Well, I'm not so sure this is good news. I'd file it under "could have been worse" news.

  Has Joe Lieberman actually delivered anything for unions during his Senate tenure? I'm not being snarky; I'm open to the possibilty that Joe might have cast some honest votes (and maybe even proactively fought) for the interests of working people (by "honest votes" I mean committee, procedural, AND floor votes consistent with helping working people).

  It's hard to reconcile stealthily supporting the privatization of Social Security with being supportive of labor, but maybe the AFL-CIO has information we don't.

  That said, Ned Lamont is very likely to be better for unions than Joe has ever been. Don't know why the AFL-CIO couldn't at least have just stayed neutral.

Joe has a mixed record with labor.  He went to mat for federal unions on DHS, and it killed the Democrats chances for the Senate in 2002.

He refused to go to AFSCME events in Iowa, decrying the events. But he also thought avioding Iowa in favor of Delaware was better campaign strategy.  

The DLC, where a few folks there still support him (but really not that many, and mostly for the sake of loyalty) has been hostile to teacher's unions because the DLC likes charter schools, which Lieberman presumably favors.

His scorecard is probably fairly high, but I doubt union leaders would put him in the same league as say Ted Kennedy in terms of their favorite senator.

I guess I would have to agree with Stoller.  At least the Unions can keep Lieberman more in line now.  That's good for the party in general.

The AFL-CIO isn't a union at all, but a federation -- it has no members, no boots on the ground. Real work is done through the locals and unions' state bodies. If you follow the links to this Paul Bass article, you see that CT labor is divided on the race. Sounds like the Lamont faction let this go through to save face for the CT AFL-CIO poobahs, who pressed for it, the better to mend fences after the primary and get to work for Ned.
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True that the AFL-CIO is a federation, but its state and local councils are composed of local unions and its endorsement process is moved by delegates from those local unions.  So it's not the case that an AFL endorsement doesn't add up to "boots on the ground" -- it very much does.

In most cases, labor electoral activity is centralized and coordinated through AFL-CIO Central Labor Councils, which move votes for AFL-CIO endorsed candidates.  That means that in most cases locals do not run their own field programs for their separately endorsed candidates outside of the AFL-CIO's program; to the contrary, they send volunteers to the CLCs to walk/phone for whoever the CLCs are working on (that is, AFL-endorsed candidates in targeted races), in this case, Lieberman in the primary.

So far from the AFL endorsement not meaning volunteers at the doors, the opposite is more often true: endorsements made by locals (and internationals, in federal races) that are contrary to the AFL endorsement are very frequently cosmetic, since most locals don't have the internal capacity to move their own field programs separate from the coordinated programs of the CLCs.  The most they often tend to add up to is refraining from sending volunteers to the CLCs.

(This is a bit more complicated now that SEIU is out of the AFL, since a significant number of SEIU state councils and, sometimes, locals, actually can move their own field programs, but SEIU is the exception, not the rule.)

The labor situation seems chaotic in Connecticut with Lamont engendering an intense following and making rapid progress. The AFL-CIO leadership has thrown in with Lieberman long since (it would be amazing if they didn't), but are adjusting to a Lamont surge.

This statement from the CT AFL-CIO chief in the Bass article is instructive:

Is the labor movement united or divided going into the primary campaigns? John Olsen was asked.

"We have a consensus movement," he said. "After Aug. 8 we have more than a consensus."

He seems to be acknowledging the divisions there. This isn't going to play out in the usual manner with all the local bodies saluting headquarters and marching into action. Although officially nothing but subsidiary organs of AFL-CIO central, in reality they are more responsive to the locals that make them up (if anything but a joke anyway and in my experience). My local body includes the NEA teachers, BTW, and I'm pretty sure SEIU and those guys, even though they're not part of the AFL-CIO.

I expect there's some intense politicking going on in many of those bodies right now and doubt they will be proceeding lockstep.
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