[txnativegop]

Hopefully this is only the first step towards destroying all unions. Once, long ago, unions might have a had a legitimate purpose, but no longer. Good Riddance!

[Doohickey]

Gerald McEntee, president of a government employees' union with more than 1 million members, accused his boycotting colleagues of aiding labor's political foes. "The only people who happy about this are President Bush and his crowd," he said.

So many things wrong with this sentence it's hard to decide where to start.

[mmercier]

Soon "organized" labor under the AFL-CIO will be only government employees unions. The laborers are so mobbed up they may as well be considered government employees.

After the rat party finally melts down at the polls, they and what remains of "organized" labor will form the base of the American Labour party.

[Tacis]

Understand completely. These unions would extort cash from members and the leaders, after skimming some for their own selfs, would turn the balanabce over to the AFL-CIO for delivery to the dems. But, the AFL-CIO leaders would skim some of the cash for their own selfs before turning it over to the DNC leaders who would skim a little off the top for their own selfs and for "black" projects.

These unions believe they can turn over more extorted cash to the DNC directly without the AFL-CIO. The answer clearly is to double union dues!!

[The Brush]

""Today will be remembered as a rebirth of union strength in America," coalition chairwoman Anna Burger said.

If she was my daughter, I would have named her Anita Burger.
My real name is Ivan Awfulitch

[telebob]

I'm glad to see this happen. I'm a past chapter president of an SEIU local. This was back in the days when the SEIU was a nuts and bolts, bread and butter union, before they decided that 'social justice' trumped the interests of the members.

They ran off the old time business reps about 13 years ago and replaced them with a bunch of commie fellow travelers. If you want a union obsessed with gay rights, benefits for illegal aliens, reparations and all the rest of the left's touch stones, the SEIU is your kind of place. They are now in a very friendly relationship with ANSWER and the anti-war left.

BTW, these articles seldom mention it, but Sweeney is the past president of SEIU. Stern learned all his double dealing from him. Hopefully they will destroy each other.

[topher]

Some of these unions have been blindly supporting the Democrats and the AFL-CIO -- putting millions into campaigns.

They have been on the losing end too long -- I hope the Republicans and President Bush tries to help them, and help their union. The Democrats have not been helping them in the past -- only hurting them...

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

When the AFL-CIO formed 50 years ago, union membership was at its zenith with one of every three private-sector workers belonging to a labor group. Now, less than 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized.

Ok here is the bottom line. Young Americans do not like joining Unions. They don't like being told what to do by anyone but they will accept it from the guy who hands them their paycheck. They will not accept it from some dude that wants them to pay protection money.

That is why Union membership is shrinking and partly why manufacturing jobs are going away. When you are unable to hire young workers because you can only hire Union members and over half your work force is on the shady side of fifty you know that you are looking at a serious problem in the making.

This is also why unions are not against immigration illegal or otherwise. That is where their new members are coming from.

[Lancey Howard]

I wonder if some of these unions want to go back to the roots of what unionization is all about and forget the political nonsense? There are plenty of union people who strongly disagree with the Democrat Party's goal of bringing European-style secular socialism to America.

[SteveMcKing]

"Leaders of the dissident unions say the AFL-CIO leadership has failed to stop the steep decline in union membership."

Have they considered not murdering their members?

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I wonder if some of this split might have to do with Sweeney being a socialist.

[staytrue]

"Today will be remembered as a rebirth of union strength in America,"

I agree with this statement. First, competition always makes you better. Now there are two coalitions competing.

Second, the old union agenda was driven by the public employees union which always wanted more taxes (more money to pay public employees) and more govt. programs (more public employees to be in the union).

Problem is, more taxes and more govt. regulations tend to kill private sector jobs which is really bad for unions working in the private sector.

Unions that work for the private sector employee may have a shot at growing and even being beneficial.

The current union movement is aimed at only 1 goal, more public sector employees and higher public sector pay.

[Tribune7]

they would take about $35 million from the AFL-CIO, which has already been forced to layoff a quarter of its 400-person staff.

I think Michael Moore should make a movie about this.

[Southack]

"The Service Employees International Union, with 1.8 million members, plans to announce Monday that it is leaving the AFL-CIO...
The Teamsters union was likely to disaffiliate at the same news conference, they said. Two other boycotting unions signaled similar intentions: United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE, a group of textile and hotel workers."

Tomorrow's union break-up announcements are the start of the Great Split between public and private unions.

In brief, carpenters in the SEIU and Teamster dockworkers have no common ground with the anarchists who burn down houses or with the greens who want to stop all new home construction as being "urban sprawl."

[Richard-SIA]

I had the misfortune to work at a company that was blackmailed into "voluntarily" becoming a Union shop.

I can say from my experiences there that the unions are really fronts for organized crime.

Time for them to be RICO'd out of existence!

[sphinx]

Most of the problems with unions would be solved with right-to-work. The leadership would have to clean up its act, politically as well as financially, or everyone would leave. It is a captive membership that makes the abuses possible.

[kcvl]

AFL-CIO, which has already been forced to layoff a quarter of its 400-person staff???!!!

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

...the AFL-CIO, which has already been forced to layoff a quarter of its 400-person staff.

These people should have unionized and fought these layoffs. ;-)

[mdmathis6]

I wonder when all the organized crime killings will commence...there is no way that the shadier elements of these unions can allow such a split...neither can the Democrats....look for "calls for investigations" from Dem. congressional officials...look for the 'Pubs' to drag their feet!