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By Doug Cunningham

[Stewart Acuff 1]: “The split hurt the labor movement. We have worked very hard to mitigate the worst effects of it. But it hurt the labor movement.”

That was AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff. It’s been a year since several unions left the AFL-CIO and Acuff says it has made unity and solidarity more difficult but much of the damage at the state and local levels of the labor movement has been patched up with thousands of local affiliates of the disaffiliated unions returning to the AFL-CIO at the state and local levels. Acuff says in the past year the AFL-CIO has launched a robust organizing effort with unions like the UAW, CWA and AFT moving millions of additional dollars into organizing efforts.

Politically, Acuff says this November’s elections will reveal whether the split has hurt labor’s ability to get worker-friendly candidates elected.

[Acuff 2]: “It would be a very sad thing indeed if the split in some way hurt our efforts to elect a pro-worker Congress, because we certainly need to stop this right-wing assault on working families.”

Acuff says the working relationship with the disaffiliated unions is difficult, but the AFL-CIO’s goal is still to someday return those unions to the AFL-CIO fold.