On the Revitalization of the U.S. Labor Movement:

Can 21st Century CyberUnions be Created in Time?
or Will CyberUnions Compute?

Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D.

If the Guinness Book of records were to salute the fastest reversal of fortune in recent years by a major American organization, the AFL-CIO would be a clear contender for the title. Agent of its own breathless recovery, one that still astonishes its would-be pall bearers, the AFL-CIO has only "just begun to fight." It might yet even earn the renewal of its most strategic international union affiliates, this as formidable a challenge to it as anything posed by its harshest corporate and political critics.

As recently as two years ago, an AFL-CIO led by Lane Kirkland, and the labor movement as a whole, was widely dismissed as a hapless has-been, a dinosaur, a brain-damaged relic from the Age of Smokestack Industries, a Second Wave anachronism. It was fashionable to suspect labor was a lost cause, and many "Sunshine Soldiers and Summer Patriots" had no problem abandoning it.

Now, intemperate opponents accuse the Federation (AFL-CIO) of posing a clear and present danger to the Republic. Leading Republicans (Senators Robert Dole, Newt Gingrich, etc.) insist organized labor is once again a formidable foe of all that is right and proper. Anti-labor editorialists and their editorial cartoon cronies heap abuse on the heads of "Union Bosses," and conservative syndicated columnists (George F. Will, William Raspberry, etc.) renew their once-lapsed attack against "Big Labor," union goons, compulsory unionism, and other such matters.

Further evidence of labor's new significance comes from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Recent public opinion polls generally report increasingly favorable attitudes toward labor unions. Similarly, previously indifferent academics have been creating Labor-Academic Teach-Ins across the country (ten on October 3, 1996, alone), and over 1,500 collegians served labor's Cause in 1996's "Union Summer" AFL-CIO project. Best of all for labor, the media has been giving all of this considerable attention, some of it even positive. The resulting buzz underlines an influential notion abroad in the land - labor is back!

Three questions cut to the heart of the matter: First, how really different is the new AFL-CIO? Has the competition between the Kirkland and the Sweeney models of a labor federation really made a difference? Second, are the Sweeney-initiated changes enough? Can they possible secure labor's survival? And finally, what else might the AFL- CIO and its affiliates do to heighten their prospects? Is there an agenda of change related to the arrival of the Information Age that warrants greater-than-ever attention from, and adaptation by Organized Labor?

To briefly anticipate my answers, I believe differences between the old and new models of the AFL-CIO are quite substantial. However, they may not be enough to counter all that is arrayed against labor. Rapid employ is necessary of what I call the CyberUnion model, one already under development in the new AFL-CIO and a small number of especially progressive unions.

Is There A New AFL-CIO? Examples abound of major changes from the ailing AFL-CIO model overseen for nearly two decades by Lane Kirk-land, a prot=E9g=E9 of George Meany. Like his mentor, Kirkland was a pragmatic, narrow, hard-boiled, unsentimental curmudgeon and Cold Warrior. His was a prosaic and hide-bound view of unionism, one rooted an in old-fashioned "control and command" model that intimidated opponents, suppressed dissent, and assured only under-supported changes that invariably helped preserve the status quo.

Since October, 1995, Kirkland's successor, former SEIU president John Sweeney, has championed a far more adventurous and far less elitist model. Still in its formative stage, it has its start-up share of gaps and inconsistencies . This notwithstanding, the Sweeney "New Voices" coali-tion already sets the AFL-CIO far apart from its predecessor, as it has implemented differences (not the least of which was quickly "accepting" the early retirement, etc., of over 60 staffers) that appear to make a strategic difference. .

Consider the following ten examples of change in the federation's practices and ethos, each of which has made a significant contribution to its reinvention, and thereby, to the renewal of the entire labor movement:

1.) No longer do top leaders bask in the sun at every winters' annual Meeting in Bal Harbor, Fla., as they have for the past 70 years. And no longer is this regarded as a perk only for the exercise of Byzantine Palace politics and Machieavellian career maneuvers.

Instead, the annual Winter Meeting was ceremoniously moved this year to Los Angeles, the better to enable attendees to show up and lend support at high-profile picket lines. It will continue to move around the country, even pitching its tent in gritty once-industrial cities like Detroit and Pittsburgh.

The Sweeney team believes this "down-and-dirty" location strategy should help boost local morale, as the top brass will deliberately get out and mingle with area activists who might otherwise not have such an opportunity. It should strengthen the impression that AFL-CIO leaders now mean to stay close both to members and to urban and industrial conflict realities alike.

