July 8, 2005 — The leaders of five of the largest unions in the AFL-CIO recently joined forces, announcing the formation of an independent alliance to rebuild the American labor movement: the Change to Win Coalition. Backed by Laborers' International Union of North America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, UNITE-HERE, United Food and Commercial Workers Union, and the Service Employees International Union, the new initiative will strive to “marshal the collective strength of our unions to develop and implement strategies to organize the tens of millions of workers in the private sector who are desperate for a voice on the job and in their community.”
The group is encouraging other unions • both inside and outside the AFL-CIO • to join the coalition in an effort to organize large groups of workers in key areas of the private sector economy. “We believe that the tens of millions of workers who need union representation are bigger than any institution,” said the group's leadership in a recent statement. “Regardless of what policies the AFL-CIO adopts in Chicago, the Change to Win Coalition will continue to move forward. The partnership we have forged in the past several months and our new constitution and bylaws enable us to hit the ground running.”
The coalition is led by: Terence O'Sullivan, president, Laborers' International Union of North America; James P. Hoffa, president, International Brotherhood of Teamsters; John W. Wilhelm, president/Hospitality Industry, UNITE-HERE; Joseph Hansen, president, United Food and Commercial Workers Union; Bruce Raynor, president UNITE-HERE; and Andrew Stern, president, Service Employees International Union. According to a joint statement from these individuals, “the world is nearly unrecognizable from what it was a generation ago. The stakes could not be higher. If the labor movement doesn't adopt dramatic changes today to cope with the new economy it will find itself marginalized into oblivion. We come together today to prevent that.”
Note: Since this report was release, the Carpenters and Joiners of America announced it is joining these five large AFL-CIO unions. By adding 525,000 members of the Carpenters union, the new coalition will expand to nearly 6 million workers.
For more information on the coalition, visit www.changetowin.org.
