WASHINGTON, March 1 (UPI) -- Teamsters' Union President James P. Hoffa sat with first lady Laura Bush during the State of the Union address this year.
For John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, the national federation of U.S. labor unions, this could not have been a pleasant sight. For he knew that he was really watching President George W. Bush resolutely court union leaders who support his plans for oil drilling in Alaska, which Sweeney opposes.
Late last year, Sweeney was reelected as AFL-CIO president without opposition. But the widening splits in the labor movement now make his position increasingly insecure.
The split over national energy policy, as one example, threatens Sweeney's grand strategy. He wants to lead a broad coalition of left-wing advocacy organizations, from feminists in the National Organization for Women to the environmentalists in Greenpeace, to help sweep pro-labor Democrats into office.
But the Teamsters and other unions -- including the Carpenters and the Operating Engineers -- support the Bush administration's energy plan, including proposed oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Carpenters' Union President Douglas McCarron, a Bush plan supporter, badly humiliated Sweeney last year when he took his union out of the AFL-CIO, claiming it was wasting money on more staff while failing to organize new members.
The Carpenters are the first major union to defect from the AFL-CIO since 1968, when the United Auto Workers broke over the Vietnam War. (The UAW has since rejoined.)
For Hoffa, McCarron and other union leaders, drilling means lower prices and more jobs. Hoffa estimates that extracting oil from the Arctic refuge could create 735,000 jobs, including 25,000 Teamster jobs.
But for Sweeney the political calculus is more complicated than that. A union fight over ANWR threatens his political strategy to link organized labor to other leftist groups in a broad-based anti-business alliance. Of these, the most powerful is the environmental movement.
National Environmental Trust President Phil Clapp has accused Bush of "trying to split the Democrats by wooing labor." John Nichols of the left-wing magazine The Nation sees "a significant threat to the long-term prospects of the 'Teamsters and Turtles' coalition of trade unionists and environmentalists forged in Seattle during the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization."
Hoffa's landslide re-election as Teamsters president late last year could be seen as a grass-roots referendum on Sweeney's coalition strategy. Supporting drilling in ANWR did not hurt Hoffa -- he won 65 percent of the vote.
The Bush administration has ignored Sweeney as it has courted other union leaders. The White House invited 23 union leaders, including McCarron and Hoffa but not Sweeney -- to a meeting where Vice President Dick Cheney and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao pitched the President's energy plan.
Leaders of the Teamsters, Steelworkers, Plumbers, Laborers, Carpenters, Operating Engineers, Steam Fitters, Seafarers, Marine Engineers and the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department mostly reacted favorably. Many are now pushing the Bush energy plan, which is currently stalled in the Senate. The Teamsters launched a series of pro-ANWR drilling radio ads.
For its part, the administration has recognized its union allies' efforts. Last week, speaking on the White House South Lawn, Bush cited the Teamsters' support for his proposal. In January, Bush visited Teamsters headquarters, where Hoffa declared: "The Teamsters are proud to have President Bush on our side as we fight for a sound energy policy."
Both Bush and his erstwhile ANWR allies have come under criticism from their traditional allies.
Conservative groups like the National Right to Work Committee criticize Bush's dalliance because of Teamsters' violence in an ongoing strike against Overnite Transportation. However, this is no solace to Sweeney. Conservatives are solidly behind the president's energy plan.
Some unions, including the United Auto Workers, the Steelworkers, and Sweeney's old union, the Service Employees International Union, support the AFL-CIO chief and oppose ANWR drilling, but they have not mobilized their members as the pro-drilling unions have.
The split in the AFL-CIO over ANWR is so serious that it is preventing the federation from taking an official position. At its December convention, the AFL-CIO restated a vague 1993 resolution supporting "exploration with safeguards to protect the environment"--hardly the strong commitment to inspire environmental groups to lock arms with it.
So far Sweeney's plan to recreate the old New Deal alliance of labor and the Left is only rhetoric. The Teamsters, Carpenters, and Operating Engineers reject his centerpiece: close cooperation with the environmental movement. They don't expect any backlash from rank-and-file union members, who, if Hoffa's landslide victory is an indication, care more about their jobs than about Sweeney's leftist agenda.
Terrence Scanlon is president of Capital Research Center, which studies the non-profit sector, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy and voluntarism.
