Service workers, Teamsters split from AFL-CIO

[IndianaGreen]

A falling out within the US labor bureaucracy
Service workers, Teamsters split from AFL-CIO
By Bill Van Auken
26 July 2005

Significantly, in the 43-pages of resolutions and amendments that the faction of the bureaucracy led by Stern and Hoffa submitted to the AFL-CIO convention, the word “Iraq” appeared not once. Nor does the subject of the US war feature in any other of the statements issued by the Change to Win group.

On this, the most decisive political question facing the American working class, Stern, Hoffa and company have no disagreements with the Sweeney leadership, which supports the continuation of the US war and occupation.

Indeed, the resolution presented by the Sweeney leadership to the AFL-CIO convention—with no opposition from the SEIU or Teamsters—criticizes the Bush administration not for continuing the illegal war, but for failing to counter the mass opposition that it has engendered within the US. “No foreign policy can be sustained without the informed consent of the American people,” the AFL-CIO bureaucracy counsels the White House.

Under conditions in which he and his bureaucratic allies accept both the war and the AFL-CIO’s decades-old collaboration with US imperialism internationally, Stern’s frequent talk of uniting workers across borders to confront global corporations is not merely hollow, but wholly hypocritical.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/aflc-j26.shtml

[kevsand]

1. This article is dead on in its description of the split

as a bureaucratic power struggle over money and turf. This isn't about the workers, it's about the players at the top.

As to Iraq, I think that the AFL-CIO has been on record from the beginning as being opposed to the invasion. They have also been critical of the suppression of Iraqi labor organizations, a situation which may have improved slightly.

Still, it is disturbing that they don't say more about it at this time. I suppose they may be a little distracted...