It takes something on the order of a contested election for the AFL-CIO to make the news these days, but that could be about to change. John Sweeney shook up the labor federation's leadership when he challenged Lane Kirkland's hand-picked successor for the presidency, and now that he has been handily elected, he promises to shake up the American labor movement as well.
That's good news for working people, most of whom are not represented by an AFL-CIO member union any more.
Part of the reason for that is that people like Kirkland and his immediate successor, Thomas Donahue, have focused their energies on protecting benefits won for labor's traditional factory and trades workers decades earlier. Meanwhile, the labor market has shifted to provide many more jobs in low-paying service industries where countless workers are cheated out of more than a living wage.
Sweeney comes from the presidency of the Service Employees International Union, which has been adding members while other unions have been losing theirs. And he promises to invest $20 million in organizing new members beginning next year.
As a display of his intent to reach out to female, minority and non-traditional union members, Sweeney proposed a new top executive position at the AFL-CIO to be filled by Linda Chavez-Thompson, who was raised in a migrant farm worker family.
"I believe the secret to protecting the labor movement lies in not protecting it," Sweeney says, "that we revitalize the AFL-CIO by opening up debate."
He intends to extend that debate beyond the movement's borders, including to members of Congress who have had less reason to listen to labor with each passing year. But he knows that what talks on Capitol Hill these days isn't talk at all.
"We believe politicians respond to heat, rather than to light," Sweeney says. "We are going to turn up the heat."
More power to his torch. J.F.
