LAS VEGAS – Just as these are no ordinary times, the AFL-CIO’s 24th
Convention, held here Dec. 3-6, was no ordinary convention.

The 1,200 participants expressed their grief and anger over the events of Sept.
11, commemorating the heroism of the 631 union members who perished that day.
Many delegates wept openly during the opening ceremony as the names of those
trade unionists – 343 of them members of the International Association
of Fire Fighters (IAFF) – were scrolled slowly down large screens in the
front of the convention hall.

But that same grief and anger are fueling something new – a steely resolve
to fight for justice for every worker and every community savaged by the twin
blows of Sept. 11 and a deepening economic crisis. Participants applauded speakers’
demands for fairness and social justice.

“We don’t want homilies,” Harold Schaitburger, president of
the IAFF, said. “We want health care for every worker. We don’t want
praise – we want adequate and just benefits for the hundreds of thousands
of workers who have been victimized or displaced by this tragedy.”

The question of organizing the unorganized topped this year’s convention
agenda and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney minced no words in his call for rededication
to the goal of annually adding a million new members to the ranks of organized
workers.

“The American labor movement is failing to help new members organize anywhere
near the level necessary – and this failure must be addressed now,”
Sweeney said. “The decline in union density since 1950, when unions represented
one worker in three, to one in eight is the harshest judgment history can make
of our collective leadership. If we do not meet this challenge, we face slow
but certain decline.”

Sweeney said if the labor movement had maintained the union density of 1950,
the 24th Convention of the AFL-CIO would have represented 40 million workers.

AFL-CIO Organizing Director Mark Splain estimates the federation will gain
450,000 – 550,000 members this year before taking into account losses from
discharges, retirements, layoffs and plant closings.

Sweeney used his keynote speech to catalogue the accomplishments of the AFL-CIO
since 1995:

• 2.5 million workers organized into unions.

• 4.6 million new voters brought to the polls in 2000.

• Winning a first contract for farm workers at the nation’s largest
strawberry farm.

• Defeating Fast Track legislation three times. (As we went to press a
House vote on Fast Track was set for Dec. 6.)

• Widening the struggle against capitalist globalization through participation
in protests against the World Trade Organisation, World Bank and International
Monetary Fund.

• Defeat of “paycheck deception” in California and 33 other
states.

• Conducting “dozens” of college teach-ins and training 3,000
Union Summer interns.

Sweeney said the decision by the AFL-CIO Executive Council in February 2000
to revise the federation’s immigration policy made him “the proudest
labor leader in the world.”

That policy was high on the agenda again at this year’s convention. “The
labor movement was built by immigrants,” said John Wilhelm, president of
the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union. Speaking to the AFL-CIO
Civil Rights Conference, held here Dec. 1-2 and attended by many convention
delegates, he said the war against terrorism “gives a new urgency”
to the problems facing immigrants.

Wilhelm, chair of the federation’s Committee on Immigration, said the
call by the AFL-CIO for amnesty to undocumented workers and their families had
“jump started” a national debate on the question. “We were well
on the road to important changes and then came Sept. 11 and we suffered a set
back of gigantic proportions. And almost immediately immigrants – especially
those from countries of the Middle East – became victims of suspicion and
xenophobia,” Wilhelm said.

In a resolution, titled “A Nation of Immigrants,” the convention
said the growing tolerance, respect and understanding of immigrants who live
and work among us has been replaced in some quarters with fear and scapegoating.

“Many who have always opposed immigration and fair treatment of immigrants
now seek to capitalize on this fear,” the resolution said, “to push
for policies that penalize hard-working immigrants for the deplorable acts of
criminals who came to the united States not to pursue the American dream but
to destroy it.”

Among other reforms, the resolution called for legalization of undocumented
immigrants; federal, state and local action to ensure that immigrant families
are treated the same as their U.S. citizen counterparts with regard to benefits
and services; and full protection of workplace rights, including the right to
organize, regardless of immigration status.

The resolution concluded with a pledge “to firmly build bridges and tear
down walls within our own ranks” by educating union members about the problems
faced by immigrants. “We will work to teach all our members the importance
of solidarity and that our destinies as workers are intertwined regardless of
immigration status or country of origin,”

Jim Lane contributed to this story.

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