2.) No longer does the AFL-CIO Executive Council consist almost exclusively of old white men (with a token one or two women and persons of color carefully included to possibly dilute criticism). This picture, mirroring as it did the hegemony of male, pale, stale, and stolid leaders, has fed anti-union propaganda for decades, and cost labor untold votes from women and non-whites in critical NLRB elections.

Now, a widely-expanded Council (54 members) includes Asian-Pacific Americans, Hispanics, and far more African Americans and women that ever before. As well, the Sweeney team itself includes the highest level female executive officer (Linda Chavez-Thompson) in the Federation's history.

3.) No longer are AFL-CIO research staffers constrained to focus on narrow policy matters, on specific pieces of legislation pending or under way, thereby assuring only a reactive and defensive position from labor lobbyists or its few political allies. Under Kirkland the AFL-CIO had been reduced to fighting primarily for its own narrow sectional interests. Attention was often diverted thereby from larger social justice objectives that had animated labor's New Deal legislative agenda.

Instead, a new AFL-CIO Department for Public Policy operates far more like an imaginative think tank, one that has been encouraged to take a long-range proactive view of economic and social issues. Thoroughly revamped, it is expected to soon offer some "out of the box" policy reform ideas, many possibly as populist and visionary as those with which labor was identified back in the New Deal era.

4.) No longer will the Fed look the other way while high-priced consultants casually steer Taft-Hartley pension fund millions into the stocks of rabidly anti-union corporations.

Instead, the Fed is busy clarifying investment mechanisms whereby the "Green Power" represented by billions of pension dollars might finally be employed as a pro-labor weapon in economic matters. Firms that treat unions with respect will get union money invested in their stocks; others will not.

Firms that treat unions with respect can also expect labor to side with progressive company leaders on proxy vote issues. Others will face the combined opposition of labor and its new allies among massive socially-concerned funds (those of certain municipal governments, colleges, foundations, religious order, churches, and socially-screened investment funds). This coalition continues to challenge narrow definitions of corporate profitability and responsibility, promoting instead a populist notion of stakeholder rights and responsibilities, e.g., opposition to offshore relocation of jobs, arbitrary downsizing and plant-closings, etc.

Already one three year-old multi-million dollar fund, Union Standard Trust, invests only in its own list of over 400 firms that qualify as especially-friendly-to-labor: To the political and financial satisfaction of its many labor supporters, the UST regularly out-performs the Standard and Poors Index.

5.) No longer does the AFL-CIO cite the autonomy of its affiliates in wanly excusing the very poor record of cooperation by unions with one another's struggles. No longer does it shrug with (feigned) helplessness when confronted by the fratricidal raids of certain of its unions on others of its unions.

Instead, the new federation has begun to vigorously encourage - and help finance - high-powered campaigns of inter-union mutual aid, this an overdue boost to the ancient notion of "solidarity." AFL-CIO staffers are given longer time, more authority, better media coverage, and far more funds that previously true of such ventures. As well, it has begun to clarify vague matters of jurisdiction so as to discourage raids even while encouraging outreach to unorganized groups previously overlooked.

6.) Similarly, in this matter of coalition-building, no longer does the AFL-CIO cite divisions in the ranks as an excuse for avoiding contact, better yet alliances with certain stigmatized groups of workers.

Instead, the new AFL-CIO, for example, works with the Gay and Lesbian Task Force on the basis of mutual respect, attention being paid in particular to achieving contractual language that adds "sexual orientation" to the list of protected classes in a contract's inclusion clause.

The AFL-CIO also collaborates with controversial community-organizing groups like ACORN. Together they are trying to secure the right to organize for more than one million former welfare recipients forced into the workforce. The AFL-CIO is campaigning to secure "Living Wage" legislation in key cities, and it demonstrates alongside of welfare recip-ients seeking justice and compassion in the enactment of experimental state welfare laws.

Consistent with this enlargement of the mission, the Federation's new Working Women's Department has launched a campaign to publicize "pocketbook" issues important to ALL women, whether dues payers or not - this an assertive variation of the Federation's attention-getting "America Needs a Raise" campaign.

7.) No longer does the AFL-CIO cooperate with the CIA and other shadowy government groups in the promotion of anti-communist elements overseas, even when this means turning its back on indigenous labor groups at odds with right-wing dictators and iron fist authoritarians.

