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...JOHN SWEENEY SAT IN HIS makeshift election headquarters at the Sheraton Hotel in New York City last week, he found himself in a rare position. The avowed rebel of American labor was counting his millions of admirers. Sweeney, 61, the insurgent candidate for president of the AFL-CIO, ticked off some of the army of unions whose support he is counting on: steelworkers, autoworkers, government workers, teamsters, machinists and, most recently, farm workers. His route to this point breaks all convention. Since the confederation known as the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations came together 40 years...
...touch of irony, Sweeney began the year backing Thomas Donahue, 67, the current president of the AFL-CIO and the man he is running against. Sweeney had wanted Lane Kirkland, president of the labor group for 16 years, to step down in favor of Donahue, his No. 2. But when Kirkland refused, Sweeney decided to challenge the leader himself. Kirkland responded by resigning last June--whereupon Donahue became the president...
...union dissidents. Sweeney retorts that the Kirkland legacy is one of an increasingly toothless movement. The challenger offers his own enviable record: since Sweeney became president of the service-workers union in 1980, it has nearly doubled in size, to 1.02 million workers, representing the fastest growth in the AFL-CIO. Late last week Sweeney held a slight edge and was confident of victory...
...task for the next AFL-CIO president will be to help overcome such barriers and infuse new life in the once proud movement. "Whoever wins is going to devote substantially more resources to organizing," says Reich. In the final analysis, he adds, "working people may simply turn to unions as their only alternative. But for that to happen, unions are going to have to be a lot more vigorous and imaginative." Labor's toughest job still lies ahead...
...after he defeated Thomas Donahue to take control of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney virtually blocked traffic on Eighth Avenue in New York City's Garment District, leading a rally of nearly 2,000 workers and denouncing "greedy employers" who are holding wages down. As an outsider in the historically closed circle of AFL-CIO leadership, Sweeney's challenge will be to revive a union that has been in steady decline for the past five years, says New York bureau chief John Moody. "His great strength is that he is not associated with the leadership of the union under former...