I don't know what the situation in the situation in the US is, but in SA I - though a union member - am hard pressed when asked which union to join. Though the union here at UWC is pretty good, the general experience that I and lots of people I know have with many SA unions is that they are a nightmare to actually get any service out of. I know a number of cases where people were paid up union members for years without the union doing anything to assist them - even when assistance was sorely needed.
Add to that the fact that jobs are being lost all over the place, and you get a union movement which certainly doesn't look healthy - even leaving aside the bizarreness which results from COSATU/ANC/SACP link-up.
All in all, the situation cries out for an approach to the problem of 'class composition' which looks beyond union membership and 'building the unions'. In this regard Chuck0's 'build counter-institutions and resist' seems like a good idea, particularly given the historic experience of SA working class struggle (I'm thinking about the experience of the 1980s in particular - or rather, what I know of that experience).
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B