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The Times surveys the competition between labor’s New Unity Partnership and its old guard:

“The way they talk, it’s my way or no way,” Mr. Buffenbarger said. “If the rhetoric doesn’t calm down, you’ll see old alliances form and that might lead to recreating the old A.F.L. and old C.I.O.” Mr. Buffenbarger said some union leaders felt that the partnership’s leaders – three of the five are Ivy League graduates – talk down to them. Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, a union representing textile, hotel and restaurant workers and a member of the New Unity Partnership, said Mr. Stern and the partnership were right to push for far-reaching changes. He said the structure of organized labor was outmoded, asserting that unions were too fractured, small and poorly structured to contend with global corporations. “The labor movement needs to confront these issues, but not in a backroom,” Mr. Raynor said. “We’re not the Kremlin. It’s not like people don’t know that our ability to protect American workers has been weakened. We have to turn that around, and to some degree that debate has to be done publicly.”

Behind this feuding are the seeds of the race to succeed John J. Sweeney, 70, who has been the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president for nine years. Mr. Sweeney has repeatedly said he would seek a new four-year term next July. But many labor leaders predict that he may step aside, suggesting that he declared he wanted another term to prevent labor leaders from focusing their energies this year on campaigning to succeed him, instead of campaigning for the Democratic presidential nominee. Some labor leaders say they expect the New Unity Partnership to pressure Mr. Sweeney not to run again to make way for new blood. Many say they expect John Wilhelm, the longtime president of the hotel and restaurant employees union and a leader of the New Unity Partnership, to seek to succeed Mr. Sweeney. But if Mr. Sweeney steps aside, several industrial unions are expected to back Richard Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s secretary-treasurer.

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