At every opportunity, I’m asking local as well as national unions and our state and central labor bodies to shift leadership and resources into organizing--even if it means cutting back on other functions. Why? Because if we don’t rebuild our membership base, nothing else is going to matter very much. Over the past 20 years, we shrank from representing 27 percent of the work force to 14 percent. And every working family paid a price as the American labor movement got clobbered from the ballot box to the bargaining table.

At the AFL-CIO, we’re setting an example by spending fully one-third of our budget on organizing. Equally important, we’re involving every department, every staff member in organizing activities.

But we need to do more than simply shift our emphasis as a movement. We need to aggressively defend the right of workers to join or form unions.

The right to join or form unions is supposedly protected by our national labor laws. But those laws have been reduced to graffiti by employers large and small who know they can break them and never be held accountable. Illegally interfering with, delaying and defeating union organizing campaigns is a growth industry in our country. Harassing, intimidating and terminating workers for union activity has become a national sport.

Shouldn’t we change our labor laws and put some teeth in them so workers can be protected? Absolutely. But the truth is, that’s not going to happen this year, or even in this session of Congress.

In order to lay the groundwork for eventual labor law reform, we’re now holding town hall meetings to help educate Congressional representatives about the struggles working Americans face when trying to organize. And we’re using those meetings as a springboard to build our grassroots political action network, one that will hold elected leaders accountable to America’s working families.

But we need more. We need to confront employers who violate our labor laws, and to convince our political leaders that the right to join a union is as vital to our society as the right to free speech and the right to be free from discrimination.

We need to begin treating anti-union bosses like we treat anti-union politicians. If a boss fires a worker, we should get the boss fired. If an employer takes us on, we should take the fight public.

To put this new organizing attitude to work, we’re asking tens of thousands of union activists to join a new solidarity and rapid response team dedicated to helping workers who are trying to organize or bargain a first contract. Through this effort, we will turn up the heat on employers who violate the basic right to organize.

Together with our natural allies in the community, we will expose the shameful violation of workers’ rights to join unions to improve their lives. And we will let millions of unrepresented workers know that, while it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a union to get a raise.