John Sweeney (labor Leader) - 1995 Campaign For Presidency of The AFL-CIO

1995 Campaign For Presidency of The AFL-CIO

In 1995, Sweeney and a small group of other national union presidents approached AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland and asked that he retire. Dissatisfaction with Kirkland's leadership had grown in the early 1990s. There were a number of issues: Failure to pass labor law reform in President Bill Clinton's first term, failure to stop the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), failure to achieve health care reform, failure to pass legislation banning the permanent replacement of strikers, and failure to shift public discourse in a more liberal, pro-union direction. The fact that Kirkland was traveling in Europe while the U.S. Senate was considering the ban on permanent replacements was seen as all too indicative of his real priorities. Most frustrating of all was Kirkland's lackluster response to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. He seemed blatantly uninterested, even hostile, to plans calling for a more aggressive political program.

The opposition to Kirkland came to a head at the mid-winter AFL-CIO executive council meeting in Bal Harbour, Florida, February 19–20, 1995. Since the start of the new year, Sweeney had twice held meetings with Kirkland to tell him that key members of the executive council were disappointed with his leadership and that he should step down in favor of secretary-treasurer Thomas R. Donahue.

The weekend before the executive council meeting, 11 union presidents on the executive council agreed to form a "Committee for Change." The group was committed to removing Kirkland as president of the AFL-CIO. The group included Sweeney; Gerald McEntee of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); Owen Bieber of the United Auto Workers (UAW); George Becker of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA); Ron Carey of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT); Arthur Coia of the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA); Wayne Glenn of the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU); Frank Hanley of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE); George Kourpias of the International Association of Machinists (IAM); Sigurd Lucassen of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC); and Richard Trumka of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Together, these unions had sufficient votes to remove Kirkland at the October AFL-CIO convention and elect a new president.

The first choice of the Committee for Change was AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Thomas R. Donahue, who had developed a reputation as an effective innovator. He had lobbied for the creation of an AFL-CIO committee to examine changes in the workplace, pioneered the federation's communication efforts (including the construction of a television studio at AFL-CIO headquarters) and led the campaign against NAFTA. But Donahue refused to challenge a man whom he had served loyally for nearly 16 years.

Kirkland refused to resign or retire. The executive council meeting turned rancorous. The dissident members of the executive council argued for a change in leadership and policy. But Kirkland pointed to his administration's policies and initiatives and claimed that the dissidents were disloyal and power-hungry.

On May 8, 1995, Donahue announced he was resigning as secretary-treasurer effective at the October AFL-CIO convention. The next day, Kirkland announced he was running for re-election.

The Committee for Change decided to run its own candidate against Kirkland. McEntee was considered too abrasive and had aggressively pursued disputes with other unions to be a consensus candidate. Trumka was considered too young and too militant. In contrast, Sweeney had a reassuring demeanor, an amiable personality and many friends on the executive council. He also would be seen as the "organizing candidate" the group wanted.

The group also agreed to nominate Trumka as secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. The group also proposed to create a new office, that of executive vice-president, charged with mobilizing state federations and central labor councils and reaching out to minorities and women. The new position was also a way of ensuring that there would be an executive position which could be filled with a woman or a minority, thus gaining additional political support for the dissidents. The Committee for Change recruited Linda Chavez-Thompson, a member of the AFL-CIO executive council, a vice-president of AFSCME and an activist on the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.

On June 13, the Committee formally announced its slate of candidates and the name of its platform, "A New Voice for American Workers." The slate of candidates became known as the "New Voice" slate. Shortly thereafter, 10 more unions announced their opposition to Kirkland's re-election. Now a total of 21 unions representing 56 percent of the delegates to the convention were opposed to Kirkland's presidency.

Faced with such discouraging numbers, Kirkland announced that he would resign effective August 1.

With Kirkland's resignation, the principal reason for Donahue's reluctance to run for president disappeared. The same day as Kirkland's announcement, Donahue withdrew his retirement announcement and said he would now run for the presidency of the AFL-CIO.

In the interim, however, support for Donahue among the dissident unions (which had changed its name to the "New Voice" slate) had dissipated.

At the August AFL-CIO executive council meeting, Donahue was elected by unanimous vote as the new AFL-CIO president. For the office of secretary-treasurer, the council elected Barbara Easterling, secretary-treasurer of the Communication Workers of America. Easterling announced that she would run with Donahue in October.

Opposition to the New Voice slate was led by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Communication Workers of America (CWA). AFT president Albert Shanker argued that the dissidents should have brought their concerns before the executive council, where, after discussion and deliberation, a decision about Kirkland's fate could have been made. Shanker also argued that exposing the labor movement's internal disputes to labor's enemies seriously risked weakening the labor movement. Finally, Shanker argued that the New Voice slate's attempt to mobilize state and local labor bodies in favor of one candidate risked politicizing the AFL-CIO and destabilizing it in the long run.

