By Harry Kelber

For nearly 10 years, labor's brightest and most influential union leaders, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and the 51-member Executive Council, have grappled with the problem of revitalizing the labor movement, but they've failed to arrest the continuing decline in membership and bargaining power.

Responding to criticism, they seem to have tried everything. Not enough money spent on organizing? They increased the AFL-CIO budget for organizing to 30% and urged affiliates to do the same. Not enough organizers? They hired hundreds of organizers. Not enough diversity? They hired large contingents of young African-American and Latino organizers, many of them women.

Not enough training? They poured more money into the Organizing Institute and improved its training programs. Too many losing recruitment drives? They called on top-level strategists to help develop winning campaigns. They created the Union Cities program to enable central labor councils to play an active role in local organizing campaigns.

Over these years, they conducted countless seminars, workshops and classes on improving organizing work. They published tons of brochures, booklets and leaflets to help unions in their organizing campaigns. They adopted strong resolutions calling for more aggressive action on recruiting.

So why didn't any of the formulas work? AFL-CIO leaders blame three factors: the economy, anti-union employers and President George W. Bush. They do not blame themselves. No one doubts that the labor movement is in the throes of a deepening crisis, but there is no agreement what to do about it.

Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), says he has a large part the answer. What is needed is to merge the AFL-CIO's 61 international unions into no more than 20, with each mega-union representing a specific sector of the national economy. These enlarged unions, with additional funding and resources, would be able to conduct winning campaigns against major corporations, even Wal-Mart, Stern says.

Stern's restructuring plan, which has been given extensive coverage in the media, has very little support from most unions and rank-and-filers outside the SEIU. But even on the wild assumption that the plan would be approved by the Executive Council, what evidence is there that the forced merger of internationals would increase union membership or economic power? In fact, there is evidence to the contrary.

When the AFL and CIO merged in 1955, they had 104 international unions with a combined total of 16 million members. Today, 49 years later, AFL CIO's 61 internationals represent about 13 million members. Despite those 43 mergers, organized labor suffered a net loss of three million members. How does Stern explain that?

The Service Employees International Union plan emphasizes the importance of density (the ratio of union members in a given industry or region) in its campaign to re-energize the labor movement. Of course, density is important, but density is achieved only by massive and successful recruiting. Stern has not spelled out organizing strategies that are essentially different from those currently in use that have failed.

To counter SEIU's 10-point Unite to Win!, Larry Cohen, Communication Workers Association executive vice president, has come up with a 10-point plan of his own: American Labor - Working Together. Cohen, who does not call for radical repackaging the AFL-CIO structure, lists policies that progressive trade unionists have advocated for some time, such as a strong shop steward system, an ample national strike fund and more effective collective bargaining.

Both the SEIU and CWA plans have several features in common: they favor a more aggressive effort on health care reform, expanded political action, more funds and resources devoted to organizing, and building a global labor movement. These ideas have been around for a long time and there are hardly any AFL-CIO affiliates that would disagree with them.

What's wrong with the SEIU and CWA plans is they both provide no significant role for the AFL-CIO's 13 million members, labor's most precious and most neglected asset. Stern and Cohen are making the same fatal mistake, as did Sweeney and the heavy hitters on the Executive Council: that if they come up with the right plan, millions of union members will automatically follow them.

As Leo Gerard, president of the United Steel Workers, said of Stern and his colleagues on the New Union Partnership during an interview: "These are five guys sitting around and talking. They don't represent the labor movement."

The starting point for any labor leader who has a plan to revitalize the labor movement is to inspire enthusiastic support from a substantial cross-section of the AFL-CIO membership. Stern, Cohen and the others want to impose their plans simply by winning Executive Council approval. It hasn't worked in the past 10 years and it won't work now.

(Mr. Kelber, a frequent critic of the AFL-CIO, publishes "Labor Talk" columns at www.laboreducator.org).