Nathan:
> Although part of the argument of the Change to Win folks is the best thing
> unions can do in the longterm for Dems is organize more workers. The more
> workers in unions, the more folks will support the Dems.
-I am not sure if this is true - blue collar rank and file tends to be -socially conservative and patriotic and thus vote Republican. In other -words, unions membership does not necessarily mean votes for Democrats - -identity politics is IMHO a much bigger factor.
A stereotype that is untrue. White unionists voter remarkably differently from their white non-union counterparts: http://www.sptimes.com/2005/02/06/Columns/Democrats_should_look.shtml
"A postelection survey conducted for the AFL-CIO by Peter D. Hart Research Associates found that 65 percent of union members voted for Kerry, while only 33 percent supported Bush. But the analysis gets more intriguing as it is broken down. For example, gun owners nationally voted for Bush over Kerry by 20 percentage points. But if those gun owners were also union members, they voted for Kerry by a 12-point margin. White men were for Bush over Kerry by 18 percentage points, but white, male union members preferred Kerry by 21 points. And Americans who go to church weekly voted for Bush over Kerry by 21 percentage points. Add in the union factor and they were for Kerry by 12 points."
Basically, take any culture characteristic, add in union membership, and voting moves about 30 percentage points toward the Democrats. That's a pretty striking change. There are no doubt some other factors that correlate with union membership that influence this shift -- possibly more urban living for example -- but it's still a striking movement.
Here's a Pew research study from 2003 on the same subject: http://www.upenn.edu/researchatpenn/article.php?735&soc
I wrote a longer piece on this in 2003 as well looking at the data: http://www.nathannewman.org/archives/003165.shtml
What is most remarkable is that union and non-union households don't actually have strikingly different views on what policies they think the government should pursue. They just vote differently.
Which emphasizes how much it matters who is talking to you at election time, your union or just your rightwing church.
>That problem is growing discord between blue
>collar identity politics which is still the main part of union appeal and
>changing nature of workforce, which is becoming more and more "white" or
>"pink" collar.
>To my knowledge, the only
>mainstream white collar profession that is substantially unionized is the
>teachers (artists or airline pilots may be unionized as well, but there are
>too few of them to make any impact).
Professionals in the health care industry are also heavily unionized and public sector workers are professionals in a whole range of areas, which highlights the fact that where unions don't face scorched earth tactics, you can organize everyone from nuclear scientists to judges -- all organized in unions in the public sector.
Nathan Newman