Realistically, the odds of putting a pro-worker majority in the Senate are slim. But the House is another matter entirely. There, the anti-worker majority rests on a slim, five vote margin.

Just recently we've seen the House leadership scrambling to retrench their position on a patient's bill of rights after a handful of Republicans who also happen to hold medical degrees declared that their own experience showed patients and doctors were getting shafted by HMOs. We're still waiting to see how far to the center the House leadership will shift after the summer recess (experience says not far enough) but the whole incident demonstrates just how fragile that majority is.

Pro-worker candidates have a real shot of narrowing that lead even further, or regaining control of the House altogether. Holding the majority means setting the agenda -- a tremendous advantage as pro-worker representatives have watched their bills languish in committee for the past six years.

Control of the House is crucial, but who sits in the White House is even more so. Clinton is a lukewarm friend to labor (can you say NAFTA?) but he certainly has caused less harm than Bush and Reagan. There are several solid pro-worker actions -- the Family and Medical Leave Act, for one -- but his biggest plus to workers comes from his veto pen. At least he can stop those horrible attacks that escape through Congress.

Workers cannot afford to have a split Congress and lose the White House. It's an equation that simply doesn't work.

How can we avoid it? We have the power. The 1998 elections clearly demonstrated that voter education and intense get-out-the-vote efforts can make the difference in electing pro-worker candidates. Across the country, politicians who now sit in the House, would be home sitting on their lawn chairs if you took out the labor vote. Union members and their families were directly responsible for pushing many candidates into the win column.

Obviously (i.e. look at the anti-worker majorities in the House and Senate) there is still a lot of work to do. But one of the keys to turning the situation around isn't education or turn out: it's voter registration. Let's state the obvious -- you may know the right candidate to vote for, and you may even show up at the polls, but you can't cast a ballot unless you're registered to vote.

Labor made great strides last year. And they did it at half strength. On average, 40+ percent of our members are not registered to vote. Take California, for instance. Of the 1.7 million union members 774,000 aren't registered. In New York, nearly 1 million out of the state's 2.1 million union members can cast a ballot. (Note to Hillary: get to work on this if you end up running for Senate in the Empire state.)

It is easy to think you have time to register later ... and then miss the deadline. But there is no reason to wait to register to vote. It doesn't cost you anything, while waiting can be very costly indeed. In fact, most of the decisions on whether a worker friendly candidate wins office won't be made in November 2000. You may think that you can wake up and pay attention after the World Series, but you can't. Key decisions -- such as who the candidates will be -- are made long before then during the spring primary season. Oftentimes, the race is over after the primaries. Your vote then could just as -- or even more -- even more important than in November 2000.

August is a slow month. But we all know fall hits with a vengeance. Suddenly, it's back to school shopping. The holidays lurk around the corner. The weather turns bad. Next thing you know it's spring ... and you've missed the primary registration deadline. Don't become another statistic of apathy.

Make a pledge to yourself to take the time to register if you aren't ... to make sure that you're still registered even if you have voted in the past (moving can invalidate your registration).

Labor Day traditionally marks the shift from summer to fall. Enjoy the parades, the picnics and the time off ... but also pledge to make the Labor Day your political participation day. Pledge to make sure that you're registered to vote. It's the first step to transforming the Labor Day speeches into a true reality.