"Telling us our hard times are about to end..."

I work for the union 'cause she's so good to me;
And I'm bound to come out on top,
that's where I should be.
I will hear ev'ry word the boss may say,
For he's the one who hands me down my pay.
Looks like this time I'm gonna get to stay,
I'm a union man, now, all the way.

Seems like King Harvest is splitting.

"Our goal is not to divide the labor movement but to rebuild it," said Andy Stern, president of the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union. He and Teamsters President James P. Hoffa said their unions would leave the AFL-CIO, paving the way for other unions to follow.

Their action drew a bitter rebuke from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who called it a "grievous insult" that could hurt workers already buffeted by the global economy and anti-union forces in Congress.

I don't know what this will mean for electoral politics, but I tend to agree with Stern's arguments. The last several elections have surely shown that union membership is no longer a reliable indicator of voting patterns. Democrats have been losing the vote of the kind of blue collar worker represented by the AFL-CIO and the Auto Workers' Union -- moreover, there's fewer and fewer machinists in this country. Union money is, of course another matter altogether, I recognize, and that's why Dems are spooked by this.

But the future for the party is in the kind of workers represented by the Service Workers' Union and the Teamsters -- people in the growing sector of our economy, like the people who clean our offices, stock the shelves at Wal Mart, and drive the UPS truck. So putting a greater effort in organizing workers in those sectors that are staunchly anti union seems to me the right direction.

Dry summer, then comes fall,
Which I depend on most of all.
Hey, rainmaker, can't you hear my call?
Please let these crops grow tall.
Long enough I've been up on Skid Row
And it's plain to see, I've nothin to show.
I'm glad to pay those union dues,
Just don't judge me by my shoes.

Check here, for organized labor central.