07/26/2005
Citing irresolvable differences, two of the largest unions that make up the AFL-CIO split from the largest federation of labor unions this week.
The Service Employers International Union and the Teamsters announced the disaffiliation yesterday, coinciding with the annual AFL-CIO convention, which started Monday in Washington, D.C. The two unions, along with United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE, which are expected to announce their disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO soon, had already boycotted the convention.
Membership in the four unions represents one-third of the AFL-CIO’s 13 million members.
Experts agree that the split will weaken organized labor’s role in the workplace, which has declined in recent years.
“If the AFL-CIO splits, the fear is at least that the entire labor union movement will be less powerful than it is today—and that's not very powerful,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich told CNN Monday.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said the split was an insult to unionized workers everywhere.
“A divided movement hurts the hopes of working families for a better life,” Sweeney said in his keynote address at the AFL-CIO convention. “The labor movement belongs to all of us—every worker—and our future should not be dictated by the demands of any group or the ambitions of any individual.”
The four dissidents, along with the Laborers’ International Union of North America, formed the Change to Win Coalition in June; the coalition, striving to rebuild the American labor movement, now has seven union members.
Historically, organized labor is not unfamiliar with such rifts. In 1938, the CIO split from the AFL; they reunited in 1955.
