UNION SPLIT: THE RETURN OF LABOR POWER

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Some experts say the split reminds them of 1930, when a similar rift occurred. The fierce competition between unions that followed took membership to record highs in the mid-1950s, but growth stalled after the merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955.

With the new split, "the constraints will come off and they'll be in direct competition for a lot of those same people," said David Lipsky, a professor at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Employers may interpret the labor infighting as disarray. But some experts say the divide could actually create more challenges for companies.

The labor rift "should be a huge wake-up call for employers," said Philip Rosen, who leads the labor practice group at Jackson Lewis LLP, a law firm representing companies in workplace cases. "They really need to look at it and say: 'The fight is coming to my work site tomorrow.'"

Click here for the rest.

If competition is supposed to be good for business, then it must also be good for unions. For many decades now, the only game in town has been the lumbering, top-down, elitist, and Washington-centered AFL-CIO. If you wanted to be involved in some way with the the rotting remains of the labor movement, you had to deal with them. Not anymore. Now there's a choice, and, as the above linked article observes, if history is any indicator, labor can only benefit. The old union regime tried to play the corporate cash game, and even though labor money has been a large factor in Democratic politics for years, they just couldn't keep up with the ever growing influence of coroprate dollars on American politics. Labor's real strength is not terms of money: rather, labor's strength is in numbers, millions of workers with the ability to bring the economy to a standstill with mass strikes and demonstrations. The AFL-CIO has forgotten this simple fact, and labor power has therefore atrophied. The new Change to Win labor coalition is bound and determined to organize and recruit the raw street power needed to fight the robber barons who rule the world, and because they stand to draw potential membership away from the old guard, the AFL-CIO status quo is most likely going to be shaken up as well. It's about time.

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