The Road Ahead

FROM THE PRESIDENT
Gerald W. McEntee

Brothers and Sisters, now that the historic AFL-CIO Convention in Chicago is over, I'm sure many of you are wondering where we go from here.

First, I am especially proud of the role our union played in the ultimately unsuccessful struggle to prevent a split in the labor movement. In the months before the convention, AFSCME provided leadership and a vision of a revitalized labor movement in the face of today's unprecedented challenges. And we worked to build consensus and keep the movement together. At the convention, AFSCME had the largest delegation of any union: 24 delegates, 24 alternates and 110 AFSCME members representing Central Labor Councils and State Federations.

With regard to the re-election of the AFL-CIO leadership team, we should be proud. President Sweeney has a strong record and a bold plan to increase worker power and grow the labor movement. He has shown he can lead, and he can listen. His reforms represent the best ideas of everyone who participated in the debate about how to build a stronger labor movement.

The greatest achievement of the convention was enacting the new AFL-CIO plan, a sweeping set of reforms. Highlights include:

• Establish a new organizing fund to help affiliates grow their ranks and give every worker the opportunity to join a union.
• Implement a series of reforms that will reduce competition among unions, and help unite workers and their unions doing work in such core industries as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which are jointly fighting to give Comcast employees a voice at work.
• Set up a year-round member education and mobilization program that won't just focus on national politicians but also on elections at every level and on issue campaigns — such as our Social Security campaign, where we've put the President's privatization plan on life support with grassroots political organizing around the country.

DEALING WITH SPLIT UNIONS. The vast majority of unions are staying in the AFL-CIO. I'm sure many of you are wondering how we should relate to those that have left and what we can expect from them. The biggest challenges we face are attempted raids of our existing members and competition over new members. Raiding occurs when one union attempts to organize workers that already belong to another union. Not only is this wrong, it's also wasteful, especially when there are so many workers without unions.

That is exactly what the service employees' union (SEIU) is trying to do to us in California. Despite its public statements that it wouldn't raid, SEIU has launched a massive campaign to steal members from our affiliate, United Domestic Workers (UDW)-NUHHCE in California, which represents 60,000 home care workers. SEIU has been shameless in its efforts to break up our union in multiple parts of the state. Worse, now they've shown their true colors. We initiated talks to reach a no-raid agreement. We all but had an agreement when, at the last minute, SEIU abruptly said no and walked out.

In California, SEIU's raiding — if successful — would be bad for the workers involved. For example, AFSCME won a raise — representing a 27 percent hike since 2003 — for more than 9,000 home care workers in Riverside, while SEIU was unable to negotiate any raise for the same kinds of workers in Los Angeles County. The only thing happening for home care workers in L.A. is that they're paying dues and getting no raises.

SEIU is also competing with us for unorganized workers. In Iowa, where we were organizing 2,500 home care workers, SEIU jumped in to try to grab them. The workers chose us, and they're now proud members of AFSCME Council 61.

UNITY TOP PRIORITY. Lastly, a big concern has been the impact of the split unions' departure on the Central Labor Councils and State Federations, which are AFL-CIO affiliate organizations. A special "solidarity charter" has been devised that would allow local unions affiliated with the split unions to remain in the affiliate bodies — provided they agree not to raid other unions and participate fully in local activities. This assures that the local unions are not penalized by the decision of their national leaders. Unity has always been our top priority, and taking this step preserves it at the local and state levels. What's important is having strong, vibrant labor organizations on the ground, where the real work gets done.

Lots of questions are still unresolved. What does that mean for AFSCME?

We have to continue to make organizing and politics our top priorities because that's how we win the best wages and benefits for our members. AFSCME has always worked to elect pro-worker politicians and hold them accountable. Now we need to work even harder to build political power. AFSCME has organized more than 250,000 public- and private-sector workers in the last five years. We've doubled our spending on organizing, and we now have the most vigorous and focused organizing program in the AFL-CIO.

But we need to do more. That's why we're trying to organize workers in new and growing professions like child care and home care. Bringing in new members helps unorganized workers win a voice at work — and by increasing our size and power, we also improve our ability to negotiate good contracts for our existing members. The road ahead will be challenging, but AFSCME has never backed down from a fight, and we're not going to back down now!