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Trumka Hopes to Mend AFL-CIO
Can Richard Trumka reunite the labor movement?
That’s the operative question being asked everywhere in Washington these days as Trumka, who is the secretary-treasurer of the massive labor organization, readies himself to be its new president when the unions gather in Pittsburgh in mid-September.
To date, Trumka, who announced his candidacy formally late last week, has no opposition for the top job, which John Sweeney is vacating after 14 years. And, according to several informed labor sources, there is no one waiting in the wings who can seriously challenge Trumka for the job.
With Trumka’s election virtually ensured, the central question is whether he can heal the rift that occurred four years ago when the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters (among others) left the AFL-CIO to form a new labor coalition known as Change to Win.
Trumka, in a recent interview with the Fix, was puzzled over the reasons behind the fracture. “First they said it was because we did too much political action [and] that obviously wasn’t the case since everyone spent a lot of time on political action,” he said. “Then they said we didn’t spent enough time on organizing.”
Regardless of the reasons for the split, Trumka says his background prepares him well for the task of reunification. Elected as the head of the United Mine Workers in the early 1980s, Trumka helped unite warring factions within the group and bring it under the AFL-CIO umbrella. “Over the years, I’ve had a fairly successful record of bringing people together,” he said.
The other factor working in favor of reunification, Trumka said, is that 70 percent of the local unions whose national arm broke off from the AFL-CIO still affiliate with it locally. “The split never occurred at the grass-roots level, which is a good thing,” he noted.
Others are more skeptical about Trumka’s ability to unite the clans, largely because of the desire of the renegade unions not to rejoin the AFL-CIO structure and because of Trumka’s loyalty to that structure.
“Over time there could be a fully united labor movement — because everyone recognizes that we are stronger together — but the devil is in the details,” said one source close to the labor movement. “And Trumka’s election makes it harder for that to happen.”
Trumka senses the challenge before him but says he thinks that ultimately the two sides will unite. “It’s more than just unity of name, it’s unity of purpose,” he said. “The strength for workers comes when we have unity of purpose.”
Article filed by Chris Cillizza for the Washington Post. For more news and information, click the following link for the Washington Post - The Monday Fix: Trumka Hopes to Mend AFL-CIO – washingtonpost.com.
