Perhaps the most important development of the 1990s has been the renaissance of the American Labor Movement fueled by the re-emergence of the AFL-CIO. Unfortunately, this type of change is difficult to convey to many who have become dispirited due to the long-time failings of the unions. This change from a remote organization with little dynamism to one which provides an effective voice for American working people is so profound--so overwhelming--that many retain the old suspicions and pay only marginal attention to our new progressive, effective leadership.

There are several reasons for this. First, we have all developed our own methods and procedures to do business to make up for a lack of leadership from the leaders of organized labor. When this happens--when progressive leadership who have struggled to bring progressive change into their organizations suddenly are confronted with a stream of new ideas and directions from those who should have provided that leadership but didn't, it becomes difficult to join with the new direction. It is easier to continue what you have been doing rather than give a serious look at something new.

Second, when a base has been developed by legitimately attacking backward leadership, it causes political problems to suddenly embrace that which you have spent a great deal of effort attacking. Third, the breadth of the new direction doesn't always fit into the more narrow directions that we set when working to improve our particular organizations.

Issues that are of interest to working people as a whole--NAFTA, minimum wage, the plight of strawberry workers or even those on strike against the reactionary management at the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News--are less relevant to the legitimate and critical day-to-day struggles that we are waging against an equally backward railroad management.

Fourth, the volume of programs and services being offered by the new AFL-CIO leadership creates more reading and more work--reading and work that we feel we just don't have time to do. Taken together, these reasons cause many of us to give only marginal support to AFL-CIO policies and programs.

As President of the BMWE and a Vice President of the new AFL-CIO, I have had an opportunity to see the new leadership in action. And having attended the past several AFL-CIO Conventions, including the one in October 1995 when the Sweeney/Trumka/Chavez-Thompson ticket was elected and the most recent one in mid-September in Pittsburgh, I can assure any doubters that the new AFL-CIO is being led by brilliant, dedicated trade unionists whose only interests are to the labor movement and to working people, including railroad workers. The change is dramatic--like an abrupt change from day to night.

All of us who have been involved in negotiations realize that we would not have achieved a decent result in the 1996 round of bargaining without the active participation and influence of the new leadership of the AFL-CIO. Their involvement throughout that process provided the critical difference between success and failure. The same is true about recent events regarding the Surface Transportation Board and many other issues of particular interest to rail labor. And when we globalize the actions of the new leadership--that is apply it to all branches of labor, we see that despite media attempts to portray labor in a bad light, the public is more and more looking favorably upon the labor movement.

At every level, the new AFL-CIO is moving the agenda and interests of the labor movement forward. Its strategic planning initiatives provide critical resources and assistance to all engaged in tough collective bargaining fights. Its legislative department is regularly in communication with the affiliates, attempting to provide the strength of the AFL-CIO to our struggles on the legislative front. The same is true for its political direction--moving from rabid supporters of the most backwards Democrats to critical supporters of those politicians who embrace a pro-worker agenda. Given an imperfect world, some of those we are forced to support do not provide the support we need or deserve. But given the choice of the "lesser of the evils," we are better off with, for example, a Clinton than we were with Reagan or Bush.

On the organizing front, there is much we have to learn from the new AFL-CIO. BMWE is declining at about 3 percent per year. We can continue this decline and become weaker or embrace the new AFL-CIO direction and assistance and begin to grow. If we choose to continue our decline, it is our decision, not the decision of the leadership of the AFL-CIO.

A new capital strategies initiative was launched--designed to harness union pension funds directly in the fight to guarantee corporate accountability. Other departments dealt with strike support and the new international direction of the AFL-CIO is now designed to bolster progressive labor in the rest of the world to improve living and working conditions for all working people. This is quite different from the days when the AFL-CIO assisted in the repression of progressive union leadership abroad because the state department labeled such progressive leadership as too radical and too opposed to the programs and policies of U.S. corporations.

The AFL-CIO convention demonstrated the increased strength our leadership has brought us. President Clinton, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, Senate Labor Committee Leader Ted Kennedy, Senator Arlen Specter, Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman all addressed the convention stressing the themes which are important to all of us in organized labor. Senator Spector dealt directly with opposition to rail mergers in general and the carve-up of Conrail by CSX and NS in particular. The next to last speaker to the convention was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, stressing that the struggle in the U.S. is a class-based struggle in which racism and sexism are simply methods used to divide working people along race or sex lines so that we fight each other over crumbs instead of uniting to obtain better conditions for all.

It is essential for those of you who give little credence to the new AFL-CIO to recognize that many of our own achievements are enhanced because of the new direction. The last official piece of business conducted by the convention was the passage of a resolution supporting BMWE and offering resources to us in our struggle to obtain a fair agreement on Amtrak. President Sweeney personally promised full AFL-CIO assistance.

It is true that labor needs more clout. Over the past two years, it has actively built its clout and it grows daily. But the new AFL-CIO has numerous struggles and limited resources. The timely intervention of the AFL-CIO in the UPS strike helped the Teamsters prove to UPS that it could provide for the strikers if the strike went on longer than it did. The broad organizing efforts and struggles of many of the unions also are critical to the new AFL-CIO. However now, for the first time, this new leadership, within the parameters of its resources, have helped rail labor in general and the BMWE in particular. We must work harder to assist the AFL-CIO also. Solidarity is not a one-way street.