Organize, don't politicize

LAST MONTH, the Chicago City Council voted to require all big-box stores -- those with at least 90,000 square feet of retail space -- to pay their employees a "living wage": $9.25 in 2007, $10 in 2010, and inflation-indexing thereafter. Although the move will affect large retailers such as Sears and Home Depot, the primary target of the ordinance is nonunion Wal-Mart, the largest private-sector employer in the country.

Not surprisingly, AFL-CIO leaders heralded the vote as a triumph for workers who barely scrape by on Wal-Mart wages while scrambling for meager benefits. For the labor movement, Wal-Mart is the prime symbol of both "low-road" capitalism and the decline of American manufacturing.

But this may be only a partial victory for progressive forces in Chicago. The American labor movement is using political power to make up for its own failure to organize new unions. It's unclear whether this trend is a sign of weakness or strength.

Throughout American labor history, a debate has raged about what the appropriate approach to government should be. Samuel Gompers, the 19th century founder of the American Federation of Labor, advocated steering clear of bureaucratic entanglements and focusing instead on "pure and simple" unionism -- wages, benefits and working conditions. Workers, he argued, would be more loyal to unionism if they won their own gains, rather than having them granted by the state.

During the crucible of the 1930s, the dynamic shifted toward political involvement. Labor's dramatic organizing gains during the Depression came partially as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's more positive attitude toward unionization. Industrial workers flocked to new unions in the auto, steel and rubber industries, and Roosevelt gained a powerful new constituency. He signed the National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing workers the right to organize and outlawing many employer practices designed to thwart unions.

By the mid-1950s, one-third of the nonfarm labor force (public and private) belonged to unions. Since then, organized labor has experienced a steady decline. Unions lost their early elan and vigor, contract negotiations became routine and corporate America went on the economic and political offensive. President Reagan's busting of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization 25 years ago this month symbolized labor's fate. Today, only 9% of the private-sector workforce is unionized.