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:: Monday, December 20, 2004 ::

The AFL-CIO faces tough choices. By Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect
With a scant 8 percent of private-sector workers belonging to unions -- the lowest level in nearly a century -- even the most brilliant political program can no longer be counted on to produce Democratic majorities. In matters of elections, or winning contracts that ensure middle-class living standards, SEIU Executive Vice President Gerry Hudson said earlier this month at a conference debating labor's future, 'We have a labor movement dangerously close to being too small to matter.'

Just one week after the election, SEIU President Andrew Stern proposed a range of remedies for labor's ailments. They included rebating half the dues that unions pay to the AFL-CIO to bolster unions' organizing programs, directing the $25 million that the AFL-CIO annually derives from its credit card into a campaign to begin organizing Wal-Mart workers and, most controversial, a policy that would enable the AFL-CIO to compel its 40 smaller unions (often too small to wage significant organizing drives) to merge into its 20 larger ones. If the AFL-CIO fails to adopt these changes, Stern said, the SEIU -- the federation's largest union and its most successful organizer -- may pull out altogether.

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