IFPTE President to Run for AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer

Greg Junemann, the president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, has just publicly announced that he is running to be Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO. This strikes me as potentially significant for a couple of reasons.

First, the none of the AFL-CIO's presidents have ever come from a union that primarily or even truly significantly organized and represented public employees. John Sweeney brought the National Association of Government Employees into the AFL-CIO, but that's not the same thing as doing substantial organizing in the government sector. Rich Trumka, the current secretary-treasurer, comes from the United Mine Workers. Junemann represents private-sector workers too, but the union has been organizing aggressively in the federal government, and, with 250 percent growth over the past ten years, IFPTE claims to the be the fastest-growing union in the country, something that would surely appeal to leaders in both the AFL-CIO and the growth-oriented unions who split to join Change to Win, a rival labor federation, in 2005. Public-sector growth is a promising alternative for the labor movement: federal-sector unions gained 78,000 members last year for a 1.3 percent bump in membership. If the AFL-CIO wants to grow in the public sector, Junemann could point a way towards doing that.

Second, Junemann says he doesn't want to criticize current leadership, but he is running on a platform of financial stability for the labor federation. Trumka, the current secretary-treasurer, has been discussed as a possibility to replace Sweeney. Junemann's announcement might encourage Trumka to encourage Sweeney to step aside, so he doesn't have to fight a reelection fight that might make him weaker in an eventual bid for the federation's presidency. Update: Sweeney's not running for re-election. So he's not a factor in the power shift, but the dynamics between Junemann and Trumka could still be interesting, depending on how Junemann's campaign shapes up.