Working America Is at Your Door By Richard Freeman

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/speakout/richard_freeman.cfm



Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University

Freeman describes a workshop at Harvard last fall where the focus was on our unique membership organization, Working America, and how Working America's outreach is making a big difference in boosting the strength of the union movement.

In 2007, union density rose for the first time in decades. Membership increased by 311,000, the proportion of organized wage and salary workers went from 12.0 percent to 12.1 percent, and private-sector density went from 7.4 percent to 7.5 percent. A skeptic may say because the 0.1 increase is so small, it could be a sampling error or mis-measurement. Or, if true, that means it would take 100 years for an annual 0.1 rise to bring union density to what it was in the days of Ronald Reagan.

But the official statistics, which measure traditional collective bargaining unionism, miss the most important gain in union strength in the new millennium. This is the 2 million people who joined Working America, the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate. Add 2 million to the number calculated by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and unionization rises by 1.5 percentage points. Given the rate at which Working America is signing up members, membership will increase between 500,000 and 1 million annually in the foreseeable future. Working America will be the largest labor organization in the country.

What has Working America done to enlist so many members when past efforts to organize workers outside of collective bargaining have failed?

To find out, the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program held a two-day conference with Working America in November 2007. We invited Working America leaders, canvassers and staff, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt; the leaders of the New Mexico and Oregon state federations; British and Dutch experts and labor scholars to discuss what Working America was doing and where it was headed. Unlike most recent meetings on unionism, which turn into wakes or gripe sessions about the declining fortunes of unions, this conference was as energizing as the best of any jazzed rally I've attended.

The story of Working America is the one of the greatest success in reaching workers outside of collective bargaining since the Knights of Labor in the 1880s. Its primary mode of enlisting members is through community canvassing, where bright young activists go door to door in potentially union-friendly neighborhoods. At the same time, Working America's strong online program has resulted in 60,000 new members signing up through its website.

FULL article at link.