The Change to Win leadership: (left to right) Jim Hoffa, General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters; Edgar Romney, Secretary-Treasurer of the CTW Federation; Andy Stern, SEIU President; Joe Hansen, UFCW President; Anna Burger, Chair of CTW Federation; Terry O’Sullivan, LIUNA General President; Arturo Rodriguez, United Farm Workers President;Geralyn Lutty, UFCW International Vice President. courtesy of the IBT.
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer
ST. LOUIS (PAI)—Declaring they want to devote three-fourths of their new group’s money to organizing, leaders and representatives of seven unions formally established the Change to Win federation Sept. 27 in St. Louis.
The federation’s unions have more than 6 million members. They are the Service Employees, Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, the Laborers, the Carpenters, UNITE HERE and the Farm Workers. Of those, all but the Laborers—who will leave soon—and the United Farm Workers, are former member unions of the AFL-CIO.
The new group, to be headquartered in Washington, named SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger as its chair and Edgar Romney, Executive Vice President of UNITE HERE, as its Secretary-Treasurer. SEIU’s organizing director, Tom Woodruff, becomes Change to Win’s organizing director—a key post—and Greg Tarpanian moves from the New York-based Labor Research Association to become Change to Win’s full-time executive director.
Burger, who will chair the monthly meetings of the new group’s 10-person board and serve as its public face, will keep her SEIU post. Woodruff will head its Strategic Organizing Center. The center "will lead federation-wide coordinated growth initiatives, leveraging the collective resources of its affiliates for growth" and "integrate their organizing plans," a Change to Win statement said.
At its first-ever convention, almost 500 delegates from the unions ratified the organization’s constitution and its goals and program by voice votes. Leaders said organizing the unorganized will be Change to Win’s overriding goal.
Teamsters President James Hoffa declared Change to Win would spend $750 million on organizing. The Teamsters, on the international level alone, spend $40-$45 million and will add $5 million next year, Hoffa said. UNITE HERE Co-President Bruce Raynor said his union spends 55 percent of its national-level budget—$35 million—on organizing.
But there is more, or maybe less, to that figure than meets the eye.
That’s because the figure includes not just what the new federation and its member international unions spend on organizing, but what their locals, councils and affiliates spend, too.
And spending next year will increase only slightly, using the funds those unions would have otherwise sent to the AFL-CIO in dues—minus the 25 cents per member per month they’re going to send to Change to Win.
And they stated that their core industries—hotels, hospitals, restaurants, textile, construction, transportation and others—have 50 million workers, but only 6 million are unionists. Workers they will pursue hold jobs that cannot be outsourced or moved overseas, they added.
"We commit ourselves to the 50 million unorganized workers and to rebuild the labor movement," Burger said.
Many of those jobs are held by minority group members, immigrants or both, and the convention showcased statements from African-American and Latino/Latina workers. Change to Win also demands full legalization of immigrants.
Key concepts of Change to Win’s program include:
• Concentrating organizing in each union’s "core industries," such as transportation for the Teamsters, according to Hoffa. Change to Win, which Burger and the union presidents emphasize would be a small, coordinating body, would mediate and decide conflicts.
• Multi-union organizing campaigns, and multi-union support for each other’s organizing drives, strikes and other action.
• Creating coordinating committees for organizing and bargaining in the specific core industries. The panels would develop joint plans and enforce provisions to ban individual unions from reaching contracts that undercut their colleagues’ efforts.
• Nationwide organizing of national targets, including DHL, Wal-Mart, Cintas, Smithfield, FedEx and possibly the Beverly Nursing Home chain. The Change to Win 10-person council—each union’s president plus an additional member each, for diversity, from SEIU, the Teamsters and UFCW—will set more targets and flesh out plans at a Nov. 1 meeting in Washington, D.C.
• Using actions, including strikes, in other cities or metro areas to support demands for recognition and contracts in one area.
• Downgrading political action to link endorsements to organizing, and endorsing only politicians who openly support the right to organize—even if those pols oppose labor on other issues.
• Using of labor’s financial re-sources, such as money in health, welfare and pension funds, to further union organizing goals. Laborers Union President Terry O’Sullivan said that includes $200 million in so-called "Taft-Hartley" pension funds in the construction industry, and $2.6 billion in public employee pensions.
• Making the areas of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama devastated by Hurricane Katrina a test case for a new union role, not just immediate relief, but training area workers to rebuild communities. "It’s an opportunity to present ourselves in the South," where the labor movement is weak and even unionists under national contracts, such as IBT master freight agreements, have lower wages, Hoffa said.
• Using the three-fourths of the $16 million that Change to Win will collect in per-capita assessments from member unions for planning and implementing joint organizing.
Change to Win leaders confirmed contacts with other unions about joining their new federation, but said they are not actively soliciting them. A prime target mentioned was the unaffiliated 2.7-million-member National Education Association, the nation’s largest union. Asked specifically if NEA would be asked to join, SEIU President Andrew Stern said no.
"There are now two federations," Stern said. "The question is now that we changed, can we win?"
