We must have more union members to change the political climate that is undermining workers' rights in this country," Hoffa said. "The AFL-CIO has chosen the opposite approach."
Christopher Murphy, a Philadelphia lawyer who works with companies that are trying to avoid unionization, said, "It's the successful unions that are leaving." Murphy, a partner at Saul Ewing L.L.P., said it would mean more business for him and more worries for his clients "if the pro-organizing cadre comes out on top. There will be a lot more pressure for union locals to succeed at organizing."
The split comes as the AFL-CIO has tried to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The federation was founded in 1955 when two rival labor organizations reunited after an earlier and bitter split.
What effect the current split will have on the labor movement depends on how well the two unions and their allies can work with the AFL-CIO establishment on both politics and organizing, said Richard Hurd, a professor of labor studies at Cornell University.
Both sides say they will never let their division stand in the way of their cooperation at the bargaining table.
"We're prepared to bargain jointly with any union, whether they've left the AFL-CIO or not," said Larry Cohen, vice president of the Communications Workers of America and a staunch supporter of the AFL-CIO leadership. But, he said, the split is a bad idea for labor. "You have to work together to work together."
The SEIU and the Teamsters are among four unions that said Sunday that they would boycott the convention. The other two are the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and Unite Here, the merged union representing hospitality and textile workers. Both unions say they are still deciding whether to stay in the AFL-CIO.
The four unions are among seven in the Change to Win Coalition, which wants to focus more on organizing and less on Democratic-focused politics. The other three are the Laborers International Union, which plans to remain within the AFL-CIO, the United Farm Workers, and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, which left in 2002.
The Teamsters and the SEIU made their announcement yesterday at the skyscraper headquarters of SEIU Local 1, which represents 35,000 janitors and building-service workers. At the convention a mile away on Chicago's Navy Pier, the mood was one of anger and bitterness.
In his keynote speech, AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney received thunderous applause and a standing ovation when he said that "a divided movement hurts the hopes of working families for a better life. And that makes me very angry - the labor movement belongs to all of us, and our future should not be dictated by the demands of any group or the ambitions of any individuals."
Many took that as a reference to Stern, a former protege who replaced Sweeney as president of the SEIU when Sweeney left to head the AFL-CIO a decade ago. "I am disappointed my own union is among" the unions leaving, said Sweeney, 71, who so far faces no opposition for reelection on Thursday.
Since the dissident unions began talking about their dissatisfaction more than a year ago, the AFL-CIO has made changes to move in the direction sought by the group. It put more money into organizing, including a program to return some dues to unions with focused campaigns. But the amount of money was less than the 50 percent rebate that Stern and Hoffa had advocated.
Both Stern and Hoffa pledged to fund the new coalition with about half of what their unions pay to the AFL-CIO.
Each union pays about $ 10 million in annual dues, accounting for about a sixth of the AFL-CIO's revenue.
The AFL-CIO has recently cut its staff by about 25 percent through buyouts.
Neither union has paid its dues for several months. Stern said there are financial issues to be worked out in the process of formal disaffiliation, including a division of $ 25 million in annual royalties from the AFL-CIO's union credit card.
"We need a divorce lawyer," Stern joked.
Back in Philadelphia, Joseph Brock, a leader of Teamsters Local 830, had mixed feelings about the news.
"If all things were equal, I'd like to stay on the same page with the AFL-CIO," Brock said. "But no angle is working. The organizing angle isn't working. The political angle isn't working. We're getting clobbered every which way we turn. So maybe shaking things up can't hurt."