I think the organized labor in this country has done a terrible job at combating this sort of "common-sense" style ignorance.  As a simple example, try naming 4 major federated unions.  Now 4 cell-phone companies. Or 4 car manufactures.  Or 4 major clothing retailers.  Or 4 oil companies.  Or even better, 4 companies that you have no idea what they do, but that do spend enough money to make sure you know they exist.   All of those are easy to do compared to the unions, right?

Where are the ad campaigns saying "AFL-CIO, making the American Way of Life better for 100 years"?  Where are the campaigns telling people why they shouldn't shop at Walmart?  Where are the ads encouraging us to shop at places that aren't exploitive towards their workers and explaining how the quality is better (and it ALWAYS is) as a result of that?

Lastly, where does labor stand on the environment?  Do they push their companies to improve standards independent of current laws? I think there needs to be a modernizing of their own ideology on that front as well.

Public perception of unions is bad. As has been pointed out in another comment, why aren't unions more focused on marketing themselves to the American public?

It really comes down to leadership, and I for the life of me cannot understand why it is sooo bad. Except for Andy Stern, there is not one union leader who seems to have new ideas or even a strong plan on how to reduce the union slide.

Perhaps it is simply the insider, labor-establishment system that keeps power in the hands of an ineffective few.

I really don't know, but it seems labor is content to watch itself die.

I read this fantastic article, "The New Boss," by Matt Bai in the New York Times Magazine. I have been trying to find a way to work for Stern ever since.

The article is here:
http://lists.iww.org/pipermail/iww-news/2005-January/007840.html

The few SEIU people who I've talked to say that it's unlikely that the progressive block will be able to take over AFL-CIO leadership.  They believe that the SEIU may indeed leave the AFL-CIO.  In the not-very-long-run, I believe that this will have a positive effect on the labor movement and for progressive politics.

They screw over my parents when it comes to grievances and are too fucking jealous of their own power to combine forces to become stronger.

That's why while I support unionization of places like wall mart, sometimes they have proved to be more trouble than they are worth.

Or has the Democratic leadership been responsible (and the Dem voters a bunch of enablers) -- thanks to a feeling that we really owned Washington and that Reagan and others would fade away?  that we really didn't need to do anything?  that we didn't need to rethink the party's relationship with American working and the middle classes? that the DLC had it all figured out and we didn't need to worry?

We all need to support Union companies, that will allow them to hire more workers.

Unions have been stretched and given alot the
the last two election cycles and they had too
because of the FDR killers.

For them to make a comeback they still need to
stay together and pull together under progressive
leadership. Emphasis contracts and benefits and
spend more than 10 percent on organizing.

Now they do need help in changing the labor laws
Union elections are no where near a fair playing
field. Karl Rove types earn their stripes breaking unions and then go on to national politics, corporations spend millions on outside
consultants who do nefarious things and put out
propaganda.

I think if Al Gore would have won the labor
laws could have been tweaked and John Kerry as
well but these close elections came up short
and now the Bush administration is going to
harass labor under labor secretary Chow.

The CWA Communication Workers of America in my
view is the best and most progressive union out
there other unions could learn from them.

If you study union elections and its almost
impossible climb to win, you would agree with me
50 percent plus 1 is not exactly what it is
portrayed.

Today's young people, largeley any economic pain, precisely because of the sacrifices of their parents and grandparents in the union movement, have been imbibing a generation or more of a celebrity-worshipping, wealth idoltray which started with Reagan's presidency, continued with the phony Clinton's using the presidency as a wealth-making machine, and now has moved into George W. Bush's leadership of the wealthy's class-warfare on the lower and middle classes.  The mass media, with its Donald Trump obsession, its greed-driven "Survivor" and "Fear Factor" and other related shows, has had a horrible effect on American values, particularly the young.

Exit polls show that the 30-49 year old age cohort is the most Republican.  

Union leadership itself is to blame for their focus on protecting their own small turf instead of working together for the broad good of the whole labor movement.

Our parents and grandparents had VALUES.  They believed in caring for their fellow man.  They believed in sticking up for the little guy and sticking together in shared sacrifice, be it in WWII or the great "Battle of the Rouge" when they were attacked by union-busting goods of Henry Ford's security forces.  Those values were defended by a great man, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who came from the upper-class but fought for those less fortunate.

Until today's young people are presented with a significant degree of economic pain, don't look for a change in the values set needed for the advancement of the labor movement.  In the 1930's and 1940's we had the Catholic Church focusing on the rights of workers and economic injustice, at least in the USA, because of the largely Catholic urban immigrant population that was largley blue-collar and marginal on the economic divide.

That has made a huge difference, for now we have a discredited Catholic Church focusing on lawsuits from the priest abuse scandal and abortion and homosexuality.

The sexual revolution of the 1960's, whether or not you believe it is a good thing or not, confronted the Church to challenge traditional teachings.  Whereas in the past the union movement was made up of a huge percentage of Catholics and other church goers, today the Church has entered in many areas a strategic alliance with reactinary Republican forces because of Democrats embrace of abortion and homosexuality.

This is why for the Democrats to rebound, and be able to help labor rebound, I believe the Democrats must end their embrace of Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America and abortion in general.  As a gay man, this hurts me, but a smart political move would be to either distance themselves from the gay movement altogether, or, a more compassionate but also better political stance would be to emphasize non-discrimination in employment and benefits and housing, civil rights, for gay people, but out of a social justice issue, not a sexual freedom framework.  For believe it or not, a significant majority of the American people, including most Democrats, instinctively still believe in traditional values and marriage.

If we stop confronting the Church, in both its Catholic and powerfullly ascendate Pentecostal and Evangelican connotations, on these sexual issues, we could gain powerful allies in the fight for economic and social justice.  

Although the leadership of the Religious Right is as unChristian and hypocritical as you can get, millions of their deluded followers are good and decent people who will become our allies again once the Democratic Party returns to what it once was, the party of the poor and the working people, and the party of family values.  In a sense it is going back to before the 60's liberals since power in 1972 and threw out Mayor Daley's delegates in preference to McGovern's.

But in going back in time, we will return to the time when the Democratic Party was the majority party-the party of the Catholics, the white Southerners, the working families, and the party to whom Catholic priests steered the immigrant faithful to.  A time when if  you were an evangelical white Baptist Southerner, you were a Democrat.  

However, without unions, no one is standing up for workers.

The GOP went over the heads of the
union leadership and cut deals with
a kabala of CEOs and business tycoons
- they are not beholden to the organizing
forces, contribution power and
general pull of the unions.

The SEIU / AFSCME/ IUPAC Dean endorsements
last year did end up backing a losing
horse.

And the fight against the Wal-Martization of
America is over as well.

So the Unions are bleeding. No surprise.
I don't think its indicative of anything
happening in a party whose focus is
truly set upon reformation of government,
esp. when the monetary and demographic
pull needed to get the job done
can now come straight from the net.