<HTML>Doug writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">If you can't reverse the slide in union density in a labor market this tight, when can you?</BLOCKQUOTE> I am at home slowly recovering from a nasty stomach virus, so I am without access to the post-Sweeney figures, although it is my recollection that there has been a small turn around in density. But if you look at this historically, you will not that the labor market is not that vital in the growth of the American labor movement, and that it has never had a period of steady, consistent growth, but rather rapid expansion in a period of great social movement [mid 1880s <Knights of Labor/AFL>, turn of the century <emergence of Debsian socialism/IWW>, post W.W.I, mid to late 1930s <emergence of CIO>, W.W.II, followed by a leveling off and then a decline. This leads, of course, to all kinds of facile notions that all we need is "social movement unionism," as if you could somehow call these movements into existence by sheer acts of political will and ideologically correct orientations. If only it were that simple. But the fundamental point remains: absent such a movement, don't expect great advances.    Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>