Two Roads Forward for Labor: The AFL–CIO’s New Agenda

An early defeat and a year-old victory have put energy and urgency into the effort by American trade unionists to launch what AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka has declared a “new strategic initiative.” The 2010 defeat in Barack Obama’s first term of the Employee Free Choice Act, the “card check” membership sign-up law, derailed labor hopes for a new era of organization and membership growth, especially among the tens of millions of low-wage workers who are employed in the retail, hotel, health care, and warehouse industries. But then came the re-election of Obama. Despite high unemployment, a weak economy, and a noticeable lack of enthusiasm on the part of some of his partisans, including many in the trade union movement, the president pulled off a victory that, by way of contrast, seemed far more like a vindication of social policy liberalism than had been put forward in Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign.