United Farm Workers Joins Change to Win Camp
Well, this is interesting:
The United Farm Workers of America (UFW) announced today that it was joining the Change to Win Coalition, the new workers organization devoted to transforming the American labor movement.If nothing else, this helps Change to Win escape the simple "six white union leaders making all the decisions" rap."To realize our goal of organizing significant numbers of low-to moderate-wage Latino and immigrant workers in the face of fierce employer resistance during the next decade, we must move aggressively to apply new resources and make changes in our own organization," said UFW President Arturo Rodriguez. "We are convinced the Change to Win Coalition mirrors our commitment of finding new ways to refocus on organizing and vigorously pursue anti-worker employers."
But the significance is greater. One of the first big campaigns John Sweeney launched as the new head of the AFL-CIO ten years ago was support for the United Farm Workers in their campaign to organize strawberry workers in California.
That campaign was largely a failure for a range of reasons, but the defection of the UFW has got to especially hurt given the efforts Sweeney made on their behalf.
The other irony of the move is to have the UFW and the Teamsters, once mortal enemies in the agricultural fields, teaming up in such close cooperation.
As a last minute propaganda coup, this counts as at least a 9 for the Change to Win folks.
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