Afl Cio

The office manager pressed forward, glowering, his muscles straining the seams of his pinstriped suit. "I'm asking you to step outside," he said. The nine men and women who had taken over the lobby of AlliedBarton Security Services did not budge. Rabbinical student clasped hands with Islamic scholar and Methodist seminarian. Heads bowed, eyes closed, they sang "Amazing Grace." And prayed that the security guards employed here would join the Service Employees International Union.

The small farmworkers union founded by labor hero Cesar Chavez joined a coalition of labor groups demanding changes in the AFL-CIO as the 50-year-old federation inched closer Friday to breaking up. The United Farm Workers union, organized in 1962 and now consisting of 27,000 members, brings to seven the number of unions in the Change to Win Coalition.

Four major unions announced Sunday that they would boycott the AFL-CIO's annual convention here this week, heightening expectations that the unions planned to cut ties with the 50-year-old labor federation. Leaders of the four unions -- the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, Service Employees International Union and Unite Here, a garment and hotel workers union -- said the decision came after recent talks to prevent the walkout failed. Andrew L.

Two of the nation's largest unions Monday officially bolted from the AFL-CIO, deepening a rift over the future of the struggling U.S. labor movement while raising questions about labor's support of the Democratic Party.

Galvanized by the fight against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and strengthened by a decade of organizing success, Southern California union leaders promised Monday they would find ways to keep the regional labor movement working together despite the split of the national AFL-CIO. But doing so could pose considerable challenges to union officials, who have built the Los Angeles labor movement into one of the region's most formidable political forces.

AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, the center of a storm in the labor movement, was reelected to a fourth term Wednesday, just days after the defection of two major unions that sought his ouster. One of those unions -- the Service Employees International Union -- was headed by Sweeney when he was first elected AFL-CIO president in 1995. It joined the Teamsters in leaving the AFL-CIO on Monday. Sweeney faced no opposition for the four-year term.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union on Friday broke away from the AFL-CIO, becoming the third union to abandon the organization this week over disagreements about how to revive labor's diminishing influence. The 1.4-million-member UFCW represents workers in several industries, including retail, food processing and healthcare.

The leader of a breakaway faction that has split the AFL-CIO, said Wednesday that his union would not mend ties with the 50-year-old umbrella group at the heart of the U.S. labor movement and that a new federation was needed to replace it. "The AFL-CIO as we know it will never exist again," said Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union. "We need to build something new ... start from zero."

A union representing almost half a million apparel and hospitality workers has decided to bolt the AFL-CIO and join a half-dozen other unions seeking to focus labor more on recruiting. "It is time for the labor movement to make some changes," Unite Here's general president, Bruce Raynor, said Wednesday.

The nation's largest labor federation and a coalition of groups that represent disabled Americans said Wednesday that they opposed U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr., describing him as a threat to worker and civil rights. The AFL-CIO and the National Coalition for Disability Rights criticized Alito's work as a federal appeals judge over the last 15 years, charging that he has often sided with employers over labor with an excessively restrictive view of federal law.