In his “Working Life” blog, Jonathan Tasini reports that there will be some new info coming out today from the Gang of Five who are challenging John Sweeney at the AFL-CIO. Jonathan says this McElroy thing is not a slam dunk (we hear it is) and says to watch the ever, uh… nimble (that’s a nicer word) Gerry McEntee of AFSCME. Ten years ago he threw in with Sweeney, thereby guaranteeing his victory. He can be the kingmaker again this time. If he throws in with the insurgents, they win and rule a bigger AFL-CIO, as the Carpenters will likely return. If he throws in with Sweeney, he will rule over a much smaller kingdom, as the insurgents and others will likely bolt.

Here’s a link to the new proposal.

Although a fact unknown to most, the blogger-in-chief has heretofore worked in his cave, lit only by the light of a fire. He scratches out his daily blogs on a flat rock with a piece of charcoal scavenged from the bed of embers. He sends it by burro to a transcriber who dutifully converts it to the format that you see.

Well this past weekend, the blogger-in-chief stumbled out of his cave, squinted into the sun and shouted “Eureka!” and embraced progress. This weekend, the nice people from Cox Cable came and pried his cold nearly-dead fingers off of his beloved 56K modem and launched him headlong into the world of high-speed, never to return. We are left to wonder, can indoor plumbing be far behind….?

No matter — now unleashed, the bar has been raised. Presumably we can expect not only higher-quality material, but we can perhaps even expect a greater frequency of stuff.

God help us all.

OK, this is a major drip, more like a gusher:

We reported below on the gathering at the Teamsters Conference in Las Vegas this week. This was not your father’s Teamsters Conference, this was a meeting of the Gang of Five hell-bent on unseating AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, a meeting of the dispossessed. It was well-known that the five amigos were there: Hoffa, Stern, Raynor, Wilhelm and O’Sullivan.

However, we learned from two different sources today that joining them were Firefighters President Harold Schaitberger and American Federation of Teachers President Ed McElroy. This is huge. Why? Because before turning up in Sin City, both were thought to be firmly in the Sweeney camp. They are not. You’ll recall (see below) that Schaitberger recently resigned in a huff as the head of the AFL’s Public Affairs Committee after being left in the dark by Sweeney about his re-organization plans. So maybe this could have been predicted, not sure, but it’s still very significant.

But there was no warning about McElroy, heretofore believed to be a strong Sweeney supporter. If Sweeney loses both of them — as our sources tell us he has — then he’s in deep you-know-what.

We’re not sure that John Wilhelm will be the candidate opposing Sweeney, but whoever it is, they will have the support of these now seven unions, getting precariously ever closer to the 51% majority needed to forcibly remove Sweeney. In the spirit of Vegas, we’d see Laborers’ President Terence O’Sullivan’s odds improving as a candidate. He just might be the Giacomo-style dark horse in this race. Stay tuned.

If you didn’t think this AFL-CIO thing is getting icky, now comes the Machinists (IAM) into the fray, taking potshots at Andy Stern for God-only-knows what reason. They have gone so far as to produce a short video called, “Mind Games” on their website. Check it out. It’s a shot at Stern. Weird. There’s no love lost between Stern and IAM President Buffenbarger, but this is just extraordinary. When was the last time one AFL affiliate produced an attack ad against the President of another AFL affiliate? Yeesh!

When John Sweeney finally exits — as he will — the blogs once again will have played a prominent role. We don’t pretend to be in the lead in that number (although we’ve clearly harnessed some of the angst), but Andy Stern’s Unite To Win blog has certainly played a big role in galvanizing opposition and putting out a clear vision of where the labor movement should be headed. There are at last two others that we’re aware of: One is the Working Life blog, which is just a general union blog but has some good stuff on there about Sweeney and the dissidents, including a report from this week about the Las Vegas hijinks. The other is simply called the “Labor Blog“, but it also has some very scathing and critical pieces on there, including an open letter to John Sweeney from a fellow trade unionist angry about the elimination of the safety and health department at the AFL-CIO.

And do check out Unite To Win to see Andy Stern’s post from Wednesday about his experiences at the Great Gathering this week in Vegas.

