01:00 AM EDT on Monday, September 5, 2005

NINETY YEARS AGO, an obscure poem gained a massive audience when workers sang the verses of "Solidarity Forever." The song became the anthem and an idealistic vision of the labor movement. The musical arrangement stressed the harmony of the words, as well as the lofty goals of organized working people.

Even most union people have trouble remembering the various stanzas, but the chorus of "Solidarity Forever," which follows each of the five four-line verses, remains fresh.

The opening stanza still captures the essence of the labor movement:

When the union's inspiration

through the workers' blood

shall run,

There can be no power greater

anywhere beneath the sun.

Yet, what force on earth is

weaker than the feeble

strength of one?

But the union makes us

strong.

On those rare occasions when union solidarity actually prevailed, the forces of reaction seldom trumped the unity of ordinary people.

In Rhode Island, as early as the 1830s, the Association of Mechanics in Providence and Newport agitated for the right to vote for all native and naturalized citizens, regardless of wealth. In the country's first national strike on the railroads, in 1877, black and white workers actually joined forces in a few locations. In the Gilded Age, the Knights of Labor operated a day-care center for working mothers in Providence's Olneyville.

In another train imbroglio, during the Gay Nineties, Eugene Debs organized both skilled and unskilled workers into the American Railway Union to battle the captains of industry. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), formed in 1905, broke through societal barriers to include Asians, African-Americans, women, and recent Italian immigrants, in a militant assault against prejudice in the workplace.

During the Great Depression, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) kicked off a parade for social justice that lasted into the 1950s. And in our own time, Cesar Chavez mixed religion and unionism when he organized farm workers.

Meanwhile, until the 1950s, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) -- citadel of the skilled since its inception, in the 1880s -- bitterly opposed attempts to organize the disenfranchised, immigrants from outside northern and western Europe, people of color, and women.

The argument over the nature of the labor movement became so heated that the opposing forces literally fought it out at the 1935 AFL convention, in Atlantic City. On the stage, John L. Lewis, standard-bearer for the United Mine Workers and champion of the unskilled, bloodied Big Bill Hutchinson, of the Carpenters Union. The competing labor interests soon parted ways, but they also proceeded to organize an unprecedented third of all working people in the United States, in a drive that stretched from the 1930s to the 1970s.

And in 1955 the AFL and CIO merged.

Yet in recent years, the percentage of union members has declined precipitously -- to about 14 percent overall, and to single digits in the private sector. The labor movement still represents a formidable army of 15 million union troops, but they are sadly out-of-shape.

The situation has little to do with disenchantment with organized labor. Rather, Big Business has sought asylum in Third World countries to evade union conditions, environmental safeguards, and corporate-tax obligations in America.

And so, under the strain of lost membership and the incessantly changing nature of work, the combined forces of the AFL-CIO have recently fissured -- exactly 50 years after their merger. By abandoning the federation in a perilous time, several unions representing a significant part of AFL-CIO membership -- the Teamsters, the Service Employees, and Food and Commercial Workers -- have brought a discordant note to "Solidarity Forever."

Critics, inside and outside the house of labor, predict a catastrophe as the political muscle of unions is seriously weakened -- especially if the sum really is greater than its parts. Dues from the dissident unions will no longer sustain the national federation or the affiliated state and local bodies, such as the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and the Providence Central Labor Council.

Furthermore, organizing drives may pit several unions from different sides of the break against one another -- reminiscent of the searing battles between the AFL and the CIO before they merged.

On the other hand, workers at any level may appreciate the increased attention and choice that several competing unions can offer them.

It should be noted that historically, the labor movement seldom enjoyed total solidarity. The railroad brotherhoods stayed independent of the AFL for a century. The Industrial Workers of the World served as a left-wing alternative to the conservative policies of the AFL under Sam Gompers. The CIO did the same thing for a generation. Other important unions, including the Teamsters, the Auto Workers, and the Mine Workers, came and went from under the union umbrella, and a few, such as the 2 million-member National Education Association, have always been independent.

The current break in the ranks, like a division in any organization, involves serious concerns about labor's direction, issues of personality, and which end of the labor movement gets to spend the dues money. Idealism, power, and even a little corporate greed fuel this secession, as they have always done.

What will happen?

Ironically, in the past the labor movement usually grew when there were alternatives to one brand of unionism. So now, despite some fracturing of solidarity, unskilled laborers, craft workers, and even professionals may all become energized if they are courted by various factions.

It's perhaps a sad comment that the crack in union unity has garnered more public attention than labor has seen in some time. (I, for one, had more interviews and phone calls from the media that week in July when the unions split than in the preceding five years!)

Some unions are now employing sharpened tactics, such as the recent Service Employees Union action on behalf of janitors in Providence. Meanwhile, though, the Carpenters Union, which broke ranks with the AFL-CIO three years ago, has little to show for its financial independence except a more bureaucratic structure -- hallmark of the breakaway slate.

Over time, organizations of any kind shed old structures and cultures to face new realities. On the long historical trail of the labor movement, there are a dozen major coalitions that perished, for one reason or another. The contemporary spat may be only temporary -- may, indeed, be the harbinger of a new labor offensive -- or it may be the playing of "Taps" over the strains of "Solidarity Forever."

Still, the last two lines of labor's melody, although aimed at the robber barons, could be interpreted prophetically for the labor movement itself:

We can bring to birth a new

world from the ashes of the

old,

For the union makes us

strong.

Scott Molloy is a professor of labor and human relations in the University of Rhode Island's Schmidt Labor Research Center.