Perhaps the idea of "traditional organizing" that many have is a false one that has never worked in history.
1. Unions in the North grew the fastest not through "traditional organizing" under normal circumstances but through wartime labor shortages and labor unions' wartime cooperation with states during WW1 and elections of pro-labor governments from the Great Depression to WW2:
War gave labor extraordinary opportunities. Combatant
governments rewarded pro-war labor leaders with positions
in the expanded state bureaucracy and support for collective
bargaining and unions. Union growth also reflected economic
conditions when wartime labor shortages strengthened the
bargaining position of workers and unions. Unions grew rapidly
during and immediately after the war. British unions, for example,
doubled their membership between 1914 and 1920, to enroll
eight million workers, almost half the nonagricultural labor force
(Bain and Price, 1980; Visser, 1989). Union membership tripled
in Germany and Sweden, doubled in Canada, Denmark,
the Netherlands, and Norway, and almost doubled in the United
States (see Table 5 and Table 1). For twelve countries,
membership grew by 121 percent between 1913 and 1920,
including 119 percent growth in seven combatant countries and
160 percent growth in five neutral states.
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Economic depression lowers union membership when
unemployed workers drop their membership and employers
use their stronger bargaining position to defeat union drives
(Bain and Elsheikh, 1976). Indeed, union membership fell
with the onset of the Great Depression but, contradicting the
usual pattern, membership rebounded sharply after 1932
despite high unemployment, rising by over 76 percent in ten
countries by 1938 (see Table 6 and Table 1). The fastest
growth came in countries with openly pro-union governments.
In France, where the Socialist Léon Blum led a Popular Front
government, and the United States, during Franklin Roosevelt's
New Deal, membership rose by 160 percent 1933-38. But
membership grew by 33 percent in eight other countries even
without openly pro-labor governments.
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Union membership exploded during and after the war,
nearly doubling between 1938 and 1946. By 1947, unions
had enrolled a majority of nonagricultural workers in
Scandinavia, Australia, and Italy, and over 40 percent in
most other European countries (see Table 1). Accumulated
depression and wartime grievances sparked a post- war strike
wave that included over 6 million strikers in France in 1948,
4 million in Italy in 1949 and 1950, and 5 million in the United
States in 1946. In Europe, popular unrest led to a dramatic
political shift to the left.
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It was after World War II that American Exceptionalism
became most valid, when the United States emerged
as the advanced, capitalist democracy with the weakest
labor movement. The United States was the only advanced
capitalist democracy where unions went into prolonged
decline right after World War II. At 35 percent, the unionization
rate in 1945 was the highest in American history, but even
then it was lower than in most other advanced capitalist
economies. It has been falling since. The post-war strike
wave, including three million strikers in 1945 and five million
in 1946, was the largest in American history but it did little to
enhance labor's political position or bargaining leverage.
Instead, it provoked a powerful reaction among employers
and others suspicious of growing union power. A concerted
drive by the CIO to organize the South, "Operation Dixie,"
failed dismally in 1946. Unable to overcome private
repression, racial divisions, and the pro-employer stance
of southern local and state governments, the CIO's defeat
left the South as a nonunion, low-wage domestic enclave
and a bastion of anti- union politics (Griffith, 1988). Then,
in 1946, a conservative Republican majority was elected
to Congress, dashing hopes for a renewed, post-war New Deal.
(Gerald Friedman, "Labor Unions in the United States," <http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/friedman.unions.us>)
2. Many kinds of work and workers in the private and public sectors, especially those growing the fastest now, are not "traditional" and can never be unionized to a great extent through "traditional organizing." One of them is care-giving work in an increasingly aging society. In this sector, it takes political redefinition of "work" and "workers" to organize those who receive money directly or indirectly from the state to provide care-giving labor, some to relatives, others to non-relatives, and that's what SEIU has done. SEIU's strategy doesn't work for the private sector, but then again no other existing union's works either. Organized labor in the USA will probably remain only in the public and quasi-public sectors, unless something changes circumstances as dramatically as WW1, the Great Depression, or WW2 changed them. -- Yoshie