Fraying House of Labor

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, June 15, 2005; Page A25

The dissident unions of the AFL-CIO are meeting in Washington today to announce that they are building a halfway house.

The Change to Win Coalition-- and boy, is that ever a provisional-sounding and utterly clunky name -- will begin life neither entirely within nor without the AFL-CIO. One of its founders, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the AFL-CIO's largest affiliate, passed a resolution last weekend authorizing its top officers to take the union out of the federation when they deem it appropriate. All signs indicate that will happen soon.