USA TODAY, July 15, 2005, Friday

Copyright 2005 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY

July 15, 2005, Friday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6A

HEADLINE: Unions debate place of politics

BYLINE: Jill Lawrence

DATELINE: ST. PAUL

BODY:
ST. PAUL -- Patti Fritz worked at a nursing home for 30 years, then decided it was time to get more control over her job and her patients' care. Last year, on her second try, the feisty Democrat ousted a veteran Republican who had headed the state House committee on health.
Fritz, a licensed practical nurse from Faribault, 55 miles south of here, didn't have a fancy degree or family money. But she did have an extensive education in organizing and politics, thanks to her union. And in the months before the election last fall, she benefited from a labor drive to turn out union voters in her district.
In all, 13 Democrats beat Republicans in Minnesota state House races last year -- cutting a 28-seat deficit to two seats. It was the best showing of either party in state assembly and house races nationwide, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Unions played a pivotal role. Yet union membership here is shrinking, and so is labor's political clout.
Minnesota is a microcosm of a national decline so dire that it threatens to rupture the 13 million-member AFL-CIO. Union leaders are so divided over how to recapture labor's glory days that five large unions are threatening to leave the federation. Leaders have put a premium on electing sympathetic politicians; the dissidents say salvation lies in organizing new members.
Fifty years ago, when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations ended 20 years of rivalry with a merger, one-third of the nation's workforce belonged to unions. Today, 12.5% of workers do.
The AFL-CIO, led by John Sweeney for the past 10 years, has worked to elect pro-labor public officials. It's had some success at state and local levels, but the White House lately has been out of reach.
The dissidents say politics should be secondary to building and streamlining a movement in which, for instance, health care workers belong to 30 different unions and 91% aren't unionized at all.
Larger, stronger, single-industry unions are needed, the dissidents say, to bargain effectively with employers. They say organizing is also needed to ensure labor's survival as a political force.
"We're verging on irrelevancy," says Andrew Stern, president of the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU). "We have to grow again."
Sweeney, running unopposed for re-election at the AFL-CIO's convention July 25, says division will embolden labor's enemies. "A split at this time would be really devastating," Sweeney says. He has proposed steps such as more money for organizing.
The dissidents, representing more than one-third of AFL-CIO members, would spend still more, plan and push for mergers and require unions to recruit strategically in their core industries. So far, they are unmoved by Sweeney's offers.
Two views
The national argument is reflected here in the views of two men who worked closely last year to elect Democrats to the state House. For Ray Waldron, head of the 400,000-member state AFL-CIO, politics is supreme.
"The prize is winning elections," he says, sitting in his cluttered office three blocks from the glistening marble state Capitol. Organizing, he says, "will fall into place" when "friendly people" are elected.
Jon Youngdahl, executive director of SEIU in Minnesota, ran AFL-CIO political activities here in 2004. Politicians can make a difference, he says, noting that Democratic governors in Michigan and Illinois signed executive orders that make it easier to organize workers.
Still, Youngdahl says, you can only get so far with a shrinking base. "We played as high as we ever have" in 2004, he says. "Yet if we continue to have declining membership, our influence declines."
Minnesota was a success story last year for labor. Despite higher overall voter turnout and falling union membership, voters from unions and union households accounted for 30% of the vote in 2004 -- the same as in 2000. Among the reasons:
*An aggressive drive that increased voter registration from 73% to 85% among active members.
*More outreach to people living with union members who are not members themselves.
*An education and turnout program to maximize labor's impact.
The cornerstone of labor's success, here and nationwide, is member-to-member contact. Union members don't just leave leaflets on a table at work a couple of weeks before an election -- they hand material to co-workers several times a year and discuss it with them. They knock on members' doors three times before an election. They call them on the phone.
The message is about which candidate would help more with jobs, education and health care. "We don't want our members to get involved in abortion or gun control," Waldron says.
The result is that some people concerned about "values" issues such as guns, abortion or gay marriage vote instead on economics. That makes unions a valuable Democratic antidote to the What's the Matter with Kansas? syndrome. In his bestselling book, liberal author Thomas Frank says working-class Kansans vote against their economic interests because they've been seduced by Republican positioning on values.
Union effect
Nearly two-thirds of union voters in Minnesota chose Kerry last year, well above his 51% statewide total. Democrats defeated Republicans for state House seats in eight districts carried by President Bush.
Michael Brodkorb, a spokesman for the Minnesota Republican Party, says unions helped Democrats win some state House races. He credits the number of labor volunteers and the intense communication among members. "They are a tight-knit group," he says. "It's difficult for Republicans sometimes to infiltrate" and make their case.
Fritz, an SEIU member, won by 347 votes in a district with 4,351 union and union-household voters. She credits her political skills to SEIU training and at least part of her victory to labor voters. "It's more unionized than people thought," she said of her district.
Sandra Peterson, president of the Minnesota Federation of Teachers for 10 years, won by 782 votes in a district with 4,716 union and union-household voters. Unions promoted her candidacy. Once, she arrived at a voter's house, and a union member was already there talking her up, his pickup in the driveway.
Peterson spent years planning the MFT's merger in 1998 with the Minnesota Education Association, so teachers could focus on education, not "fighting each other." She says she hopes the AFL-CIO "can work this out and stay together."
In an era of electoral squeakers at every level from president to school board, labor is crucial to the Democratic coalition. If a split weakens labor further, says Steve Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College, "it could have a big impact on Democratic vote totals."
Democrats are worried but cautious about commenting on AFL-CIO internal conflicts. "I'd obviously rather have a unified labor movement than non-unified," says Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg.
Some labor historians say unions would be better served if Sweeney stepped aside in favor of an aggressive organizer. It is "wrongheaded" to rely on politics to reverse labor's decline, says Clete Daniel of Cornell University in New York.
Few say a split will benefit labor. The dissidents are making a "tactical misstep" by turning minor disagreements into a crisis, says Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He and James Green at the University of Massachusetts say divisions could lead to wasted resources, fights over the same workers and a bad image for unions. "These things can turn ugly quickly," Green says.
Waldron says he'll work with SEIU and other unions even if they secede. If that's frowned on, he says, laughing, "we'll have to do it underground."