Change to Win
I just got an e-mail from Joe Hansen, International President of the United Food and Commercial Workers. Okay, it was a mass e-mail sent out over the union’s “Union Voice” list. The meat of it is significant, but not surprising. UFCW’s Executive Board has authorized Hansen to withdraw from the AFL-CIO. This makes UFCW the second union, after SEIU, to authorize its president to pull out of the AFL-CIO if the July convention proves dissatisfactory. The five international unions that make up the Change to Win Coalition – SEIU and UFCW, Unite Here, the Teamsters and the Laborers – held a coming out party today in Washington. They voted on a constitution, by-laws and guiding principles, and then held a press conference. That sounds like a rival labor federation to me. It’s tempting to make comparisons to the old CIO. Of course, the political climate and times are very different […]