In an era when unions typically face frustration and failure in attracting workers in the private sector, the Service Employees International Union is bringing in 5,000 janitors from several companies at once. With work force experts saying that unions face a slow death unless they can figure out how to organize private-sector workers in big bunches, labor leaders are looking to the Houston campaign as a model.

The service employees, which led a breakaway of four unions from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. last summer, has used several unusual tactics in Houston, among them lining up the support of religious leaders, pension funds and the city's mayor, Bill White, a Democrat. Making the effort even more unusual has been the union's success in a state that has long been hostile to labor.

"It's the largest unionization campaign in the South in years," said Julius Getman, a labor law professor at the University of Texas. "Other unions will say, 'Yes, it can be done here.' "

Mr. Getman predicted that the Houston effort would embolden other unions to take their chances with ambitious drives in the South, although success could prove difficult because many companies will continue to fight unionization efforts, and many workers still shy away from unions.

full article @ NYTimes

SEI told the AFL-CIO that they needed to stop pissing away so much of the union dues on lobbying in Washington and put it in to recruiting and expanding union members. The business-as-usual [failure-as-usual] old guard AFL-CIO leadership did not want to hear that. So SEI LEFT and lead other more forward thinking unions out the door with them. This was widely sighted as a horrible development. That unions were "eating themselves".

Perhaps we are now seeing a clearer picture of what was going on within the unions. Should SEIU have placidly allowed AFL-CIO to continue their conventional but FAILED approach to organizing? Should SEIU have remained under the leadership that had presided of the collapse of the union movement?

Now we see that perhaps it was the AFL-CIO leadership that should have adopted and accepted the new ideas of the SEIU. Imagine how much more could have been accomplished if the entire AFL-CIO had abandoned the failure policy of their old guard and adopted something like the SEIU's approach.

It is important to note that SEIU was VERY successful at organizing new members when they were apart of the AFL-CIO. THEY had a record of success which the AFL-CIO chose to ignore.

Never underestimate the stubbornness of entrenched leadership to cling to their outmoded and ineffective ideas to the bitter end.

# posted by Jon Easton : 7:50 AM  1 comments