Posted on 06/12/2005 2:29:44 AM PDT by TXBSAFH
AFL-CIO Closer to Breaking Up SEIU Board Authorizes Union Leaders to Quit Federation
By Thomas B. Edsall Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 12, 2005; Page A07
The Service Employees International Union yesterday took the first concrete step toward breaking up the AFL-CIO, the nation's central labor federation.
The SEIU executive board, at a meeting in San Francisco, authorized union leaders to quit the federation. As many as four other unions -- the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, Unite Here and the Laborers -- could follow suit, pulling out 5 million of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members.
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The conflict could become a major battle at the AFL-CIO convention at the end of July in Chicago, with both camps so angry that prospects for a peaceful resolution appear unlikely.
Democratic Party officials have privately voiced deep concern over the struggles within the AFL-CIO, which has become a mainstay of the party both financially and in voter-turnout drives.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Get the popcorn, this should be fun.
Duh, could it be that American workers choose to NOT be a member of a union? The handwriting is on the wall for the dinosauers of the labor movement.
Neither Sweeney nor anyone else can stem the tide of today's modern employees choosing freedom over their local Union Lemming Chapters.
Leni
Radical Marxists spits from the Commuist Party!
Leni
I have a neighbor who was a union member. He quit after 15+ years. Their support for the rat lib agenda just got to stinking to much for him.
SEIU Executive Board Authorizes Disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO; Follows Resolutions By Local Unions
By unitetowin
Posted on Sat Jun 11, 2005 at 02:14:04 PM EST
Faced with "a fundamental and apparently irreconcilable disagreement" within the labor movement about how to rebuild workers' strength, the SEIU International Executive Board has formally authorized the union's top leadership to disaffiliate from the AFL-CIO if necessary. (Read the full statement by the SEIU Board.)
The Board acted after receiving resolutions from local unions authorizing disaffiliation. The elected rank-and-file executive boards of local unions representing 70 percent of the SEIU membership have already adopted such resolutions, and more have scheduled meetings to consider the issue.
The Board set the following policy of cooperation and partnerships if the union does disaffiliate:
1) "We will seek agreements with other unions to cooperate on strategies to help workers form unions in their core industries or occupations and negotiate better living standards - regardless of whether the cooperating unions are in or out of the AFL-CIO.
2) "We will offer to coordinate with the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions on political issues important to working families, as we do with the NEA, America Votes, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, Mi Familia Vota, and many other organizations, and we would be prepared to contribute financially to the AFL-CIO political program.
3) "We will work to build powerful and inclusive social movements in our communities through continued participation with Central Labor Councils (CLCs) and State Federations.
4) "We will seek agreements with other unions not to fight over the few workers who are already organized or make deals with employers to lower pay and benefit standards. Our focus will be on helping more workers in our core industries to join unions, and not on dividing workers' strength or wasting workers' precious resources by trying to persuade current union members to change unions."
The SEIU Board - which includes 50 local union leaders whose locals include more than 80 percent of the union's membership - said the union's decisions will continue to be based on three principles:
· "The union movement must focus on uniting with us the 9 out of 10 workers who have no union. Without doing so, we not only cannot build a broad movement for social and economic justice but we can't even win consistently at the bargaining table or in the legislative arena for the small minority of workers who still have a union.
· "Uniting more workers with us requires lead unions in each industry or occupation that have the focus, strategy, and resources to win. We cannot help workers make major advances in each industry as long as the AFL-CIO structure and rules condone and reward union strategies that divide workers' strength in each industry -- 15 separate organizations in the transportation industry, 15 in construction, 13 in public employment, 9 in manufacturing, and so on -- while allowing even more unions to start organizing in those sectors and make a bad situation even worse.
· "We must empower those hit hardest in today's economy, including low-wage women and people of color. That requires two changes. First, we must make it our top priority to help millions in today's diverse workforce to join unions. Second, we must adopt standards and timetables to ensure that our organizations reflect that diversity at every level of leadership and member participation.
While unions that represent a total of 5 million workers have made a proposal for change based on those commitments (see ChangetoWin.org ), the AFL-CIO officers have made their own proposal which does not implement those principles.
"We respect those who disagree with us, and hope to continue to work with them on political and community issues we share," the SEIU Board said. "But there comes a point where if we can't reach agreement on basic principles, we should each move on and devote our time and resources to a strategy we believe will help working people win."
http://www.unitetowinblog.org/
Meaning all those illegals under the "work visa" program...
Leni
This is kicking on the legs of the chair out from under teh rats.
This isn't really about the AFL-CIO breaking up.
What's really happening is that they are breaking up so that they can reorganize under a new entity.
I'm sure that many are vying for the top spots, but this is just like a corporate restructuring.
The Unite-here leadership is basically trying to take over, but they can't until the pieces of the Afl-cio break off first.
Bush's fault
I'm melting! I'm melting!
There was a time when unions really were working people combining their efforts to market their commodity (labor.) I have no problem with that. It has a free market ring to it. If it's enforced with bats and clubs against other potential workers, then even that has a free market ring to it.
But then the democrat party moved in and made the unions simply a cash reserve of their political party. The politicians gradually applied the rubber band of restrictive legislation to the gonads of the labor movement.
These geldings began asking for the ridiculous....in work restrictions, pay, benefits, etc. They made non-issues such as abortion, parental rights, and liberal foreign policy a centerpiece of their agenda.
How could such a hodgepodge of inanity survive?
I could not have said it better.
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