Work in Progress: The State of the Unions Two Years after the AFL-CIO Split

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney recently took a strange trip. It was a short one, just a half-mile or so from the federation's sandstone fortress near the White House to a sleek, smoked-glass office building that America's fastest growing union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was dedicating as its new head-quarters. What made Sweeney's appearance at the January dedication so strange was that SEIU—the union he led in the eighties and nineties—had stormed out of the AFL-CIO less than two years earlier and established the rival Change to Win (CTW) federation with six other unions. Back then, many feared a bitter war would break out between the two federations and that an already dwindling labor movement would disappear completely. Yet, there in SEIU's glass-walled atrium, with beatific portraits of workers all around, the breakaway union's staff applauded warmly when Sweeney was introduced. Though he didn't speak at the ceremony, Sweeney stayed for the reception and chatted with old friends in the crowd.