Union activists demand increased diversity in leadership

July 24—Hundreds of union officers and members gathered here on July 23 for a “National Summit on Diversity in Our Union Movement” sponsored by the AFL-CIO. More than 800 activists registered for the weekend, often filling the Sheraton Ballroom during the various sessions.

Student activist Felicia Ricks addresses the Diversity Summit.

The large majority of those at the event, which was held for two days prior to the start of the National AFL-CIO Convention, were not delegates to the full convention.

Many of the participants were active in six “constituency groups” sanctioned by the AFL-CIO: the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), Pride at Work, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Con ference of Labor Union Women, the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.

The looming struggle inside the AFL-CIO, which might result in a boycott or even a split in the federation, was clearly on everyone’s mind. But the representatives from all the various unions in the weekend summit showed that labor activists are unified in their desire to broadly increase diversity in the union leadership and vastly increase organizing among the 88 percent of the workforce that is not unionized.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Executive Vice-President Linda Chavez Thompson both spoke at the summit. They stressed pledges that the AFL-CIO International Executive Board would add more women and representatives of color. It was also announced that the 2009 AFL-CIO national convention would seat only those union delegations that represented the diversity of their membership.

But in some frank remarks later in the day, Bill Lucy, secretary treasurer of the CBTU, told the crowd that it was only with the threatened split in the federation that “we suddenly got a lot of friends” and promises to increase diversity in the top leadership.

Many panels of speakers were presented. Floor discussion was limited. Several groups intervened on the important questions of war and Pentagon spending by distributing written statements to summit participants.

The Million Worker March Movement distributed a statement to participants emphasizing that, “The AFL-CIO’s opposition to support the Million Worker March in 2004, once again sends a message to the corporate rulers, that labor-management cooperation and collaboration with the two corporate parties, including U.S. foreign policy of war and empire, is at the heart of labor’s strategy for survival and ‘growth.’”

Organizers for the National Conference to Reclaim Our Cities handed out 700 copies of a brochure entitled “Money for our cities, not for war!” The event, to be held in Detroit Nov. 11-13, 2005, links the crisis of the cities directly to the bloated Pentagon budget and calls for a national fight-back campaign to “Feed the cities, starve the Pentagon.”

Hundreds of union representatives also had a chance to read an informative leaflet from the International Action Center about the U.S. government’s attempt to undermine the pro-worker government of Hugo Chávez in Vene zuela. It exposed the AFL-CIO’s collaboration with the Bush administration, the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy, calling for the AFL to break with these right-wing agencies.

Workers World newspaper, with a special appeal to the AFL-CIO convention to “Organize, don’t split,” got into the hands of hundreds of unionists and was well received.