SEIU Calls for End to U.S. Occupation
And Withdrawal of Troops from Iraq

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the AFL-CIO’s largest affiliated union with 1,600,000 members, voted to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq and to bring U.S. troops stationed there home, in a resolution approved unanimously by nearly 4, 000 delegates at the union’s national convention in San Francisco on June 22.

The strongly -worded resolution accused the Bush administration of using “deception, lies and false promises to the American people and the world” to launch a “unilateral, pre-emptive war” in Iraq, causing the death of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of U.S. soldiers, and costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

The union also charged the Bush administration with a series of attacks against working people that have eroded their economic, social and personal security. These attacks have resulted in declining wages and cuts in health care, education and other essential services, the resolution stated. It declared that “massive military spending, combined with tax cuts for the rich, is creating massive federal deficits and huge cuts in state public services.”

The SEIU is the only national labor organization to speak out so unequivocally against the war in Iraq. The AFL-CIO and most of its affiliates have had an unwritten policy of totally ignoring Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terrorism.

The AFL-CIO’s newsletter, Work in Progress, which regularly prints items about SEIU’s organizing victories at hospitals, had not a word to say about the biggest labor story of the month, featuring a convention of its largest affiliate. Nor did the AFL-CIO’s Web site carry anything about the SEIU’s anti-war resolution.

The resolution aligned SEIU with the principles contained in the Mission Statement of US Labor Against the War (USLAW), a national network of more than 70 affiliated labor organizations, including a dozen of SEIU’s largest local unions.

The SEIU called for “the redirecting of the nation’s resources from inflated military spending to meeting the needs of working families for health care, education, a clean environment, housing and a decent standard of living.”

In a paragraph dealing with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the resolution called for “supporting our troops and their families by bringing our troops home safely, by not recklessly putting them in harms way, by providing adequate veterans’ benefits and promoting domestic policies that prioritize the needs of working people who make up the bulk of the military.”

Given the SEIU’s anti-war action, it may be difficult for the AFL-CIO Executive Council to avoid a discussion of the situation in Iraq when it holds its semi-annual meeting on Aug. 9-10 in Chicago. SEIU president Andrew Stern has become increasingly critical of the Sweeney leadership, noting that AFL-CIO members represent only 12.9% of the nation’s work force, compared with 13.3% only two years ago.

If the SEIU presents its resolution to the Council, it will precipitate a debate on President Bush’s foreign policy, which Sweeney has been able to avoid for more than a year. It will be interesting to see how the 54 council members vote, since very few have expressed any opinions publicly about Iraq.

Our weekly “LaborTalk” and “Labor and the War’ columns can be viewed on our Web site www.laboreducator.or>. Union members who want information about the AFL-CIO rank-and-file reform movement should visit www.rankandfileaflcio.org.