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AFL-CIO to Examine New Strategies, Structures
CWA is playing a prominent role as the AFL-CIO undertakes a wide open self-examination and debate over strategies to revitalize the labor movement and reverse the steady decline of union membership as a proportion of the workforce.
The process begins March 1-3 when the federation's Executive Council meets in Las Vegas to review proposals for new directions that President John Sweeney earlier solicited from affiliates. Recommendations requiring convention action then will go before the AFL-CIO convention July 25-28 in Chicago.
President Morton Bahr will lay out a 10-point plan developed by CWA's Executive Board, entitled "Democracy in the Workplace: CWA Proposals to the AFL-CIO." The full text of the plan can be found online at: ga.cwa-union.org/issues/democracy/. The AFL-CIO has posted on its website (www.aflcio.org) all the proposals it has received.
CWA's plan emphasizes a major, long-range push to strengthen worker organizing and bargaining rights through passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, along with building a larger grassroots base of workplace stewards and mobilizers, and bolstering the effectiveness of central labor councils for action at the community level.
Other highlights include a call for a movement-wide strike insurance fund, greater emphasis on creating global union alliances, promotion of joint union bargaining and organizing efforts, encouragement of voluntary union mergers, and a sharper focus by the AFL-CIO on bargaining support, politics and legislation.
"This debate can be a healthy and productive one if union leaders can maintain a positive focus and look for solutions that unite us, not divide us," Bahr stated.
CWA already has been singled out by the news media as one of the major players in the debate following a panel appearance by Executive Vice President Larry Cohen at a labor forum last December at Queens College in New York.
At the forum, Cohen offered several of the proposals later fleshed out and formalized by the CWA board, and in doing so, he voiced disagreement with some of the ideas offered by fellow panelists from the SEIU and UNITE HERE.
Those unions and a few others have floated a controversial proposal to force a consolidation of the AFL-CIO's 58 affiliates down to 20 along industry lines, and to impose strong federation control over jurisdictions for organizing.
CWA's approach, by contrast, stresses developing local leadership and grassroots activism - building labor from the ground up. Cohen stated at the Queens College forum: "If anyone in this room thinks that we're going to change collective bargaining rights based on how we structure rather than how we mobilize, they're mistaken."
The process begins March 1-3 when the federation's Executive Council meets in Las Vegas to review proposals for new directions that President John Sweeney earlier solicited from affiliates. Recommendations requiring convention action then will go before the AFL-CIO convention July 25-28 in Chicago.
President Morton Bahr will lay out a 10-point plan developed by CWA's Executive Board, entitled "Democracy in the Workplace: CWA Proposals to the AFL-CIO." The full text of the plan can be found online at: ga.cwa-union.org/issues/democracy/. The AFL-CIO has posted on its website (www.aflcio.org) all the proposals it has received.
CWA's plan emphasizes a major, long-range push to strengthen worker organizing and bargaining rights through passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, along with building a larger grassroots base of workplace stewards and mobilizers, and bolstering the effectiveness of central labor councils for action at the community level.
Other highlights include a call for a movement-wide strike insurance fund, greater emphasis on creating global union alliances, promotion of joint union bargaining and organizing efforts, encouragement of voluntary union mergers, and a sharper focus by the AFL-CIO on bargaining support, politics and legislation.
"This debate can be a healthy and productive one if union leaders can maintain a positive focus and look for solutions that unite us, not divide us," Bahr stated.
CWA already has been singled out by the news media as one of the major players in the debate following a panel appearance by Executive Vice President Larry Cohen at a labor forum last December at Queens College in New York.
At the forum, Cohen offered several of the proposals later fleshed out and formalized by the CWA board, and in doing so, he voiced disagreement with some of the ideas offered by fellow panelists from the SEIU and UNITE HERE.
Those unions and a few others have floated a controversial proposal to force a consolidation of the AFL-CIO's 58 affiliates down to 20 along industry lines, and to impose strong federation control over jurisdictions for organizing.
CWA's approach, by contrast, stresses developing local leadership and grassroots activism - building labor from the ground up. Cohen stated at the Queens College forum: "If anyone in this room thinks that we're going to change collective bargaining rights based on how we structure rather than how we mobilize, they're mistaken."