Unions
Whistling past
the graveyard?
By Steven Miller
BusinessNevada
Nevada labor
officials are telling news reporters that the defection of two
major unions from the AFL-CIO and the looming departure of two
others won’t make a difference in the Silver State.
But the truth is that unions disaffiliating from
the AFL-CIO nationally are legally barred by the
organization’s constitution from continuing to be affiliated
at the state level. So far, the relevant provisions remain
unchanged and national officials—hurt and angry—don’t appear
about to change them.
So while Nevada AFL-CIO boss Danny Thompson
assured the Las Vegas Sun this week that there “is no
problem in Nevada,” he may well be whistling past the
graveyard. Eighty percent of the union members ostensibly
under Thompson’s leadership belong to the anti-AFL-CIO
coalition.
Calling itself “Change to Win,” that coalition
includes the largest union in the U.S., the service employees
(SEIU), and the Teamsters, who have both already officially
left the AFL-CIO. Change to Win also includes two other unions
threatening to quit: Unite Here, which represents apparel,
hotel and restaurant workers, and the United Food and
Commercial Workers (UFCW).
All four dissident unions are active in Nevada.
The state’s largest local—Culinary Local 226, reporting 50,000
resort industry members—is part of Unite Here. SEIU Local 1107
represents approximately 11,000 government employees with
Clark County, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority,
McCarran International Airport, the Las Vegas and North Las
Vegas housing authorities and the Clark County Health
District.
John Wilhelm, president of Unite Here and former Culinary boss
in Las Vegas, last week quit as chairman of the AFL-CIO
Immigration Committee. He charged that AFL-CIO President John
Sweeney has been seeking to circumvent the committee and
undermine its work. The blast was one of many recently flying
around the federation that suggest that personal hostilities
increasingly characterize the schism at the national
level—hostilities that will be hard or impossible to bridge.
If the AFL-CIO’s by-laws are not amended,
Thompson told Sun reporter Cy Ryan, “the other option
would be to create a new organization” in Nevada. “I think my
executive board is prepared to do that,” he said.
However, that course also presents problems. It
would mean that for the state executive director of the
AFL-CIO to continue to lead Nevada union members, he would now
himself have to go outside of the federation. Not only
would this be a serious symbolic blow to the AFL-CIO in
Nevada, it could not but weaken Thompson in union counsels. It
also could soon have important monetary and jurisdictional
implications, with much less financial support going to the
AFL-CIO and with the disaffiliated unions now free to raid the
membership of unions remaining in the federation.
Nationally, SEIU President Andrew Stern and
Teamsters President James P. Hoffa are encouraging their union
locals to continue participating in state and local labor
efforts through the state federations and central labor
councils. But AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka has
emphasized that the federation’s constitution prohibits that
participation.
Nevada could also see changes in labor’s role in Democratic
primaries. In California, the head of the California Labor
Federation has already said that SEIU and the Teamsters could
end up supporting a wider array of Democratic primary
candidates. The same could be true for Nevada—especially as
SEIU and Teamsters national leadership begin to implement
their different vision for labor’s future, free now of AFL-CIO
constraints.
