> Not to take anything away from the SEIU's organizing efforts, but it's
> situated in some of the sectors which have undergone the greatest growth in
> the past decades: hospitals, nursing homes, janitorial and security
> services, etc. where the demand for lower-skilled labour has been high and
> pay and conditions have been low.
I think you may be confusing the cart and the horse. SEIU does not simply happen to be applying its organizing model in five of the eight fastest-growing industries, and more of the other top 50 than I would care to count (http://www.acinet.org/acinet/indview1.asp), by fortunate coincidence. Rather, concentrating its efforts within growth industries is a key component of the organizing model - in fact, probably its most essential aspect.
What prevents the UAW from organizing 93,100 new automotive repairs and maintenance workers? Or 51,100 new motor vehicle dealership workers? (Not to mention 229,000 and 169,300 current ones, respectively.) Why can't CWA and OPEIU team up to organize hundreds of thousands of finance-sector workers? When will the old plant unions notice that pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing isn't going anywhere?