In the spring of 1995, when Lane Kirkland’s old order was toppling and John Sweeney’s young(er) Turks were poised to revitalize the American labor movement, one of the movement’s leading operatives gave me his take on what was behind the revolt. “We didn’t join the labor movement when it represented 20 percent of the work force,” he said—and by “we,” he meant a generation of more militant organizers, children of the sixties, who were then in their forties—“only to see it drift down to 5 percent on our watch.”

The Sweeney regime turned the AFL-CIO into a more effective electoral machine than it had ever been and it repositioned the labor movement to be part—in some ways, the center—of a grand liberal coalition alongside feminists, environmentalists, and the whole lefty crew. What it didn’t do was arrest the relative decline in union membership. A decade later, a second revolt broke out, led by Sweeney’s own union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The Change...

» Want to continue? Login below:

top  |  print  |  email