ABSTRACT
If they were an animal or plant, private-sector unions would fall on the en dangered species list of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Private-sector union density is in single digits-comparable to the level at the turn of the twentieth century. Despite the “organize, organize, organize” mantra of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFLCIO) leadership, density fell throughout the 1990s, even in states whose rates of unionization would seem to have reached rock bottom. In 1990, for ex ample, Mississippi had an 8 percent unionization rate for all workers, public as well as private. In 2001, it had a 5.5 percent unionization rate.1 The AFLCIO commitment to organizing may have helped staunch the rate of union decline in the 1990s,2 but it did little to bring unionism to the millions of workers who want union representation but who are either a minority at their workplace or who cannot win a collective bargaining contract in the face of massive employer opposition.
