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By Chris Brady
Austin, Texas – This past Thursday, AFL-CIO President Liz Schuler and SEIU President April Verret announced the merging of their respective unions at the annual AFL-CIO’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference.
The merger represents an important development between America’s largest labor federation and one of the largest non-affiliated unions.
SEIU’s two million workers will join AFL-CIO’s almost thirteen million membership ranks, representing a labor re-alignment to emphasize unity. The move comes in the wake of the Trump re-election, which has caught a weakened American left and dwindling union movement on its back foot.
SEIU is one of the more effective major unions at organizing new workplaces in the private sector, and has backed the budding Starbucks Workers Union through its national affiliate Workers United. SEIU was famously behind the fast food workers’ “Fight for $15” campaign. The AFL-CIO has historically been criticized for complacency, and some are hopeful SEIU can bring a needed militancy to the trade union going forward. But SEIU also has a reputation as one of the most top-down, staff-driven unions, with critics arguing that staff use workers as campaign props to give the appearance of worker-led campaigns, while actually pulling the strings behind the scenes. Regardless, the consolidation of working power before another Trump term is a refreshing development.
In AFL-CIO’s statement, President Schuler is quoted “CEOs and billionaires want nothing more than to see workers divided, but we’re standing here today with greater solidarity than ever to reach the 60 million Americans who say they’d join a union tomorrow if the laws allowed and to unrig our labor laws to guarantee every worker in America the basic right to organize on the job.”
Reunited After 20 Years Apart
The merger marks the reunification of SEIU with the AFL-CIO since the two parted ways in 2005. That year, four big unions – the Teamsters, UFCW, SEIU, and UFW – boycotted the annual convention. Then in September of 2005, these unions as well as the Laborers (LiUNA), the Carpenters, and UNITE HERE disaffiliated to launch Change To Win, a new, rival federation as an alternative to the AFL-CIO.
With Teamsters President James P Hoffa heading the new federation, the seven departing unions represented some 40 percent of the federations membership. The split was based in part on a clash of personalities, but also on competing visions for renewed organizing between a large number of smaller craft unions and a handful of multi-industry mega-unions. Members pledged to invest some 75 percent of the federations funds into new organizing, instead of spending money on politics. But although the split had similarities with the 1930s formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizing, many consider the split to be more about reducing dues paid to the AFL-CIO and preserving the power of union presidents than an actual genuine effort to reignite the labor movement.
Change To Win, now known as the Strategic Organizing Center, failed to develop into a true competitor with the AFL-CIO. The federation failed to achieve higher levels of organizing success, with UFCW, UNITE HERE, and the Laborers returning to the AFL-CIO. The Carpenters disaffiliated from Change To Win after conflicts with other coalition members. With SEIU’s return, Teamsters and the Carpenters are now the last major unions from the Change To Win effort to remain disaffiliated, although several other unions not involved in the Change To Win effort are also not part of the AFL-CIO, including the National Education Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
Former SEIU president Andy Stern, who was one of the orchestrators of the Change to Win coalition, posted on X in support of the merger, “An appropriate time to unite SEIU’s strength with other unions. Change to Win was a courageous attempt by seven unions to build something stronger for workers by confronting structural and organizing issues that divide workers. A worthy experiment at a moment in history.”
The Work Begins
The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Conference was peppered with AFL-CIO and SEIU leaders bashing the Republicans as enemies of the working class. A predictable occurrence, given the easy dunk opportunity the crypto-fascist GOP provides, and that both union presidents were “All In” for the Kamala Harris campaign. These comments remind class-conscious labor organizers that there is much work to be done – although unifying our organizations is a positive step – as long as we view working power through a faulty bourgeois partisan political lens, our potential for revolutionary change is negated.
Although the spectacle of union leadership politics and affiliations is relevant to workers, our task remains regardless of our organizations’ standing. We must organize, in new workplaces, and within our current union bureaucracies. Much like how unions are reacting to anticipated new attacks on labor by consolidating, and we must react to pressure them to become more militant. This demand is essential and transforms any reductive political platitudes.
Nonetheless, today marks a shift for the American labor movement. Bold steps like this were and continue to be badly needed. There are reasons for revolutionary optimism, as airport service worker and SEIU member Payton Abrams said, “…we’re coming together to help build the biggest, baddest labor movement this country has ever seen. This is how we change the rules…With our AFL-CIO siblings beside us, we’ll be unstoppable.”
Chris Brady is a member of Boston DSA.
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