Faced with that dwindling base, unions have demanded more support from politicians for organizing, such as the Employee Free Choice Act, which provides less burdensome union recognition procedures. And Change to Win wants to refocus its political strategy even more toward union growth, UNITE HERE chief of staff Chris Chafe says. But the labor movement is also expanding the universe of voters--union and nonunion--it can mobilize. Over the past three years, the AFL-CIO has recruited more than 1.5 million members in about fifteen states to its new "community affiliate," Working America. Its members are mainly middle-income workers who sympathize with labor's broad goals but do not belong to unions. In Ohio one in ten households will be part of Working America by this election.

They were recruited by organizers like Kirby Torrance, a curly-haired recent Sarah Lawrence graduate who was knocking on doors this fall in Coon Rapids, a remote Minneapolis suburb of split-level houses and driveways filled with pickups and SUVs. At each house Torrance delivered a short, vigorous argument about how Working America was fighting for affordable healthcare (or good jobs), asking any adult in the house to sign up and "send a strong message to our representatives." Two-thirds typically do, and even if their initial commitment is superficial, they receive information about elections, issues and legislation. Lake Research studies for the AFL-CIO suggest that Working America boosts turnout and support for labor candidates dramatically, for example, lifting participation by drop-off voters by twenty percentage points above the general public's.

Larry Meyer, a 56-year-old independent salesman, is the kind of nonunion worker Working America seeks. With health insurance costs increasing and coverage shrinking, Meyer, who faces three major surgeries this year, is concerned about both health insurance and the health of the country. "I'm not a very political person, but I think our country has gone so far off the deep end, we need to get it back on track," he says. "We're not a democracy. We're heading the other way."

Unions have also forged alliances with other groups to generate voter enthusiasm for their issues and candidates. Working Families Win, a partly labor-funded project of Americans for Democratic Action, organizes nonunion activists from small cities in eight states to reach voters about trade and related economic matters. ACORN, working with unions, has put minimum-wage referendums on four state ballots, potentially boosting low-income-worker turnout. And the union-backed Working Families Party, which gives voters a chance to support Democrats while sending a distinct worker-oriented message, is organizing in two key, hotly contested Congressional districts--an upstate New York seat vacated by Republican Sherwood Boehlert and a competitive Connecticut seat held by Republican Nancy Johnson.

Beyond expanding its turnout operations, labor is strengthened by what it didn't do: splinter. The AFL-CIO and Change to Win negotiated agreements permitting local CTW unions to receive "solidarity charters" so that they could continue to participate in the AFL's central labor councils or state labor federations. And this summer the two federations formed a National Labor Coordinating Committee for politics. "We're uniting across the labor movement with both federations to assure maximum turnout," says Chafe. "There's a lot more common ground than differences with the AFL-CIO when it comes to political action," including near complete overlap in lists of top targets.

In many areas, the split has had little effect: In Austin, Ryan and Wesley are AFL-CIO members, but their labor-to-labor walk was organized at the local of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), a CTW union. CTW unions can decide state by state how they want to participate in the AFL-CIO program--neighborhood walks, polling, research, mailings. The Carpenters and Teamsters seem to share membership lists the least with the AFL-CIO, and the Service Employees (SEIU) maintain considerable independence, but in some states CTW unions participate fully in AFL-CIO operations. Even before the split, however, many local or national unions had gone their own way.

"The impact of the split has been minimal so far," says AFSCME political director Larry Scanlon. "Unions on both sides realize there's a bigger picture out there." And Communications Workers District 4 vice president Seth Rosen notes, "If you're a local-level activist [in Ohio], it would appear there's more cooperation than there was two years ago."

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