Instead, the new AFL-CIO is thoroughly revamping its overseas operations. It is severing ties with right-wing pseudo-labor organiza-tions in developing nations, and it is opening cordial relations with pro-union indigenous activists who would probably not earn the approval of American Far Right ideologues.

8.) No longer is the Fed's political action effort primarily a matter of conventional phone bank efforts and PAC donations, a combination better known for post-election excuses (and oblique condemnation of the unreliability of the rank-and-file) than for its ballot-box successes.

Instead, as the 1996 presidential election demonstrated, the new AFL-CIO brings flair, pizzas, and high energy to a creative effort: Its $35 million expenditure on catchy TY ads, house-to-house campaigning, and centrist policies helped it capture media attention and the wrath of surprised conservatives who had erroneously written it off.

When the smoked clear Labor had helped defeat 18 targeted candidates for the House, It had helped protect Medicare and the Minimum Wage. And it had turned two and a half million voters it had lost in 1994 back into labor's column. It showed the nation it was still quite alive, and it gave members an overdue sense of their power through the ballot. Little surprise, accordingly, that unions like AGSCME claim more members gave voluntary donations, time, and effort than in any other previous election.

9.) No longer do Federation affiliates (74 unions) comfortably oper-ate in accord with the infamous "Rule of Five." That is, accept as unexcep-tional the practice whereby their organizing budget was held to no more than 5% of the union's financial (and human) resources.

A major explanation for the failure of many organizing campaigns, the Rule covertly assured incumbent officers that few newcomers would soon threaten the status quo (as in the case of their re-election chances). It belonged to a tired burned-out model of unionism, one that barely served the needs of a declining number of gray-haired white males. Little wonder that labor declined a calamitous decline from 36% of the work-force in 1953 to only 14% at present.

In place of the fatalism and foreboding that characterized discussions of organizing in the pre-Sweeney years, new AFL-CIO influentials like Richard Trumpka, Linda Chavez-Thompson, and others, move effectively to repeal the Rule of Five. Where once top leaders seemed to lack the conviction that labor's numbers could soon increase, they barnstorm endlessly, arguing just the opposite - and they offer concrete examples of organizing wins being earned (or at least vigorously sought) here, there, and elsewhere.

Created by six major unions in 1989, the innovative AFL-CIO Organizing Institute has had its size, funds, and staff vastly increased. Its successful 1996 "Union Summer" Project, one that rewarded labor with great PR and a sizable number of new young and energetic organizers, has earned a repeat effort in 1997. The difference this time involves creation of a small army of volunteer union retirees, many of whom will mentor college students and other young adults eager to test whether labor is their Calling.

A small number of very large internationals (AFSCME, AFT, CWA, IBT, UFCW, UNITE, etc.), impressed with the organizing gains racked by up recently by Sweeney's old union, the SEIU ( as from the Justice for Janitors campaign, etc.), are making substantial increases in their own organizing outlay (funds, personnel, publicity, priority, etc.). To their credit, and fully in the spirit of the Sweeney emphasis on grass-roots involvement, they are also making considerable use of their own members as volunteer organizers, thereby aiding a related cause - organizing the organized!

Progress has been elusive: For all of the razzle-dazzle of the new AFL-CIO these past two years, during the first six months of 1996 its 74 AFL-CIO affiliates participated in fewer elections, and lost more of them than in the same period in 1995 - when Sweeney took charge. Indeed, Labor in 1996 gained en toto only 12,000 new members - when 300,000 are thought necessary to just stand still as a percent of the labor force, and a million new members would be required to move labor from 14% up to 15% of all workers. ... gains that have not been approached for over 60 years.

Undaunted by these numbers, the Sweeney team insists the picture would be far worse but for the innovations and esprit they bring to the organizing challenge. To judge cautiously from a manifest pickup in media coverage of this organizing campaign and that one, often surprisingly sympathetic coverage, the AFL-CIO may finally be at the beginning of a winning streak..

10.) No longer does the AFL-CIO have to limp along on a stringency budget, one than can serve plaintively as an excuse not to attempt this bold and expensive venture, or that one. Nor is it hostage as in the past to the withholding of critical per capita funds by a petulant union president irked by this or that action of the Executive Council

Instead, the federation can now leverage a new source of substantial revenue of its own - revenue fees from an improved AFL-CIO credit card. In its 1996 arrangement with Household International, the fed has been guaranteed that it will earn at least $75 million a year in royalties over the next five years. That will exceed by $10 million a year the amount the old AFL-CIO collected as dues from affiliates.

