Unions fight for comeback after split

America's labor movement may be at its weakest point in decades, with just 8 percent of private-sector workers in unions and a huge split in its ranks. But it's also fighting back, trying to resonate with Americans worried about job losses and healthcare.

Among its hopeful signs:

• A big victory in organizing janitors in Houston, not known as a union-friendly city. The win by the Service Employees International Union came just months after it and five other unions split from the AFL-CIO.

• The Communications Workers of America have been busily organizing at Cingular Wireless, adding more than 13,500 new members this year.

• The AFL-CIO has kicked off its largest worker-rights campaign in 15 years. It plans huge rallies this week, leading up to Saturday's International Human Rights Day and focused on workplace organizing as a fundamental - and threatened - human right.

"There's a real awareness on both sides [of labor's divide] that it's not business as usual," says Harley Shaiken, a professor who specializes in labor issues at University of California in Berkeley. While he emphasizes that it's too soon to assess the split's impact, Professor Shaiken says that both factions are trying creative tactics. "There are some really tough challenges out there for unions, but it's also a moment of real opportunity. There is so much downward pressure on wages and working conditions ... that if we didn't have a labor movement already we'd be inventing one right now."

Some early worries about the AFL-CIO split - due in part to philosophical differences over how much to focus on organizing versus political lobbying - have lessened. Last month, the members of the dissident Change to Win coalition and the AFL-CIO solidified an agreement to let state and local affiliates work together. The SEIU and the American Federation of State, County, Federal, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) - often at odds - have created antiraiding pacts and appear to be mending at least a few of their differences.

"I think the worst is over in that the two sides have overcome some of their initial bitterness or bad feelings," says Ruth Milkman, director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California in Los Angeles. "Both sides are trying harder to prove that they were right in the debate that occurred in the last year and a half. That can only benefit labor movement as a whole."

She and others point to the SEIU's success with Houston janitors as an example of how the labor movement is adapting to modern economic realities. The union used strategies that have worked in other cities: demonstrating workers' desire to unionize with "card checks" rather than National Labor Relations Board elections; organizing a whole industry at once so individual employers don't face unfair competition; and building a broad coalition of support including local churches, politicians, and immigrant groups.

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