This is a fairly succinct review of the issues that led to the AFL-CIO split:
http://progressive.org/?q=mag_tinylabor-snip-
Herewith a few suggestions, culled from discussions with labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan and dozens of other labor activists around the country:
Organize, don’t subsidize.The amount spent on organizing is one of the key issues separating Change to Win from the rest of the AFL-CIO. Stern and the other dissidents want to boost the federation’s organizing to $72 million; Sweeney would increase it to $30 million out of a total budget of $125 million. Where does the rest of that money go now? Well, a lot goes to subsidize the Democratic Party, with a view to electing more labor-friendly candidates. But the best way to pump up the Democratic vote is, in fact, to organize. According to the AFL-CIO’s own statistics, nonunion white male voters went 69 percent for Bush in 2000, while white male union members went 59 percent for Gore. Put another way, union organizing adds more Democratic votes, at least among white males, than any number of television commercials. The best way to get union-friendly elected officials is to build the unions.
Open up membership to every pro-union American. If I want to support the women’s movement, all I have to do is send in my dues to NOW. But to join a union, most people have to go through the trial-by-fire of a union organizing drive in their workplace. This isn’t so in Germany, for example, where individuals can join a union whether their workplace is organized or not. Here, the Steelworkers have started opening up their union to unorganized individuals, but for most Americans the unions remain a distant, inaccessible fortress. Individual members wouldn’t be just dues-payers and supporters; they could be the seeds of organizing drives in their workplaces.
-snip-
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