Afl Cio

The nation's largest union federation, targeting a segment of the country's growing immigrant workforce, announced Wednesday that it had agreed to work with a large day laborer organization to improve wages and working conditions. The agreement between the AFL-CIO and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network has particular significance in the Los Angeles area, whose estimated 25,000 such workers make it the nation's day laborer capital.

Leaders of the nation's largest labor federation announced Wednesday that they would spend more money this year than ever before to get voters to the polls in a midterm election they hoped would return Democrats to power in Congress. "This Labor Day, it appears that a 'perfect storm' is gathering that may well sweep away Republican control of the Congress this fall," said AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney. Republican voter mobilization efforts were credited with big GOP wins in 2004 and 2002.

The AFL-CIO, one of the largest shareholders in public companies, wants to learn about the role big accounting firms may have played in the burgeoning stock options affair.

AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said organized labor would push quickly for action on economic issues such as minimum wage, lower prices for prescription drugs and restoring cuts in student loan programs. Other items on labor's agenda include pressing for cutting tax breaks that make it easy to send jobs overseas and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. But he acknowledged that the Democratic congressional victory wouldn't guarantee success.

Amid a deepening sense of crisis in the U.S. labor movement, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said Thursday he would propose comprehensive reforms for the labor federation and seek reelection to a third term. "We're at a crucial time, and I think I'm in the best position to lead this whole process of change," said Sweeney, 70, who won the presidency in 1995.

Dissident union presidents pushing for radical change in the AFL-CIO failed Wednesday to win approval of their proposal from a majority of the federation's 58 unions. The dissidents, led by the president of the nation's largest union, said they would continue to seek support through July, when delegates from member unions are scheduled to vote on reform proposals and the federation's top officers.

A territorial spat between two of the nation's largest unions that was discussed Thursday at the AFL-CIO's semiannual leadership meeting underscored the potential difficulties in holding the labor federation together. Union fights over which can organize and represent certain workers aren't uncommon, particularly in these days of dwindling membership.

A business alliance that supports President Bush's call for private Social Security accounts lost a second corporate member Monday as a result of pressure from the AFL-CIO, which had threatened to picket the company if it did not remove itself from the group. Waddell & Reed, a financial services company in Overland Park, Kan.

The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor union, plans public protests against Charles Schwab Corp. and Wachovia Corp. because the companies back President Bush's plan for private Social Security accounts, a union official said Tuesday.

Two Republican members of the House Education and Workforce Committee asked the Labor Department on Friday to investigate the AFL-CIO campaign against corporations supporting President Bush' s Social Security proposal. The request came after two investment firms and a trade group withdrew from business coalitions backing Bush when union leaders threatened to withdraw pension funds from portfolios managed by the firms.