AFL-CIO Announces Change In Local Leadership

    Before the Democratic Convention takes place in Colorado, the state’s local AFL-CIO will have new leadership.

    The national labor federation is planning to cut the jobs of local President Steve Adams and  Secretary-Treasurer Paul Mendrick, and will then begin searching for a new leader in the near future.From the Rocky Mountain News:

    The national AFL-CIO took charge of the state federation’s daily operations this year because of internal conflicts among its top leaders.

    The conclusion: The organization’s structure must be changed to restore peace within the splintered group.

    “We’ll be looking for new leadership,” said Rick Bender, the Washington state labor leader serving as trustee of the Colorado group.

    “If we were to keep one or the other, we would probably lose one half of the unions” in the state, Bender said. “There was no way we could bring unity. That’s the rationale.”

    Whether or not such a move will quell troubles between labor and convention planners is another question. But it is likely to defuse divisions in Colorado’s AFL-CIO, a scenario that has been a long time coming.

    Erin Rosa was born in Spain and raised in Colorado Springs. She is a freelance writer currently living in Denver. Rosa's work has been featured in a variety of news outlets including the Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle, an alternative-weekly in Northern Colorado where she worked as a columnist covering the state legislature. Rosa has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting on lobbying and woman's health issues. She was also tapped with a rare honorable mention award by the Newspaper Guild-CWA's David S. Barr Award in 2008--only the second such honor conferred in its nine-year history--for her investigative series covering the federal government's Supermax prison in the state. Rosa covers the labor community, corrections, immigration and government transparency matters. She can be reached at erosa@www.coloradoindependent.com.