With debate continuing over how to revamp the AFL-CIO, a top constituency group pushed for greater representation, and the Roofers protested forced mergers.

The ideas came forth just before the next big step in the revamp debate: A Feb. 15-17 meeting in Washington of hundreds of delegates from state federations and central labor councils (CLCs), which may produce their own reorganization plan.

All the responses came after federation President John J. Sweeney called for unionists nationwide to participate in the revamp debate, which will culminate at the AFL-CIO convention in Chicago in late July.

Service Employees President Andrew Stern, in turn, started it last June by telling his convention the AFL-CIO must be drastically reformed and become more top-down, or be blown up as ineffective and outmoded.

But some of Stern?s ideas, notably forced mergers of smaller unions into larger ones and dividing the economy into sectors with a "lead union" in each, have drawn flak.

For example, AFSCME and the Fire Fighters call for more emphasis on politics, either to achieve legislative goals and worker rights or battle the anti-labor Bush administration or both. IAFF said the federation must be more bipartisan. The Teachers and Machinists, two of the larger, activist unions, also oppose forced mergers. The Teamsters want to encourage mergers with a carrot--returning half of any union?s AFL-CIO dues--to encourage organizing, and not a stick.

The forced merger plan drew the particular ire of Roofers President John C. Martini. Amalgamated Transit Union President Warren George, whose 120,000-member union has engaged in past talks with the Transport Workers, also opposed forced mergers.

Martini, whose union has 19,000 members, noted forced mergers often backfired on the companies involved in industries such as trucking and airlines. The AFL-CIO should not imitate failed corporate models, he said. And when local construction unions merged, the contractors they worked with often took their firms, projects and workers non-union, he pointed out.

"How this (mergers) would be good for the AFL-CIO and the 'smaller' unions is yet an unproven theory," Martini wrote Sweeney in early January. "For my union and the members it represents, it would be nothing less than a disaster."

Martini said construction unions' unique relationships with contractors would be upset by forced mergers, especially with larger unions that know little or nothing about the industry.

"My union is not alone in experiencing loss of both signatory contractors and members when mergers were forced on smaller locals. While mergers may have looked good on paper, the reality is many of the contractors in those areas...refused to sign agreements" with newly merged unions, Martini explained.

"They went non-union and their workers followed them," he said. "I fear this would only be replicated with forced or voluntary mergers of smaller construction unions with larger ones." He called that "a known result," and not "a rosy scenario" of a larger union.

The Coalition of Labor Union Women and Pride at Work took different tacks. CLUW advocated affirmative action to increase leadership by women and people of color.

Pride at Work, who represent the latter three groups, suggested sensitivity training for the AFL-CIO?s mostly white male leadership on issues of racism, sexism and homophobia. But it concentrated more on joint multi-union organizing campaigns, and how constituencies--including itself--could participate.

CLUW President Susan Phillips, who held high posts in the majority-female United Food and Commercial Workers, told Sweeney almost half the federation?s 13.3 million members are women. And women are more pro-union and more likely to unionize than men. But few AFL-CIO leaders, nationally or locally, are female.

"Surveys reveal women's support for unions diminished because of the dearth of high-ranking and visible women in the labor movement," she warned. "Women seek to join a movement that will reflect their needs and aspirations, and seeing women in decision-making positions is a key indicator that unions welcome women and understand their needs, concerns, and priorities."

CLUW said the fed should "address the needs of women wor-kers and seek to organize them...by ensuring representation and participation of women, people of color, and immigrants at the highest levels of policy determinations and decision-making."

And CLUW wants it to target industries and workplaces with large numbers of women workers and encourage unions to hire women organizers, leaders and staffers "so women seeking to organize will view unions as responsive to women's needs and concerns."

Phillips also wants the fed to "target union women as a key electoral swing group" in off-years as well as election years, and give money and personnel to union women running for office.

And the AFL-CIO should make working women's issues a high legislative priority, CLUW added. They include "pay equity, affirmative action, the right to organize, paid family and medical leave, Social Security, protections for part-time workers and national health care," Phillips wrote.

Phillips said the fed should use womens? expertise, along with that of other constituency groups, in the "overarching Wal-Mart effort." She noted the mammoth retailer's rock-bottom wages and bad benefits predominantly affect working women. Wal-Mart?s workforce is 70 percent female.

Stern proposed allotting $25 million to a national campaign to organize the million-worker anti-union retail behemoth and publicize its mistreatment of workers, suppliers and communities.

Pride at Work devoted most of its suggestions to organizing, but also opposed forced mergers. Indeed, it said such huge mergers could play into the hands of the anti-worker right-wing National Right to Work Committee.

"The AFL-CIO and the labor movement need a national organizing campaign. Take a company, like Wal-Mart, and make it the ultimate goal of the movement to organize that company or sector. Constituency groups could then play a role in organizing and educating their own respective communities on the issues and mobilize their communities for direct action," PAW said.

"The way we will reach massive organizing is through joint organizing campaigns NOT through forced mergers," it declared.

Citing its own co-president?s recent experience at San Francisco Airport--where a coalition of six internationals and 10 locals jointly organized 30,000 workers--PAW advocated similar efforts elsewhhere.

"The appropriate role of the federation was to provide background research on the companies (and) fund the effort. Such joint efforts allow unions to take on campaigns that alone they could not." In other such drives, PAW said, unions could go after like-minded workers and the constituency groups could pursue their colleagues--all with the same joint organizing goal in mind.