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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Two major unions representing 3.2 million workers broke away from the AFL-CIO labor group on Monday in a dispute over declining U.S. union membership and the future direction of organized labor. ... The two unions belong to a dissident group made up of seven unions that want a greater focus on organizing workers and merging smaller unions into larger ones. They charge the AFL-CIO devotes too much of its resources to political lobbying and the central office.

... "A divided movement hurts the hopes of working families for a better life, and that makes me angry," Sweeney said in his keynote address to the cheering convention on Monday.

The boycott, he added, "is a grievous insult to all the unions."
...
Since Sweeney assumed leadership of the federation in 1995 as a reformer, union membership fell from 15.5 percent of the U.S. work force to 12.5 percent. In 1983, before a U.S. manufacturing decline and the loss of jobs to other countries, one of five workers belonged to a union.
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The defecting unions mostly represent lower-wage workers, many in service industries where organizing is expanding, while dominant unions in the auto, steel and communications industries remained in the AFL-CIO fold, Vanderbilt University sociologist Dan Cornfield said.

» Reuters.com - Teamsters, service workers break from AFL-CIO