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The union label

Democrats should look for the union label

One of Bush's priorities has been to strip federal employees of workplace and organizing rights. Employees in U.S. attorneys' offices, federal airport screeners and employees at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency have had their rights to unionize unilaterally terminated in the name of national security. And at the Department of Homeland Security, newly completed rules will sharply curtail the rights of the 180,000 employees to bargain collectively.

In the meantime, the manufacturing sector, labor's lifeblood, has been decimated over the last 4 1/2 years with the loss of 3-million factory jobs.

A corollary to the decline in labor's fortunes has been the rise in obscene corporate executive compensation. In 2003, the pay gap between CEOs of large companies and average workers topped 300-to-1. In 1982, it was just 42-to-1.

Unions used to be the countervailing force, demanding that management share the wealth of a company with its workers. Today, with the threat of unionization remote and with employers such as Wal-Mart union-busting without apparent consequence, employers are free to compensate workers poorly while spreading the company's profits among its executives and Wall Street.

Even workers in corporate jobs are watching helplessly as their once-generous health insurance and defined-benefit pension plans are slashed or eliminated without their input. In 1980, 35 percent of American workers were enrolled in a pension. That number stands at 20 percent today.

It is time for the labor movement to reassert itself in a big way and with Democratic help. That includes promoting the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give employees trying to organize significant new legal protections from retaliation. It would also allow for the certification of a union based on the collection of employee authorization cards without the need for an election that may be delayed by an employer for months or years.

Workers who are unionized are far better educated on issues affecting their lives and how politics affects those issues. That's why they vote Democratic in great majorities. Kerry lost, primarily, because union membership keeps declining. This should be the organizing principle for Democrats going forward.