The Break-up of the AFL-CIO Begins

It looks like the problems for the AFL-CIO reported here awhile back have come to a head:

The AFL-CIO succumbed to division Sunday, with its largest union deciding to bolt the 50-year-old federation and three others poised to do so in a dispute over how to reverse organized labor's long slide.

The four unions, representing nearly one-third of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members, announced Sunday they would boycott the federation's convention that begins Monday. They are part of the Coalition to Win, a group of seven unions vowing to reform the labor movement - outside the AFL-CIO if necessary.

The Service Employees International Union, with 1.8 million members, plans to announce Monday that it is leaving the AFL-CIO, said several labor officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the developments.

The Teamsters union also was on the verge of disaffiliating, and would likely to be the first to follow SEIU's lead, the officials said. Two other boycotting unions were likely to leave the federation: United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE, a group of textile and hotel workers.

Here's what I said about the break-up of the AFL-CIO in a previous post:

This is sort of like watching the Iran/Iraq war back in the 80's. No matter who lost, we all won. I have a hard time feeling sorry for the big unions, especially given the massive amount of time and money they spend trying to defeat Republicans (didn't work). The election results showed that many union members, despite being held up for their union dues which went right into lefty campaigns, defected from the union line and voted for Bush. Those folks are apparently smarter than their union leaders.