The AFL-CIO will hold it 50th convention in Chicago starting July 25. Will the convention be the end of the AFL-CIO as we know it? Is the internal crisis threatening to split the federation really a battle between the status quo union bureaucrats and union leaders committed to building a strong labor movement?
Joann Wypijewski puts it all into perpsective in this piece from Counterpunch and it ain’t pretty.
July 22, 2005
Showdown in Chicago
Is This Really an “Insurgency ” to Shake Up the Labor Movement?
By JOANN WYPIJEWSKI
The day nears for the 50th national convention of the AFL-CIO, opening in Chicago on July 25. The meeting is being heralded as a possibly fateful encounter, in which forces of enlightenment and reaction will wrestle in momentous debate over the future of organized labor.
On the one side, so the story goes, we have the dynamic “organizing” unions with vivid blueprints for revitalization; on the other side, the dinosaur unions and leadership of the AFL-CIO, content with the status quo even as union membership dips to its lowest level in 70 years. We are primed for heated words and, perhaps, a turbulent exit by some of labor’s biggest players, who haven’t yet secured the votes to control the convention floor or to unseat John Sweeney as president of the 13 million-member labor federation.
It would be pleasant to set forth the impending showdown in Chicago as one in which the mutineers have a convincing plan for regenerating a labor movement, a plan made credible and compelling by their own past achievements. God knows, organized labor needs shaking up. The clich
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