LAT: Head of Big Service-Workers Union Weighs Separation From AFL-CIO

[DeepModem Mom]

Head of Big Service-Workers Union Weighs Separation From AFL-CIO
SEIU President Andrew Stern says the federation is dying of inertia. He demands an increased focus on organizing new members.

By Nancy Cleeland, Times Staff Writer


Fifty years after it was formed by a merger of two powerful factions of labor unions, the AFL-CIO is on the brink of a historic split. If there's any single person to blame, or praise, for what happens next, it's an intense Ivy League graduate with a penchant for purple, the unifying color of the 1.8-million-member Service Employees International Union.

SEIU President Andrew Stern set the maelstrom in motion in November as labor leaders were still licking their wounds from a costly failure to help elect Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) as president.

Stern said the federation of 60 unions was dying of inertia, and threatened to pull out unless it changed dramatically — among other things, by dropping nearly all other activities in favor of organizing new members and forcing smaller, ineffective unions to consolidate into 15 stronger mega-unions.

As head of the AFL-CIO's largest and fastest-growing union, Stern could not be ignored, although many found his style imperious. His ideas, modified, are now supported by the presidents of four major unions: Unite Here, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Laborers International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers. Together with the SEIU, they represent a 40% block of votes in the AFL-CIO.

Along with structural change, the dissidents are calling for new leadership. The federation's top officers stand for reelection in July....


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-stern28may28,0,556453.story?coll=la-home-business

[Bandit]

1. If they can get the Teamsters under a big umbrella that is good

The Teamsters are our Judas and either we actively work against them or we force them into a larger group where they have to tow the line. This is about the only way the Unions will survive this GOP onslought. IMHO

[oneold1-4u]

2. For over fifty years

I have watched the "I've got enough" crowd scorn the unions who were the beginning of helping the working person "get enough"! The unions did get too big and crooked, so they did deserve a big kick, but today, the working poor are again slaves! Without organization and strength in number, in agreement, the average worker will never know the day that owning an average home will happen. The many thousands, living in working poverty today is growing so rapidly that military and prison begin to look like Valhalla!
-FREE FOOD,CLOTHING,MEDICAL,HOUSING,RECREATION,EDUCATION,TV AND PCs, LITTLE OR NO TAXATION, and FREE TRAVEL WORLD WIDE TO EXOTIC PLACES IN THE MILITARY.