My sources tell me that today at 2 p.m. Change To Win and the AFL-CIO will announce a deal that sort of helps bridge the work of the two federations, mainly in the area of politics.

This new formation will be called the National Labor Coordinating Committee and the main purpose of the committee will be to coordinate educational and mobilization efforts around the 2006 elections. What will happen after 2006 is unclear so this seems like a temporary solution to a longer-term question.

The head of this new committee is, of course, Gerry McEntee, the president of AFSCME, for whom politics is the most important part of what he does–I won’t go into detail here about whether labor’s political program is successful. Folks who have been around this blog for sometime know that I am a skeptic, at best. The vice-chair of the new formation will be Edgar Romney, executive vice-president of UNITEHERE and Change To Win’s Secretary-Treasurer.

As part of the deal, John Sweeney has pledged to recommend to the AFL-CIO Executive Council that the United Farm Workers be allowed to become part of the Solidarity Charter concept. You may remember that for some inexplicable reason Sweeney drew a line and told the UFW that it could not be part of the Solidarity Charter deal because it left the AFL-CIO in January–after the withdrawal of the initial Change To Win unions. As part of this new deal, McEntee has told insiders that he will push the Executive Council to okay the expansion of the Solidarity Charter to cover the UFW.

The announcement is being made at this very minute so here’s the press release:

Change to Win and AFL-CIO Agree to Coordinate Election Year Efforts

AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and Change to Win chair Anna Burger today announced that they have reached a tentative agreement on a plan for coordination of member mobilization activity for the 2006 election year.

“The entire labor movement is united by the desire to make working people’s issues the country’s priorities this election year, and we are taking all the necessary steps to effectively coordinate our efforts toward this end,” said Sweeney and Burger.

Change to Win and the AFL-CIO will create a National Labor Coordinating Committee (NLCC) to be chaired by Gerald McEntee, AFL-CIO political committee chair and president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and vice-chaired by Edgar Romney, secretary-treasurer of Change to Win and executive vice president of UNITE HERE.

Political directors and staff from the organizations will work in close collaboration on every aspect of the program, and the organizations will share the costs of joint activities.

As part of the agreement, Change to Win releases its affiliates to participate in state and local central labor bodies, and AFL-CIO President Sweeney will recommend to the AFL-CIO Executive Council that the United Farm Workers be eligible to participate in state and local bodies.