AFL-CIO leader seeks to expand membership beyond unions

Susan Page @susanpage | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption AFL-CIO President: Labor movement in crisis | Capital Download In this edition of Capital Download, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka discusses need for change to accommodate today's workers, and a new plan for the organization to partner with the NAACP, Sierra Club and other non-union groups.

Just 11.3%25 of American workers are now in unions%3B 30 years ago%2C 20.1%25 were members

AFL-CIO now in talks with groups like the Sierra Club%2C NAACP%2C about partnerships%2C even membership

There could be conflicts ahead over issues such as building the Keystone XL Pipeline

WASHINGTON — Calling the labor movement in crisis, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says he will push far-reaching changes at the federation's convention next month, including forging closer partnerships and even accepting as members such outside groups as the Sierra Club and the NAACP.

The changes, some of which will require amending the AFL-CIO's bylaws, are part of a strategy aimed at reviving the labor movement's falling clout and recasting it as a champion for American workers generally, not just for the declining ranks of dues-paying union members.

In an interview Wednesday with USA TODAY, Trumka acknowledged resistance within his organization and the possibility of conflicts ahead.

"I think any time you do new things and you have change, people are concerned about what it means," he said on the weekly video newsmaker series, Capital Download. "Will it dilute us? Look, here's the way I look at it: What we've been doing the last 30 years hasn't worked real well. We need to do things differently."

Last year, just 11.3% of American wage and salary workers were unionized, the lowest percentage in nearly a century. Thirty years ago, 20.1% were, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "We are in crisis," Trumka said.

He wants to reach out to Americans who traditionally haven't been represented by unions — including graduate students, fast-food workers, child-care providers and young people who now may hold two or three part-time jobs. And while the AFL-CIO has worked with outside organizations before on particular issues, he envisions a closer and more continuous relationship with liberal-leaning religious, environmental and civil-rights groups.

"We're in conversations with the AFL-CIO about a more formalized partnership," Cathy Duvall of the Sierra Club confirms. Details about how the new arrangements will work still are being negotiated. Some of the groups may pay dues and others may not, Trumka says. In some places, the new groups could become part of the structure of the local labor movement.

"The labor movement knows that it cannot function purely as a representative of those workers who happen to have collective-bargaining agreements with specific companies or local governments," says labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California-Santa Barbara. "It's a return to its 19th-century roots when the labor movement claimed to speak for, we call them 'the 99%' today."

Trumka says combining forces would strengthen the clout of progressive politics. "None of us are big enough to be able to change the climate out there, whether it's economic, political or legislative," Trumka says. "And all of us realize it takes all of us working together to get it done." AFL-CIO unions now represent 12 million workers.

But there are sure to be conflicts on specific issues. For instance, the Building Trades, which represents construction workers, supports the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline as a project that will generate jobs; the Sierra Club opposes it as a threat to the environment.

Trumka, 64, born in the coal-mining community of Nemacolin, Pa., and a former president of the United Mine Workers, was elected to lead the labor federation at its 2009 convention and is expected to be re-elected at next month's convention in Los Angeles. He was interviewed at AFL-CIO headquarters in the George Meany Room, named for the late labor leader and sporting a spectacular view of the White House on the opposite side of Lafayette Square.

Trumka praised President Obama, who is slated to address the convention, as someone who "has a good heart and the interests of workers of this country at heart." But he said most American workers don't yet feel a recovery from the Great Recession.

"Wages are still stagnant; hours are still down; benefits are still down; pensions are being taken away; health care is being lost," he said. "So for the average worker, they're still out there sacrificing. They're still out they're scraping. And for those who do have a job, they worry every day about losing it."