After several months of widening tension between John Sweeney and union leaders calling for a more aggressive, broader-based organizing vision more like the one that's been winning in from Los Angeles to New Haven, Andy Stern and Bruce Raynor yesterday explicitly ruled out another term with Sweeney at the helm of the AFL-CIO as an acceptable vehicle for change:

Asserting that sweeping change was needed to revive the labor movement, the union leader, Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, said Mr. Sweeney was not the person to bring about bold change. "We need to make far-reaching changes and have a leader committed to such changes, and that leader is not John Sweeney," said Mr. Stern, whose union represents more than 1.7 million workers...Yesterday, Mr. Stern joined the leaders of four other major unions - the Teamsters, the laborers, the food and commercial workers, and the hotel, restaurant and apparel workers union, Unite Here - in endorsing a platform that calls for overhauling the A.F.L.-C.I.O. The platform proposes nearly tripling the amount that the 13-million-member federation spends on unionization efforts... In an interview, Mr. Stern indicated that his union would stay in the A.F.L.-C.I.O. if labor leaders elected a challenger committed to broad changes to help unions grow...Saying he is the best candidate to push labor forward and unite it, Mr. Sweeney has said he has no intention of being pressured into retiring. "At a moment when workers are under severe attack, it's time to work together as never before to build and strengthen our movement," he said in a statement. "It's certainly no time for ultimatums." Mr. Stern said he would support John W. Wilhelm, president of Unite Here's hospitality division, if he challenged Mr. Sweeney. But Mr. Wilhelm has voiced doubts about running because unions with only 35 percent of the federation's membership support him. Several Wilhelm supporters said that if he declined to run, they would support Terence O'Sullivan, the laborers' president.