I was just handed an amendment being proposed by the AFL-CIO officers that could be fairly construed as a backsliding on diversity. Close readers here will remember that there is a struggle over the creation of a new Executive Committee, which would be a subset of the full Executive Council–the Executive Committee exists but was put in place between conventions so now the back-and-forth is about how to make it a permanent Constitutional body…and most important, what powers it will have.

Well, there’s this odd little thing in clause 17b. You can see here that in describing who would sit on the Executive Committee, you wander down to the end and it reads, “…and four additional Vice Presidents from affiliates not otherwise represented on the Committee, who shall be appointed each year by the President, with the approval of the Executive Council, to ensure that the Committee reflects the diversity of the labor movement, includings its INDUSTRIAL SECTORS AND CRAFTS, women members, and members of color.”

The capital letters are mine. Since when did the notion of diversity include making sure smaller unions and craft unions got a seat at the table? Isn’t diversity pretty clearly about race, gender, disability and sexual orientation? [An aside: I would age…just because my pet little peeve (and modest proposal) is that the Executive Council should include one or more people under the age of 30. But, I digress.]

Is this new definition of diversity just a way of squeezing in a seat for one of the old white guys who don’t county among the 15 largest affiliates? Is this the Mike Sacco seat?—Sacco being the head of the Seafarers Union, which has got to be the whitest union in America. Look, speaking as a white guy myself, Sacco should have a voice–but he, or anyone else from a smaller union or caft, should not be the labor movement’s face of diversity.

Hello? Was this just a bad oversight or mistake? I’m hopeful that it is so. But, people have got to start picking up the phone or e-mailing their representatives. This comes before the
Constitution Committee this afternoon.

UPDATE: The Executive Council passed this amendment. John Wilhelm of UNITE HERE spoke out against it.