The Washington Post takes a fascinating look at what was once the Democratic Party's most important constituency.
By a 2 to 1 margin, the AFL-CIO's executive committee last week rejected the dissidents' proposal to boost spending on union organizing and membership drives by roughly $35 million. Instead, it adopted the Sweeney plan to nearly double spending on political and legislative mobilization, raising the AFL-CIO's annual commitment to these activities to $45 million.
In 1953, 36 percent of private-sector workers were union members; today, fewer than 8 percent belong to unions. Sweeney argued that the only way to stem the collapse of unionization is to win back Democratic control of the Congress and the White House. Union organizing, in the view of Sweeney and his backers, will be futile in the face of hostile Republican leaders and regulators who allow employers to block union-certification elections and use stalling tactics and threats to discourage organizing drives.
It certainly seems like a hopeless strategy to fight the war against Republicans in Washington while your membership slowly drains away at the bottom. But it might be that the cause is hopeless either way.
Some experts warn that neither proposed strategy will work in the face of such overwhelming forces as globalization, the shift of production and services to low-wage countries, and the emergence of Wal-Mart and other mega-corporations that have undermined -- and in some cases obliterated -- union efforts.
Leo Troy, an economics professor at Rutgers University, predicted that unionization in the private sector "will continue to ebb" worldwide in all advanced industrial countries.
It may well be that the Labor Union is a movement with a great future behind it.
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