WASHINGTON, D.C. — Faced with a split in labor’s political operations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win reached a new agreement on May 8 on letting Change to Win union locals get Solidarity Charters.

The pact, announced by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Change to Win Chair Anna Burger, recommits the CtW unions to paying per-capita dues for locals that have charters and rejoin — or remain — in AFL-CIO’s state federations and central labor councils.

CtW locals on May 1 suspended dues payments to AFL-

CIO state and local bodies to protest what they said were newly-imposed Solidarity Charter rules that excluded the Farm Workers and any other union that left the national AFL-CIO after July 2005 from participating. Approximately 1,600 CtW locals have signed Solidarity Charters nationwide. Their dues dollars account for a large portion of operating income for state labor federations and local labor councils.

In a concession to end the brouhaha, Sweeney said he’ll ask his Executive Council to let United Farm Workers locals seek charters. If approved, they would join five of the seven CtW unions — the Service Employees, Teamsters, UNITE HERE, Carpenters and the United Food and Commercial Workers — whose locals can get charters. The seventh CtW union, the Laborers, is still in the AFL-CIO.

The resolution is important, Burger and Sweeney said, so locals and their members from both federations can work with each other “on the ground” during the 2006 campaign — a key reason the charters were established in the first place.

“The entire labor movement is united by the desire to make working people’s issues the country’s priorities this election year, and we are taking all the necessary steps to effectively coordinate our efforts toward this end,” they added.

To run the political operation, the two federations will create a National Labor Coordinating Committee, chaired by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees President Gerald McEntee and vice-chaired by CtW Secretary-Treasurer Edgar Romney, who is executive vice president of UNITE HERE.

“Political directors and staff from the organizations will work in close collaboration on every aspect of the program, and the organizations will share the costs of joint activities,” the two federations said.

After the CtW unions left the AFL-CIO in 2005, the state feds and central labor councils lost substantial shares of their dollars, staffers and political activists. They then pressured Sweeney to establish the Solidarity Charter program to help recoup the losses.

Despite the announcement, political unity on the ground may not be complete. SEIU President Andy Stern, in a May 3 letter to his local leaders announcing the developments, said SEIU — like the others — left Solidarity Charter participation decisions to its locals. As a result, “uneven participation makes it impossible to create a fully integrated member-to-member program” for the elections “that includes all members of both federations,” Stern said.

He also said CtW would go ahead with an idea Burger proposed, and Sweeney rejected: Creation of an “umbrella” organization, the Alliance For Worker Justice “to bring the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and any other labor organization together to plan and coordinate on legislative and political issues that affect working families.”

And Stern reminded CtW locals the Solidarity Charters will exist only through the end of this year, adding: “Change to Win has no plan to seek renewal of the program beyond that date.”

Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO, said two Change to Win unions with Solidarity Charters — Service Employees Locals 503 and 49 — will decide later this month whether to continue paying dues to the state labor federation.

Change to Win unions with Solidarity Charters at the Northwest Oregon Labor Council — United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, UNITE HERE Local 9 and Teamsters Joint Council 37 — attended a May 8 executive board meeting, where representatives said they will resume paying dues to Oregon’s largest central labor council.

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