By Stuart Appelbaum

It is no secret that the Democratic national election victory has less to do with who the Democrats are than who they are not. But while voter outrage over the Republicans' handling of just about everything carried Democrats across the finish line, it will take more than Bush-bashing to keep them there.

What's a party to do? Here is my suggestion: Reform labor laws first. This may seem obscure, but the truth is that it is one of the most significant problems the Democrats could take on. It is also one that could yield enormous political dividends for them in years to come.

Unions, of course, have been under the gun for some time. Today, the illegal firing of workers who attempt to organize is commonplace. Under the control of Republican appointees, the National Labor Relations Board has further fanned the flames of employer resistance to organized labor.

In a series of recent decisions the labor board even gave a green light to business efforts to reclassify millions of workers as supervisors, thus robbing as many as eight million Americans of their right to collective bargaining.

While the decline in unionization has thrilled labor's conservative opponents, it has exacted a huge toll on Michigan. Historically, unions have enabled Americans, who might otherwise live in poverty, to join the middle-class.

They still can. On average, unionized workers' wages are 29 percent higher than their nonunion counterparts. What's more, only 16 percent of nonunion workers have guaranteed pensions, compared to 73 percent of union workers. No less significant, more than 90 percent of unionized workers have jobs that provide health insurance benefits, by virtue of having the right to collectively bargain.

The problem is not that Democrats in Congress are anti-union. Today, virtually all of them are co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act; a bill to ease the ability of workers to organize and more effectively punish employers who violate labor laws.

The problem is that Democrats too often consider reforming labor laws to be a niche issue: a priority for union officials alone. It doesn't have to be that way. Instead, Democrats can make the revitalization of America's unions a cornerstone of their economic agenda. It would be in their interest to do so.

A new study by labor expert Jim Grossfeld for the Center for American Progress, points out that even well educated white collar workers feel they are treading water as they face growing economic uncertainties. Many see their careers tanking. Instead of shying away from unions, he urges political progressives to show how organized labor can help them succeed in the new economy.

Now that Democrats have won the power to set the agenda in the next Congress they will need to move fast to demonstrate that they have something substantive to offer U.S. workers, blue and white collar alike. Sure, let's raise the minimum wage and make college more affordable. But Democrats can do more than
that: they can move to strengthen the right to organize and, with it, give all Americans a stronger voice on the job and more control over their own future.

Unions, they may discover, are an old idea whose time has come.

(The author is president of the 100,000-member Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, United Food and Commercial Workers. This column originally appeared in the Detroit News).