Mixed Report Card for AFL-CIO Leader

Inside America’s labor movement, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney has emerged as a hero.

His sweeping overhaul of the national labor federation--launched after he won his dissident election campaign in 1995--has energized union militants, impressed former opponents and captured enormous media attention.

But the revolution led by Sweeney, who stands unopposed for reelection today at the AFL-CIO’s convention in Pittsburgh, so far has made scant headway in changing American economic life.

Notwithstanding the labor clout demonstrated in the Teamsters’ strike against United Parcel Service of America, it’s not clear whether the union movement is about to start growing again after years of stagnation.

What’s more, the AFL-CIO’s revitalization efforts could be complicated by ongoing investigations that have started to look at the labor federation’s political finance practices. In particular, a federal grand jury in New York is looking into the AFL-CIO’s alleged participation in an illegal diversion of Teamsters union funds.

Sweeney, 63, a ruddy-cheeked native New Yorker, gets high grades, even from his rivals, for invigorating and raising the profile of the once-slumbering AFL-CIO. “The AFL-CIO is a more potent force than it was two years ago. His energy has rubbed off on a lot of people,” said Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Still, the main long-term problem for Sweeney as he enters his second two-year term is the same one that faced him when he first was elected: the declining percentage of workers belonging to unions.

During the first year of the Sweeney administration, 1996, the portion of American workers in unions slid to 14.5%. That was off from 14.9% in 1995 and down from a peak of 35% in the 1950s.

Much of the loss over the years has been due to the disappearance of jobs in traditionally unionized industries. But on top of that, many workers are rejecting the opportunity to vote for unions at their companies, whether out of personal conviction or because of fierce antilabor campaigns by employers.

Organized labor won only 47.3% of the elections among workers deciding whether they wanted union representation, according to the latest figures from the National Labor Relations Board, which cover the 12-month period ended in September 1996. The percentage of union victories was the lowest in five years.

“If you talk to union people, they say the world feels different to them. There’s a new surge of energy and new blood,” said Daniel J.B. Mitchell, a UCLA labor economist. But so far, he added, “this hasn’t borne fruit in terms of new union members.”

Yet Sweeney backers argue that it’s unreasonable to expect a sudden reversal in the long-term economic forces, such as intensified international competition, that have drained union membership.

AFL-CIO officials also say that the government figures don’t reflect major recruiting campaigns currently underway, already successful campaigns involving government employees, or the growing use of organizing campaigns that circumvent the traditional NLRB election process.

To try to spur a turnaround, the AFL-CIO has begun to spend millions to spur worker-organizing campaigns by its member unions, a dramatic shift from its longtime hands-off approach to recruiting.

In addition to direct financial help, the AFL-CIO has started training more organizers for its member unions and launched programs to enlist enthusiastic college students and retirees to help on organizing campaigns. Other initiatives have zeroed in on drawing women, minorities and low-wage workers to unions.

In fact, given the dizzying array of programs launched over the last two years, Sweeney said his main plan for the new term is to refine what already has been started, and to maintain the focus on organizing and political activism.

“We don’t need any new programs,” Sweeney said. “We just need to do what we’ve been doing even better.”

Politically, the Sweeney-led AFL-CIO has shaken up things more dramatically, again by vastly stepping up spending, largely with funds from a special levy on union members imposed last year. Although organized labor fell short of its goal of restoring Congress to Democratic control last year, it reestablished itself as a force that commands attention in Washington.

Both Vice President Al Gore and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, regarded as the leading contenders for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2000, “are obssessing about labor’s role in that election, and they should be,” said Thomas Geoghegan, a Chicago labor lawyer and author. Organized labor “is becoming a much bigger player in who the nominee will be and a much bigger player in the Democratic Party, and that’s something, given their dwindling numbers.”

Still, critics question how much the Sweeney-led AFL-CIO has achieved legislatively. On one of the issues most crucial to organized labor, foreign trade, the AFL-CIO is battling with the Clinton administration.

The nation’s labor leaders are vigorously opposing the “fast-track” authority President Clinton seeks from Congress to negotiate international trade agreements, fearing that it will mean the loss of more American jobs.

Meanwhile, government investigators are conducting an inquiry into whether the AFL-CIO engaged in campaign finance abuse. Such controversy could damage labor’s image at a time when it is seeking more public support.

Last week, when three former associates of Teamster President Ron Carey pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with a complex election finance scheme, prosecutors pointed to possible involvement by Richard Trumka, Sweeney’s second-in-command as the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

Trumka is said to have authorized the AFL-CIO to accept $150,000 in Teamster funds and then to contribute an equal amount to a liberal lobbying group. Prosecutors have testimony that the lobbying group, in turn, funneled $100,000 of the money to Carey’s 1996 reelection campaign.

Sweeney and other AFL-CIO officials say they are conducting an internal investigation of the organization’s campaign finance practices but have found no wrongdoing.

Beyond the investigations, some critics fault the Sweeney administration for giving up political leverage by drawing too close to the Democratic Party. Another occasional criticism of Sweeney is that he focuses too much attention on organizing low-wage workers, such as strawberry pickers, at the expense of high-wage employees who have traditionally been the backbone of organized labor.

Sweeney, a first-generation Irish-American whose mother was a domestic worker, brushes aside that objection. “The focus is on all economic levels of the work force,” he said.

As for his personal future, Sweeney makes it clear he hopes to keep his $192,000-a-year job for several more terms. He intends to retire at age 70, nearly seven years away.

For many union advocates, that’s good news. Geoghegan said that if Sweeney was replaced by a traditionalist who tried to return the AFL-CIO to its less-aggressive ways, “it would be curtains for the labor movement in this country.”