[news] Palace Coup at the AFL-CIO

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http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2003/nf2003037_7581_db016.htm

March 7, 2003

Business Week



Palace Coup at the AFL-CIO



In a rebuke to President John Sweeney, activists pushed through a plan aimed
at streamlining the federation and building membership



In 1995, union leaders anxious about labor's decline kicked out AFL-CIO
President Lane Kirkland and elected John J. Sweeney with a mandate to get
the labor movement moving again. Now, in a sharp rebuke to Sweeney, a group
of five union chiefs concerned that he hasn't made enough progress have
pulled off something of a palace coup. On Feb. 27, after most of the press
had left labor's annual winter gathering in Hollywood, Fla., the group
quietly pushed through the creation of a new governing body to run the
federation. The goal: to reinvigorate the AFL-CIO and refocus its agenda on
recruitment and politics -- and ditch almost everything else.



It's a bid to fundamentally overhaul the house of labor by slashing the
AFL-CIO's bureaucracy, orchestrating mergers of small unions, and mounting
national recruitment drives. "Today's labor movement was invented in the
1950s and hasn't changed much since," says John W. Wilhelm, president of the
Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees union and one of those behind the new
entity. "We need dramatic change. Every program of the AFL-CIO should be
evaluated in terms of its contribution to organizing and politics."

THREATENED.  The AFL-CIO's current governing body, the 54-member executive
council, voted in the leaner structure despite protests from a handful of
union leaders who would be excluded. The new group, called the executive
committee, will meet monthly without staff and includes the heads of the 10
largest unions, plus seven others Sweeney chose. He's a member, too, with
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka and Executive Vice-President Linda
Chavez-Thompson.

Will a more powerful, slimmed-down AFL-CIO make a real difference in labor's
fortunes? After all, Sweeney himself has been pushing many of the same ideas
ever since he came to power, only to encounter resistance from unions that
haven't mustered the will to change. The internal politics of the new
committee could also prove divisive. Several union presidents say Sweeney,
who ultimately endorsed the reorganization, feels threatened by the obvious
challenge to his leadership.

CALLING THE SHOTS.  The five union leaders who hatched the changes -- Sandra
Feldman of the teachers' union, Andy Stern of the service employees, Bruce
Raynor of the needle trades, Terence M. O'Sullivan of the laborers, and
Wilhelm -- began talking about the need for bold moves last year. But when
they approached Sweeney several months ago, "he took it like a slap in the
face," says one participant.

Sweeney only moved on the reorganization after meeting with the five union
chiefs on Feb. 25, the first day of the Florida meeting. Even then, he
didn't tell most other union leaders on the executive council -- who now
stand to lose much of their power -- what was up until he proposed the new
committee two days later. When asked by BusinessWeek about the new governing
structure after the vote, he responded angrily, at first saying it had been
his idea but then insisting it "will be advisory only." Still, the 10
largest unions represent two-thirds of the federation's membership, so they
likely will call the shots. "This will let union presidents get more
involved in decision-making, which is usually done beforehand" by the
AFL-CIO staff, says Gerald W. McEntee, head of the American Federation of
State, County & Municipal Employees.

If the new committee can truly remake the AFL-CIO, it would address a number
of the criticisms union leaders have privately leveled at Sweeney for years.
Like United Brotherhood of Carpenters President Douglas J. McCarron, who
yanked his union out of the AFL-CIO in 2001 over many of the same issues,
some labor leaders think Sweeney has built an expensive bureaucracy that
hasn't put enough emphasis on hiking union membership. Indeed, the latest
Bureau of Labor Statistics report, issued on Feb. 25, shows union membership
at 13.2% of the U.S. workforce in 2002, down from 13.4% the year before.
"The AFL-CIO can't afford to be everything to every union anymore; it needs
to focus more on a growth strategy," says Stern, whose union, the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU), has grown by some 200,000 members
since he succeeded Sweeney as its president.

LESS BUREAUCRACY.  The real question, though, is whether organized labor is
capable of reinventing itself, regardless of who is setting the agenda.
Sweeney himself came to power by exhorting unions to focus their
still-considerable resources on recruitment to offset labor's plummeting
share of the workforce. But most unions have done little to follow his
advice.

Some unions, such as Raynor's garment workers and Wilhelm's hotel workers,
have radically reshaped their structures. Like the Carpenters and the SEIU
under Stern, they have slashed bureaucracies and freed up staff and money
for organizing, leading to major recruitment victories.

The problem is, that group includes only a half-dozen or so unions. Now,
some of labor's most aggressive leaders will be on the new governing
committee, including Wilhelm, Raynor, and O'Sullivan, whom Sweeney chose as
representatives of smaller unions. If the new group can make tough decisions
about how the labor movement operates, it may bring back some of the vigor
that rippled through the house of labor when Sweeney first took office.


By Aaron Bernstein in Hollywood, Fla.