The founding convention in St. Louis was also full of critical talk -- about Republicans, Democrats and the main union federation, the AFL-CIO. Most unions in the new group, the Change to Win Federation, have left the AFL-CIO, saying American workers need a new grouping that will be far more aggressive about unionizing workers.
The president of the laborers union, Terence O'Sullivan, said Tuesday that his union also was likely to leave the AFL-CIO.
"There are some people who say we are dividing the labor movement," James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said. "I say we are rebuilding the labor movement, but this time we are building it right."
Leaders of the new federation said they would seek to unionize many of the 50 million workers whose jobs cannot be sent overseas or replaced by machines. Many of those jobs pay poverty-level wages and include janitors, cashiers, nursing home aides and security guards.
If the convention had one theme, it was that unions, for all their problems, are the best tool to improve wages and benefits, not just for low-wage workers, but for all workers.
"American workers play by the rules, but the rules no longer work," said Anna Burger, the chairwoman of the new federation. "Wages are down, hours are up, and the gap between rich and poor is staggering and growing."
Leaders of the group said it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to unionize workers.
They said they would undertake huge drives that might organize 5,000 or 10,000 workers at a time.
The group represents 5.4 million U.S. workers and includes the Teamsters, the service employees, the food and commercial workers and Unite Here, which represents hotel, casino, restaurant and apparel workers. Over the last two months, those four unions have left the AFL-CIO, leaving it with nearly 9 million members.
The carpenters union, which quit the AFL-CIO in 2001, also joined the new group, as did two unions still in the federation, the United Farm Workers and the laborers.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney criticized the unions for breaking away.
"There's nothing the Change to Win unions are doing today they couldn't have done in unity with the entire union movement, from within the AFL-CIO," he said. "Instead, they've chosen a path which divides union members at a time when working people are under attack as never before. Their way leaves all working people weakened and vulnerable, not stronger."