To be sure, critics inside and outside of labor condemn the credit card as a timid response that diverts attention from fundamental problems, and confuses the role of the federation with that of the consumer culture. Proponents rebut that members appreciate the savings, prefer to see labor make something on their purchases, and welcome a painless opportunity to lend support.

Thanks to this windfall, the Sweeney administration is cautiously buying imaginative upgrades the Kirkland team might have dismissed as over-priced frills, e.g., the entire AFL-CIO building is being re-engineered for cutting-edge fiber optic telecommunication systems, the better to position the Labor Movement to prove a major player in the cyberspace world that beckons (more on this later).

This ten-item list could be extended quite abit, as mention should be made of the new emphasis on revitalizing near-moribund city central bodies and state federations. The point, however, is already clear: The differences between the Sweeney model and its predecessor come close to being differences of kind rather than degree.

The Sweeney "New Voices" leadership team is animated by a vision of unionism quite distinct from that known to the Kirkland entourage. Sweeney and his colleagues have initiated a thoroughgoing overhaul and redirection of the AFL-CIO, a "velvet revolution" still quite young and far from complete (indeed, enthusiasts contend the AFL-CIO will deliberately model an open-ended on-going renewal process). They have positioned organized labor, or at least that aspect of it under their control, at the cutting-edge of democratic social change. Keenly aware labor is at a flex point in its history, theirs is an administration that does not fear to dare, and intends to make the most of its every opportunity.

Is It Enough? My second question asks - Is it enough? Can it provide enough of a shield, and protect enough time, for labor to end its slippage, and possibly even begin to increase its percent representation of the nation's workforce?

Possibly not, though not for any lack of trying on the part of the new AFL-CIO. The problem lies elsewhere, lies, that is, in the limits that operate on a federation whose affiliates commonly lag far behind it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the AFL-CIO can only be as strong as its major affiliates, and this dependency of the federation could prove its Achilles Heel. The merits and demerits of the 74 AFL-CIO unions will determine if there are any unions left tomorrow to affiliate with an AFL-CIO. Here is where the fate of Organized Labor may especially be decided - and the picture is far less clear than in true of Sweeney's re-newal of the Federation.

Where the major international unions are concerned, turmoil seems the order of the day. An impartial student of the 74 international unions on whom the AFL-CIO depends would have to conclude they leave much to be desired. Many are still dominated by the desire of officers not to have to "return to the tools," a desire which translates into the fiercest type of protective politics and defensive stratagems. Many have little or nothing to with other unions, even those allied in the same industry. Many are far behind the curve where the employ of modern communication tools and approaches are concerned. Many wish for the "old shoe" comfort of years past, and find the hurly-burly of the fin-de-millennium damn near over-whelming.

Membership continues to decline as do dues revenues. Opposition to dues increases grows, as does disagreement about the course labor should take next. Leaders are being replaced faster than ever, locals are being consolidated more than ever, and mergers (like that of the UAW, the Machinists, and the Steelworkers) are in the wind. Uncertainty and impermanence characterize the lives of officers and staffers alike, with problematic morale the order of the day.

None of this encourages the kind of bold risk-taking that the AFL-CIO models, and this is the rub: Without such innovation by the international unions themselves, much of the potential gain of the federation is undermined. Intrigued by the razzle-dazzle appeal of the Sweeney model, many international unions appear ready for something, for almost anything, but they seem to know not what.

"Solving" for an Age of Information. My third and final question asks - What else might the AFL-CIO and its affiliates do to heighten their pros-pects? Is there an agenda of change related to the arrival of the Information Age that warrants greater-than-ever attention from, and adaptation by Organized Labor?

With mind-boggling speed the so-called Age of Information has swept in and engulfed organized labor in a world surely not of its own making, but rife nevertheless with rich opportunities. Infotech, or the mix of gadgets spawned by a synthesis of computers and telecommun-ications, revolutionizes organizations and the lives of us all. Cellular phones abound. We wonder how we ever got anything done before email. We take the fax for granted, and watch with wonder while the Internet transforms itself before our eyes. Our children ask how did we ever get along before search engines, personal homepages, Nintendo, Myst, interactive games, chat rooms, and the exotic like.

