UFCW to AFL-CIO

Mike Elk reports that the United Food and Commercial Workers are returning to the AFL-CIO after 8 years with the insurgent Change to Win coalition. While this is inside baseball to people who aren’t intimately concerned with labor politics, it matters on a couple of levels. First, it moves organized labor back toward a more unified voice. Second, it isolates SEIU a bit. There’s really no reason for Change to Win to exist anymore. It now consists of SEIU, the Teamsters, and the remaining few members of the United Farm Workers. Since the Teamsters always go their own way anyway on these questions, this is really now just SEIU. No problem with SEIU going it alone, but Andy Stern’s vision for an alternative to the AFL-CIO is completely dead. Which is fine since it never did anything anyway. Third, it could mean greater federation support for the UFCW Wal-Mart campaigns, one of the highest profile struggles of the last year. That would be quite positive.