John Sweeney spent the past 14 years building the AFL-CIO into a political powerhouse for workers’ rights and other Democratic causes.
Yet over the same time, the ranks of union members continued to shrink, diminishing organized labor’s clout in the workplace. Frustration with Sweeney’s tenure and the dip in membership led seven unions to split from the AFL-CIO four years ago to form the rival Change to Win federation.
As Sweeney, 75, prepares to step down this week as AFL-CIO president, his successor and longtime deputy — Richard Trumka — wants to aggressively recruit younger workers and boost membership as a means of expanding labor’s political influence.
Trumka, 60, officially takes the helm of the AFL-CIO at its quadrennial convention, which opens Sunday in Pittsburgh. On Tuesday, President Obama addresses the nation’s largest labor federation, which represents about 11 million workers in 56 unions.
By many accounts, Sweeney transformed a moribund labor movement in the mid-1990s by firmly aligning the AFL-CIO with the Democratic Left. The son of working-class Irish immigrants from the Bronx repositioned the AFL-CIO as a champion of social Democratic causes by forging alliances with civil rights leaders as well as women’s, environmental and anti-poverty groups.
Besides giving the federation more political heft, he mobilized rank-and-file union members to boost political activism, beef up voter registration drives and expand get-out-the-vote efforts.
Making political action a year-round affair, rather than just focusing on elections, allowed the AFL-CIO to mobilize quickly this summer to help Obama push his health care overhaul. Last month, 24,000-plus union members showed up at more than 400 town hall meetings and rallies in all 50 states to counter those who oppose Obama’s ideas for changing health care.
But Sweeney could not seem to find the answer to steep membership declines. Union membership now stands at about 12.4 percent, down from a high of 35 percent in the 1950s. The drop has been steeper in the private sector, which has shrunk to 7.6 percent from about 17 percent in the 1980s.
Now that labor has a Democrat in the White House and a solid Democratic majority in Congress, several of the departed unions are considering a return to the AFL-CIO. The two federations have worked together to help Obama enact his economic stimulus package and seek improvements to the health care system.
The AFL-CIO is expected to be even more aggressive in pursuing its political agenda under Trumka, who last month said Democratic lawmakers would pay a political price if they don’t include a government-run option in any health care overhaul.
Labor leaders are also counting on Congress to pass a measure this year that would make it easier for workers to organize unions. But Democratic lawmakers are trying to reach a compromise that can muster enough votes to pass.
