By a substantial margin, the nation's union leaders adopted a proposal to put the AFL-CIO's prime emphasis on politics and legislation, with organizing second.

The plan by federation President John Sweeney was adopted by the federation?s Executive Committee, a smaller subset of top leaders, in a long meeting Wednesday. It triumphed over a competing plan from Teamsters President James Hoffa.

Hoffa's plan emphasized rebating half of every union's AFL-CIO dues to those unions that develop strategic organizing plans. The AFL-CIO Executive Council, meeting in Las Vegas, was expected to follow the smaller body?s lead and put politics first.

Hoffa's plan, however, was a large package dealing with how to revamp the AFL-CIO to make it more responsive to needs of workers in the current hostile political and business climate. His plan included encouraging, but not forcing, union mergers, slimming the federation's structure, restricting the AFL-CIO to "core issues," and reducing the size of top leadership bodies. It also put organizing first.

The vote for Sweeney's plan in the Executive Committee was reported as 15-9, with the vote rejecting Hoffa?s plan reported as either 14-8 or 15-7, since accounts varied.

What did not vary, according to UNITE HERE President Bruce Raynor, a Hoffa ally, was that unions representing 5 million workers--about 40 percent of the federation?s 12.95 million members--backed Hoffa's plan.

"What passed is that half of (money from) per capita dues payments" to the AFL-CIO "goes to politics. We don't disagree, but we believe there needs to be a balance for organizing," Laborers President Terry O?Sullivan said.

Backers of the dues rebate and its allied issues included SEIU, the Teamsters, UNITE HERE, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Laborers and the United Auto Workers.

Both sides also agreed a drastic restructuring of the AFL-CIO to make it a better instrument for workers will occur, even if much of that will be thrashed out in meetings before the federation's convention in Chicago in late July.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard L. Trumka declined to confirm O'Sullivan?s figures, since the Executive Council could change everything.

Sweeney's plan would allocate approximately half of the per-capita dues payments--now 61 cents per worker per year, passed through international unions--to politics. That would yield $45 million, O'Sullivan said.

Organizing would get $15 million, on condition that unions develop strategic organizing plans, as Hoffa and the others proposed, O'Sullivan added. That money would be added to the $13.5 million the federation now channels from its credit card "affinity" payments into organizing.

The $15 million "is a significant increase in AFL-CIO support for organizing," said Machinists President Thomas Buffenbarger.

The federation also gets money from sources other than dues and those would go for other programs, including research, Trumka said. Union leaders are still hashing out what the "core functions" of the federation will be in the future, he added.

Hoffa and his allies, such as SEIU President Andrew Stern, said the federation should concentrate on just a few "core functions," and leave the rest to national and local unions.

Union presidents on both sides emphasized organizing and politics are inseparable. The question, they said, was how much emphasis to put on each.

"You can have the best political program in the world, but without the numbers of members, we'll not win another f***** election, if we can't grow," O'Sullivan said. He said the Hoffa-led group did not object to $45 million for politics, but they wanted an equal amount for organizing.

"I think the difference is that their view was about how much money should be directed to the rebates" for organizing, added Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger, co-chair of the AFL-CIO Political Committee. He backed Sweeney's plan.

"But the discussion is very consistent" on both sides, Schaitberger added. Both sides want some form of dues rebate for organizing, though they disagreed on a specific figure, and both are willing to put money into politics, he added.

Though most of the discussion was characterized as being about the rebate, Hoffa also advocated distributing more duties and accountability to state feds and Central Labor Councils.

Some of those reform proposals were adopted and others will be discussed between now and July, Trumka said. One was to reduce the number of CLCs, creating cases where, as he put it "instead of three organizations we have one organization with three layers." Details have yet to worked out, he added.

Forced union mergers did not come up, as Stern originally advocated when he touched off the revamp debate. Forced mergers drew a lot of criticism, particularly from Buffenbarger, and Stern's original proposal took a back seat to Hoffa's. But Buffenbarger still raised storm signals.

When Stern first proposed forced mergers, IAM's Grand Lodge reacted by authorizing withdrawal if the 342,000-member union faced a forced merger. "The real issue is a battle between autocrats and democrats," Buffenbarger told PAI.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates,Inc., news service. Used by permission.

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