‘Change to Win’ Was Doomed to Failure
In Effort to Build a Rival Labor Federation

When seven international unions left the AFL-CIO in September 2005 to build a rival labor federation (Change to Win) through massive organizing campaigns, it received widespread publicity, with some commentators seeing a similarity with the successful CIO breakaway in the 1930s.

The chief architect of the new labor federation was Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the fastest growing union in the U.S., with 2.2 million members. After criticizing the AFL-CIO leadership for its dismal record in organizing workers, Stern came forward with a novel plan to build the labor movement.

Stern proposed to create 15 mega-unions, with one in each industry. This would be done by merging small unions into the mega-unions, which, he maintained, was the only way to organize corporations with thousands of workers.

But CtW ran into deep trouble when it could not get a single one of the AFL-CIO’s 50-odd international unions to join it. This left CtW’s seven unions with a quandary: How could it establish 15 mega-unions for Stern’s organizing plan? Furthermore, how could CtW call itself a “labor federation” when it did not have unions representing communication workers, machinists, teachers, public employees and others—and had neither the ability nor the resources to organize them?

But even as a coalition of unions, CtW was torn by internal dissent. The Carpenters (500,00 members), one of the seven founding unions, left the CtW in the summer of 2009. Stern wanted each union to stick to its industry jurisdiction, but the Teamsters were trying to organize in more than a dozen different ones, addition to trucking..

An angry exchange occurred when Stern had a meeting with the Wal-Mart president, without telling UFCW officials, who had been trying to organize the food store chain for years. After a split within UNITE HERE, the UNITE division of the Union with 250,000 members, rejoined the AFL-CIO. .

If CtW had won some blockbuster organizing victories, it might have remained an important influence in the labor movement, goading the stagnant AFL-CIO into more organizing activity. But its attempt at large-scale organizing failed.

Change to Win’s Declining Influence

When Andy Stern resigned as president of SEIU on April 13, 2010, the CtW lost its prime mover. Then came another shock with the resignation of Anna Burger, CtW Chair, after she had lost a bid for the SEIU presidency. Still another heavy blow to CtW was the announcement by Laborers’ president Terence O’Sullivan that his union would rejoin the AFL-CIO on October 1.

That left four CtW unions from the original seven: the Service Employees, Teamsters, Food and Commercial Workers and the Farm Workers. Joseph Hansen, UFCW president, will become Chair of a demoralized CtW that never fulfilled its glowing promise. Instead of focusing on organizing, CtW unions are putting their efforts into winning the midterm elections.

It is not clear whether Mary Kay Henry, SEIU’s new president, is interested in having the union return to the AFL-CIO. She may feel, as Stern did, that the millions of dollars in per capita payments to the AFL-CIO can better be used for SEIU’s own organizing efforts. The Teamsters, burdened with serious pension problems, may feel the same way.