Organizing the Unorganized: Will Promises Become Practices?

Abstract

The "New Voice" leadership which captured power in the AFL-CIO in 1995 has promised nothing less than the re-creation of a labor movement. By any measuring rod this will be a daunting task. One measure of the strength of a labor movement is union density, that is, the fraction of the employed part of the labor force which is unionized. Union density in the United States is remarkably low, both in comparison with other countries and with what it once was here. Densities between 60 percent and 80 percent exist in the Scandinavian nations, while in the other advanced capitalist states, they range between 10 percent in France to 40 percent in Great Britain and 33 percent in Germany. In Canada, with many similar economic features, density is around 30 percent. Even in New Zealand, which has experienced a profoundly anti-labor legal restructuring, 23 percent of employees are union members.

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