For those of you who don’t routinely check out Superfactory.com and their blog, excellently written by Kevin Meyer, there’s a great article on there entitled, “The Coming Manufacturing Revolution“. It’s a great and thought-provoking piece that we’d recommend to you. In the course of the article, it mentions “Seven Revolutions” as posited by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Among them are population growth, economic integration and the emergence of genomics and nanotechnology. It’s worth a read. It also points to the upcoming conference of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, where this topic will be covered in depth. AME is a great group for anyone passionate about manufacturing and making it better.

Under that heading did Association Management magazine — without a doubt the finest damn magazine in America — list our humble NAM blog. Thanks to Kevin Holland of ACCA for writing the article and for accepting our large gratuity. Just kidding. Kevin runs a pretty good blog himself. We spent the day patting ourselves on the back, of course. Note the gaudy blue ribbon we’ve added over on the left. We tried to make it bigger, but the ego police stopped us. Here’s a link to our self-congratulatory press release.

In any event, we accept this award on behalf of all the little people who made it possible…(insert stock Oscar speech here). Seriously, the NAM’s Dave Kralik was an early supporter of this notion and has provided tech support and a fair amount of content — and goading — to the blogger-in-chief. So, too, Doug Kurkul and Debi Schneider. Most of all, we’d like to thank the big guy himself — not, not God (although He helped, too)– John Engler, who gave us the room (the rope, maybe?) to give this a go. Manufacturers having a blog? How groundbreaking!

Thanks to you regular blog readers, both of you, for hanging in there. We should also thank John Sweeney who of late has given us more than enough content as well.

OK, everybody back to work!

We mention below John Sweeney foe Andy Stern’s presentation at the Teamsters gathering in Las Vegas laying out the case for action over at the sleepy AFL-CIO. Here’s a copy of an earlier version of that fairly exhaustive presentation. We warn you, it’s in PowerPoint and it’s a monster, about 1.3 mg in total. Imagine sitting through this, a combination of War & Peace and Gone with the Wind. Talk about a weeper! Last we heard, John Sweeney was heard muttering, “I’ll think about it tomorrow….”

Got an e-mail yesterday from one of our union pals with a subject line that just said, “Drip…” and attaching an article by Josh Gerstein of the New York Sun entitled, “At Teamsters Conference, Dissidents Warn of Death of Labor Movement”.

This week, there is a Teamsters Conference in Las Vegas. Nothing newsworthy there. But what is newsworthy was the presence of SEIU President Andy Stern, HERE UNITE officials Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm, and Laborers’ President Terence O’Sullivan, all of whom — together with Teamsters President Jim Hoffa — make up the “Gang of Five”, the core group of insurgents allied against AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

As Gerstein reports, “In a series of salty and at times profane speeches to hundreds of Teamster officials and organizers from across the country”, the Fab 5 “Urgently called for sweeping reforms to the…AFL-CIO.” SEIU President Stern gave a PowerPoint presentation detailing labor’s retreat, saying, “This is not organized labor. This is disorganized labor.”

Hoffa swore to “fight at the [AFL-CIO] Convention in July for what’s right”, while putative Sweeney challenger John Wilhelm complained that the political program of the AFL-CIO “has become captured by the Democratic Party…” No wonder Hill Democrats are nervous. Could the inept Sweeney be replaced by a guy who actually cared about what was best for the members?!? Infidel!

The Teamsters put out a press release under the banner, “Teamsters Lead Reform Coalition to Strengthen Unions, Empower Workers”.

The storm’s a-brewin’. This is one thing that happened in Vegas that in all likelihood is not gonna stay in Vegas…

Yesterday found NAM President John Engler back home in Michigan for his first major economic address since seizing the reins here some 6 months ago. He outlined a five-part plan of action that, when fully implemented, would inject some $1 trillion of spending and investment into the economy. The good news, as he said, is that the plan already exists and is pending before Congress in the form of the energy bill, Clear Skies, the highway bill, asbestos reform and the telecomm/broadband legislation. For a breakdown of how much each would contribute to the economy see our press release which also includes a link to the full speech. As Engler said, it’s time for Congress to move from the brake to the accelerator.

Some 600 folks turned out to hear Engler, a huge crowd by any standard. There was also a great amount of press interest, including a great story in the Detroit News by Charlie Cain and an AP story by Ken Thomas.

Over the past half year, below the radar, Engler has been quietly hitting a few dozen states, carrying the manufacturing message and meeting with manufacturers large and small. Plan on seeing that continue until the climate for manufacturing in this country dramatically improves.

All in all, a great job yesterday by the Gov. Here’s a link to a video of the speech.