Remodeling the House of Labor

When union workers wanted new leadership at the AFL-CIO, AFSCME turned to the leader of another growing union: John Sweeney.

"Since our last Convention, the House of Labor has undergone major remodeling," AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee said, introducing AFL-CIO Pres. John Sweeney. "And I am happy to say that AFSCME's fingerprints are all over the results!"

It was a historic event-the first time since 1982 an AFSCME convention was addressed by the president of the AFL-CIO.

And AFSCME helped put him in that job. Sweeney gave McEntee credit for starting a movement to bring in new leadership.

Like other AFSCME activists, McEntee was tired of watching the labor movement shrink in membership and influence. He sought to revitalize the House of Labor and that meant new leadership. He called Sweeney, then president of the Service Employees International Union.

Housecleaning. "The campaign to rejuvenate the American labor movement began more than a year before we announced that we were running," said Sweeney when he took the podium. "Jerry McEntee called me and said, 'John, we've got to talk about the AFL-CIO.'"

Until then, the huge 13.5 million-member labor organization was drifting. The AFL-CIO was not organizing aggressively and was taking a back seat in politics.

At the time of McEntee's call, said Sweeney, "We were not talking about who headed the AFL-CIO. We were talking about where the AFL-CIO was headed. Let history note that we took back the labor movement because Jerry McEntee refused to slink around in the shadows of silence."

Since then, the new AFL-CIO has launched Labor '96, which is now putting $35 million into field organizing and radio and television advertisements to educate working people on issues that matter to them and to their families.

To support this and other efforts, the AFL-CIO created Union Summer, a program for young people who are organizing in the nation's streets and communities. "Our original goal was to deploy 1,000 young people," said Sweeney. "We already have 3,300 applications, and we're trying to accommodate as many as we can."

America needs a raise. Sweeney got an earful during the AFL-CIO's recent series of some 23 open forums held around the U.S. focusing on the theme, "America Needs a Raise."

"Workers say, 'I'm working harder and harder, and I'm making less and less.' They have no time to spend with their families. Their anger is exceeded only by their anxiety about keeping their jobs. This is a prescription for social and economic disaster," he said.

There's only one remedy, said Sweeney: "We're going to work harder, spend more money and campaign smarter than ever before. We're going to take back the House, and we're going to start to take back the Senate. We're going to take back our country for working people."

By Susan Ellen Holleran