Afl Cio

He came to power as an insurgent vowing to shake up the stodgy House of Labor that was the AFL-CIO. Fourteen years later, John J. Sweeney, an immigrants' son who rose to the pinnacle of U.S. unionism, is stepping down this month as president of the AFL-CIO. The labor movement remains deeply divided, its ranks greatly thinned, its top legislative goals unrealized and unemployment nearing 10%, the highest in more than a quarter of a century. Yet Sweeney, 75, departs as organized labor faces its best prospects in years.

The AFL-CIO said Wednesday that it would have union protesters follow GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain around the country to demand explanations of his positions on economic and labor issues. The effort is part of a wide-ranging campaign aimed at linking the Arizona senator with what union officials call the Bush administration's failed economic policies. The nation's largest labor federation also plans to devote part of its record-setting $53.

Two of the nation's largest unions formally announced a campaign to organize Southern California's 18,000 carwash workers and offered consumers recommendations on how to avoid carwashes that violate minimum wage laws. "We will do whatever it takes to clean up the carwash industry," said Jon Hiatt, general counsel for the AFL-CIO, which launched the campaign with the United Steelworkers.

Tony Moreno is talking about the weak economy and about jobs lost to outsourcing. He's trying to sell a Barack Obama presidency -- one union member to another. But Moreno is in Los Angeles and the union member he's talking to is in Pennsylvania. Moreno, a part-time cook at Sony studios and member of Unite Here Local 11, has volunteered at a bustling phone bank run by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. And all the calls he's making are long distance.

For the last dozen years, Capitol Hill hasn't been the friendliest place for organized labor. But that's changed with the new Democratic-controlled Congress, and labor is pressing its agenda. That was apparent Thursday as the House approved a bill to make it easier to form a union -- a longtime priority of labor, an important Democratic constituency. The vote was followed by a victory celebration in the House speaker's office attended by the president of the AFL-CIO.

The California Nurses Assn. was granted a charter this week to join the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor organization. The move, approved Thursday by the AFL-CIO during a meeting in Las Vegas, unites the country's largest labor federation, which has 10 million members and 54 unions, with a union of 75,000 registered nurses known for political protests and for aggressive organizing. Both sides had sought the alliance.

The AFL-CIO, a major shareholder in public companies, is targeting Verizon Communications Inc. this year for a shake-up of its board of directors as it accuses the company's chief executive of collecting exorbitant pay while turning in a poor performance. The labor federation scored successes last year at Home Depot Inc. and Pfizer Inc., whose chief executives departed in a storm of investor anger over executive pay.

As she presses for a coveted endorsement from organized labor, presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is facing a backlash over the business ties of a top campaign aide who has angered the labor movement. Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) and her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are to speak today at an AFL-CIO candidate forum in Chicago. An endorsement promises brigades of union workers to knock on doors, drive people to the polls, and staff phone banks targeting potential voters.

The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest federation of labor unions, has postponed making an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primaries, freeing its 55 unions to choose for themselves from the eight contenders. "There is not a consensus candidate," Karen Ackerman, political director of the AFL-CIO, said in Chicago, one day after the candidates tried to impress union leaders at a presidential forum.

The AFL-CIO and its unions said they would spend an estimated $200 million on the 2008 elections, with the nation's largest labor federation devoting a record $53 million exclusively to grass-roots mobilization. In addition, the AFL-CIO said it would deploy more than 200,000 volunteers leading up to the election, with special focus on battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.