The New Voice group, however, understood that their only hope for success was to move the debate out of the executive council. In the executive council, each union—no matter how small—had an equal vote. A group of 20 small unions could make binding decisions even though their membership might be far less than that of their opponents. But at the AFL-CIO convention, each union was allotted delegates proportional to the size of its membership. At the convention, a coalition of large unions could triumph even if they did not represent a majority of unions. It would have been foolish for the New Voice slate, whose base was in some of the largest unions in the AFL-CIO, to pursue their goals in the executive council where their votes counted for less.

A public debate over the AFL-CIO's future had rarely been seen in the history of the American labor movement. The New Voice ticket campaigned intensively for the support of the state federations and central labor councils (CLCs), each of which was entitled to send one delegate to the convention. Normally, few of these bodies sent delegates to the quadrennial convention. But New Voice slate actively recruited delegates, and allegations were made that the slate had agreed to pay travel and housing for delegates if they agreed to support Sweeney. Sweeney also promised that more attention would be paid to these bodies, which the New Voice ticket saw as important in supporting locallabor actions and enlarging the federation's political capabilities. Donahue refused to campaign for votes among the state federations and central labor councils, arguing that it would politicize the AFL-CIO and weaken the post-election consensus among the AFL-CIO's various bodies.

By August, it was clear that the New Voice slate would win at least two-thirds of the state federation and CLC votes. Donahue reversed his decision and campaigned for votes among these delegates, but his action came too late: Most of the votes were already locked up.

Both sides hired professional public relations firms to help manage their campaigns, which included media strategies, slogans, graphics, leaflets, press releases, t-shirts, opposition research, posters and videotaped speeches. The candidates also used 'free' media extensively, appearing on 'Meet the Press,' National Public Radio's 'Talk of the Nation,' the Public Broadcasting Service's 'MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour,' C-SPAN and other shows.

Despite Donahue's energetic campaigning, it soon became clear that his candidacy was profoundly limited by his ties to the Kirkland regime. Donahue was forced to defend the status quo and deny the magnitude of the labor movement's problems when he believed otherwise.

The New Voice political platform persuaded many unions to abandon the status quo. Sweeney called for a major expansion of the federation's role in organizing by: spending $20 million a year on hiring and training thousands of new organizers; mobilizing over 1,000 college students for summer organizing; creating a "Sunbelt Organizing Fund" to sponsor organizing in the South and Southwest; and establishing a separate Organizing Department. Sweeney also proposed creating a Center for Strategic Campaigns to coordinate all national contract campaigns; creating a Strategic Campaign Fund to provide grants to unions in difficult organizing and contract fights; creating a Strike Support Team of organizers that could be deployed to help support strikes; and establishing a Pension Investment Clearinghouse to provide information on how pensions are invested and to help mobilize investments in support of organizing. Sweeney also called for a modification of labor's political tactics and withdrawal of support for Democrats who did not support labor's agenda. Sweeney recommended creating a National Labor Political Training Center to recruit and train candidates and political campaign directors, and establishing a Labor Center for Economic and Public Policy that would develop policy analysis, support the federation's legislative agenda and expand the political activities of the state federations and central labor councils.

Finally, Sweeney argued that it was time to revamp the AFL-CIO itself. The New Voice platform promised more effective consultation with state federations and central labor councils, better ties with women and minority groups, expansion of the executive council to insure more women and minority representation, creation of the office of executive vice-president, annual meetings of the general board, restructuring of the trade and industrial departments and a rule that no one over the age of 70 could run for any executive office.

Partly in response to the New Voice platform and partly because he believed change was, in fact, needed, Donahue began to implement some of the New Voice reforms. He diverted revenue from the Union Privilege program into a new organizing fund that would eventually pay out $20 million a year. He increased the budget of the Organizing Institute, approved plans to double the number of organizers recruited and trained each year, and obtained executive council approval to provide no-interest loans to support striking unions. Donahue also diverted Union Privilege money to train 500 activists to work in the 1996 congressional elections.

At the AFL-CIO convention in New York City, a record-breaking 1,047 delegates gathered to determine the AFL-CIO's future. When the votes were finally counted on October 25, 1995, John Sweeney had secured the support of 34 unions representing 7,286,837 members, or 57 percent of the AFL-CIO's membership. As a result of New Voice efforts, the number of delegates from state federation and local central labor councils rose from 186 at the 1993 convention to 488 in 1995.

The New Voice ticket then asked the convention to implement its platform. Subsequently, the convention voted to provide state federations with representation on the AFL-CIO general board, which had previously been open only to national union presidents. The convention also expanded the AFL-CIO executive council from 33 to 54 members. Sweeney offered these new seats to previously unrepresented unions. The expansion nearly doubled representation for women and minorities on the council. The expansion had the added advantage of enabling both Sweeney supporters and Donahue loyalists to sit on the council, encouraging reconciliation. A 'unity slate' of executive council members was announced by Douglas H. Dority, president of the UFCW and a key Donahue supporter, and Gerald McEntee. The unity slate helped avoid the threat of disaffiliations from the labor federation.