Word: afl-cio
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WITH ORGANIZED LABOR withering away to what its leaders fear is near irrelevance, a conflict over its future direction has been building between AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and Andrew Stern, a onetime protégé who is threatening to bolt from the federation and take its largest union with him. Among the proposals put forward by Stern, president of the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union, is one that would forcibly merge dozens of unions, putting weaker ones out of existence, with the goal of consolidating the bargaining power of unions in key industries. Sweeney opposes the idea (though...
...question for labor leaders is how to restore union influence in the workplace and in politics. Sweeney, 70, who was considered a reformer when he took the helm of the AFL-CIO a decade ago, has put far more union resources into political mobilization and has significantly increased union members' voter turnout. But the Democratic presidential candidates labor backed have twice been defeated in that time, and Republican majorities have grown in Congress as well. The only answer to regaining influence, Stern and other union leaders contend, is to increase union membership, which has continued to decline under Sweeney...
Sweeney last week endorsed one Stern idea: to give the unions back a share of their AFL-CIO dues so they can pour it into drives to recruit more members. Sweeney declined to say how large a rebate he would support, but a proposal, backed by the Teamsters, would require the federation to return $35 million--50% of its intake--to its member unions. The result would be a smaller budget, and presumably less political clout, for the AFL-CIO. A challenge to Sweeney's political clout may also be in the offing. Hotel workers' union president John W. Wilhelm...
...race now moves to the house of labor, where a committee of the AFL-CIO could vote to endorse one of the candidates on Tuesday. If there is no endorsement, the individual member unions of the AFL will likely make their own picks...
...vote game for more than two decades. The son of a shoe salesman, Rosenthal, 51, grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and got his start in politics organizing unions in New Jersey. Few in Democratic politics have shown the kind of results that Rosenthal did as head of the AFL-CIO's political operation from 1996 to 2002. In the 2000 election, union members accounted for only about 16% of the voting-age population but produced 26% of the votes; two of three union votes went to the Dems...