By Doug Cunningham

Delegates at the AFL-CIO convention here in Chicago Tuesday approved a strategic organizing plan that dramatically boosts annual spending on union organizing: Twenty-two and a half million dollars, up from 12.5 million last year. Up to two-thirds of that money will go back to affiliate unions as organizing rebates. The goal is to get to a total of 500 million dollars a year spent on organizing by the AFL-CIO and all unions nationwide. It will be spent in coordinated, strategic campaigns to build worker power. AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stuart Acuff:

[Acuff] : “The federation is gonna focus on helping unions develop their organizing capacity and develop their capacity and their planning to organize in their key, core industrial sectors.”