Teamsters, SEIU Leave AFL-CIO

he Teamsters union and the Service Employees International Union said Monday they are leaving the AFL-CIO, the Associated Press reported.

Teamsters President James Hoffa said in a prepared statement on the union's Web site: "In our view, we must have more union members in order to change the political climate that is undermining workers' rights in this country."

"The AFL-CIO has chosen the opposite approach," he said in the remarks prepared for a news conference at which he was to announce the withdrawal of the Teamsters, which represent truckers and which for years operated outside of the AFL-CIO.

The two, along with two other unions which together represent nearly one-third of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members, said Sunday they would boycott the AFL-CIO’s convention which began Monday, AP reported.

The unions are part of the Change to Win Coalition, seven labor groups vowing to accomplish what the AFL-CIO has failed to do: Reverse the decades-long decline in union membership, AP said.

Leaders of the dissident unions say the AFL-CIO was beyond repair from within. In addition to seeking the ouster of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, they demanded more money for organizing, power to force mergers of smaller unions and other changes they say are key to adapting to vast changes in society and the economy, AP reported.

It's the biggest rift in organized labor since 1938, when the Congress of Industrial Unions split from the American Federation of Labor, AP said. The two reunited in the mid-1950s as the AFL-CIO.