NYT/AP:Organized Labor at Crossroads w/ Feud(some unions may quit AFL-CIO)

Organized Labor at Crossroads With Feud
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 23, 2005
Filed at 12:35 p.m. ET


CHICAGO (AP) -- Labor's toughest negotiators are turning their bruising tactics on each other, playing a high-stakes game of chicken inside the AFL-CIO at a perilous time for the long-fading union movement.

A politically charged feud over the future of organized labor comes to a climax this week when nearly 1,000 delegates gather to celebrate the 50th year of the AFL-CIO.

Four of the federation's 56 affiliates, representing about one-third of its dues-paying union members, are threatening to leave Chicago before the convention begins Monday and, eventually, bolt the AFL-CIO itself.

A divided House of Labor threatens the Democratic Party, which relies on the AFL-CIO's organizing powers on Election Day, and could affect the livelihoods of 13 million workers represented by the federation's affiliates. Whether the civil war jolts organized labor from its slumber or hastens its decline is a subject of intense debate....

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Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union is leading an effort to overthrow his former mentor, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, and radically overhaul the federation. He has formed a coalition of seven reform-minded unions, including the four threatening to quit the AFL-CIO if their demands on not met....


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Labor-Rift.html

I don't know that that would be a bad thing! Unions have done a lot of great things for the workers of our country over the years, but there's been a lot of corruption in them as well.

I don't think the AFL/CIO hasn't done a great job for workers in the past 10-20 years! The Sweeney's aren't hurting, the workers are!

I want to hear more about what's really going on here before I slam this division.

"During the Democratic convention Stern told David Broder of the Washington Post Washington Post that organized labor and the Democratic party would both probably be better served by a Kerry defeat. Last Summer SEIU gave more than $500,000 to the Republican Governor's Association. He lauds the DLC, and told me that SEIU is a member. And he's talked of his admiration for Stephen Moore and the Club for Growth, the doctrinaire free-marketers who've spent millions in Republican primaries sniping at moderate Republicans on behalf of right wing candidates, almost all of whom have either failed to unseat the incumbent Republican or who've lost to a Democrat in the general election."

http://racerx.dailykos.com/section/Labor

Look where they've invested pension funds. Union "presidents" for life. (Sweeney, Hoffa). Time to shake the tree.....

But mostly in US "client states," not at home. It's clear unions are dying in the US, but not so much how or why.