Change To Win Coalition Union

The Inland Empire has become a new battleground for unions looking to organize warehouse workers and broaden labor's clout in international trade, a $300-billion industry in the Southland. The fledgling movement is backed by a coalition of unions with more than 6 million members known as Change to Win.

The threatened split in organized labor that erupted last week is all about politics. I'm not talking about the internal squabbling of union leaders. I mean real politics -- elections and legislation. That's what's really driving the five unions that formed a potential breakaway group, called Change to Win, within the AFL-CIO. They fear -- quite rightly -- that they're losing political clout as their membership numbers decline. They're in a fight-for-survival mood.

A group of dissident union leaders last week vowed to reinvigorate the slumping U.S. labor movement by launching a series of big, strategic organizing campaigns. Elements of what they have in mind have already been road-tested in California, a hot spot for union activism for more than a decade. And they seem to be working.