AFL-CIO ‘Old Guard’ Controls the Votes
To Block A Challenge from New Leaders

Although the AFL-CIO convention is two years away, its current leaders are assured of re-election for four more years or to designate replacements for those who plan to retire. They will use he same formula that enabled them to be elected four successive terms over ten years, despite a dismal organizing record and a series of legislative defeats.

Their trump card is a provision in the AFL-CIO constitution that awards international unions the same number of votes as their membership, based on per capita payments, while state federations and central labor councils are given one vote each. Here is how it worked out at the 2005 convention:

The nine delegates from, the United Auto Workers each had 69,570 convention votes, based on the UAW's 626,137 reported members. At the same time, the California and New York State Federations, each with two million members, were limited to one delegate and one convention vote apiece. A small union, like the Federation of Professional Athletes, was entitled to cast 1,700 votes, which was more than three times the combined votes of all state federations and central labor councils.

It was impossible for any potential candidate, no matter how qualified and popular, to successfully challenge the AFL-CIO’s three executive officers or the 48 members of the Executive Council. In fact, no officer of either a state federation or central labor council has ever won a seat on the policy-making national council in the 50 years of the Federation’s history.

One important reform that is urgently needed is to change the AFL-CIO constitution so that each delegate is entitled to one — and only one — convention vote. This is the standard procedure followed by democratic organizations everywhere, from the U.S. Congress down to any well-run local union.

But the slogan, “One Delegate, One Vote,” has thus far not been popularized. It has received almost no attention from the labor media. Nor have state federations and central labor councils, who would benefit greatly from this democratic reform, shown any interest in promoting it.

Right now, working families are overwhelmed with problems. Their wages remain stagnant while profits have soared. They’re worried about health care costs, the threat to their retirement income, the outsourcing of good jobs and the never-ending war in Iraq. They are getting no help from the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, and they’re stuck with their inept and self-serving labor leaders for another two years‹and probably much longer, unless new, militant leaders emerge.

Two years is not a long time to organize the difficult campaign to restore democracy to the labor movement. The challenge to would-be national leaders is here and now.

Our two weekly columns and their archives (LaborTalk and The World of Labor) can be viewed and downloaded at our website: www.laboreducator.org.