AFL-CIO

In September 2006, NLPC published a Special Report titled Common Cause with America's Enemies: How Labor Unions Embraced Antiwar Extremism. Authored by Dr. Carl Horowitz, the director of NLPC’s Organized Labor Accountability Project, the report details the close relationships between union leaders and anti-war activists. Click here or on image at right to download 28-page pdf of Special Report.

According to Horowitz, “It's no secret that much of the opposition to our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is anti-American, and not simply antiwar.  Prominent self-styled ‘peace activists’ such as Cindy Sheehan, Leslie Cagan and Ramsey Clark rarely waste an opportunity to portray America as the number-one obstacle to world peace. What may be less known is the prominent role that many of the nation's labor unions have had in promoting this view.”

In June 2006, NLPC released a special report titled Why Unions Promote Mass Immigration by Dr. Carl F. Horowitz, director of NLPC’s Organized Labor Accountability Project. Click here or on the image at right to download a 20-page pdf of the Special Report.

Unions, argues the NLPC report, form one part of an interest-group triumvirate that consistently acts to thwart real immigration reform. The other two elements are big business and ethnic politicians. Each has cultivated a working relationship with the other. Congress and the successive presidential administrations listen to them more than the American people.

It’s hardly front-page news that the AFL-CIO has fallen upon hard times.  Since late July, seven unions representing some 5.5 million workers have formed their own counter-federation, Change to Win, in hopes of adding to that total by millions more.  Six of the unions had broken away from the labor federation beginning this July; a seventh, the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, already had taken flight back in 2001.  Yet with understandably less fanfare, the AFL-CIO, whose unions represent 8 million union members (plus another 1 million workers who are not full-fledged members), has begun to recoup some of the lost ground.  In September, the California Nurses Association, with 65,000 members, requested a charter from the AFL-CIO to begin petitioning for membership.  This month another union, the United Transportation Union (UTU), which along with the Carpenters had left the federation four years ago, is back in. 

People saw it coming a mile away.  The Teamsters’ James P. Hoffa and the Service Employees’ Andrew Stern each made good on their threats to take their unions out of the AFL-CIO at the start of that labor federation’s 50^th anniversary convention in Chicago.  In the process, they and several other dissenting unions have left observers wondering if the fortunes of organized labor have been irrevocably damaged.  While that’s a possibility, the most likely long-run outcome probably will be the opposite.  Indeed, unions may emerge with more members, revenues and political clout.  As for battling corruption, they don’t seem to view this as a high-priority item.  But this requires some context.   And the context is the convention.