Much to its credit, the AFL-CIO and certain of its major affiliates have moved quickly to turn infotech to advantage. The AFL-CIO's LaborNet service on Compuserve, for example, has pioneered in bringing both official information and informal chat rooms to union activists. International homepages, and those of especially forward-looking locals can be found on the Internet, along with specialized listserves, such as PubLabor, that enable unionists to engage in free-wheeling focused discussions (as, for example, of items of special interest to public sector unionists).

Equally impressive are such innovations as the use the Hotel and Restaurant Union is making of a site on the Net to warn unionists away from hotels it is picketing. The Flight Attendants Union has created a Net site for collecting complaints from members about airplane equipment problems the union intends to soon address. Insurgents in the American Airline Pilots Union are using faxes and email to rally their troops. And cyberprotesters around the world recently rallied to bombard Bridge-stone-Firestone executives with email protesting the company's treatment of its American work force.

More and more, labor cannot hold its own in arbitrations unless its representative is using a laptop. It cannot match the other side of the bargaining table unless its representative is using a modular phone, a fax, and a laptop. It cannot bring back useful material from a discussion or conference unless conveyed via a modular phone or swiftly word-processed into a laptop. All of these forms of empowerment and more are opera-tional today, but they appear true of only a very small proportion of union professionals.

Labor's effort here falls far short of the potential, as it remains inchoate and directionless. Labor's various computer instructors, for example, are still not knit together in one organization, and do not even have their own listserve. Various locals are busy re-inventing the wheel in infotech applications because their international does not have a central office to help field-proven tools gain employ. No cross-fertilization occurs, except sporadically when a good listserve like PubLabor has a contributor highlight an infotech gain.

Try the CyberUnion Model. The time is at hand for the AFL-CIO and particularly assertive affiliates to consider adoption of the CyberUnion model, an intriguing 21st century approach to trade unionism. Marked by enthusiasm for the Age of Information, it is creative in making the most of what other frustrated unions find daunting in the extreme.

A CyberUnion stands out in its employ of futuristics (a perspective), infotech (cutting-edge tools), and tradition (a commitment). Its appreciation for what "F-I-T" can do for it has enthusiasts believing the CyberUnion could enable labor to surge early in the next century.

Employing an art form known as futuristics, a CyberUnion will replace the narrow "putting-out-fires" orientation of most unions with a longer perspective, one that encompasses the here-and-now, but extends 5 and 10 years beyond it. It will replace a narrow tolerance for shopworn communication tools (newsletters, mailings, etc.) with a high-tech perspective, one that upgrades familiar tools (as in adding color to the newletter) even as it moves to the cutting-edge (email for all; listserves for many; etc.). Finally, it will replace hollow observances of union traditions with whole-hearted celebration, the better to ensure that labor's high tech gains are always accompanied by comparable high touch advances, e.g., a local's history and traditions could be "captured" in a memorable CD-ROM provided to all.

Infotech Employ. Leaving further discussion of both futuristics and tradition for another time, a CyberUnion's employ of infotech might include at least five features:
1) It will employ infotech tools to regularly survey members, both actual and potential, to learn in depth what are their needs and wants, their dreams and night-mares.
2.) It will employ infotech tools to keep members abreast of relevant developments, and, to learn of such from the rank-and-file. The union's homepage is updated daily, and email of real merit flows often back and forth between officers and the rank-and-file.
3.) It will employ infotech tools to survey members and ascertain preferences and priorities among major questions confronting the organization. Every effort is made to improve member participation in union policy- making.
4.) It will make all of its officers and staffers accessible to members via email, and promises personal responses within 72 hours of a message's receipt.
5.) It will update its infotech infrastructure regularly. It will take pride both in being at the cutting-edge, and, in making a special effort to take the membership there with it.

These five attributes should help put labor unions on a par with the CyberCorps rapidly coming their way. They should send the message that labor is finally and actually "with it!," a message of import for the union's membership, the media, the public, and the business community alike. And they should empower the rank-and-file as never before.

Unions uniquely blend humanistic, ethical, and materialistic con-cerns. They should be able to produce a distinctive set of infotech-use rewards, one that will have the citizenry sit up, notice, and applaud. They should be able to get Americans to think of unions, and not just of corpor-ations, when they think about successful cutting-edge organizations. And they should mentor their membership in closing the gap between Info-Haves and Have-Nots, arguably the greatest threat posed now to the demo-cracy.

Doubts and Misgivings. Skeptics will dismiss futuristics as only for the secure; infotech, as only for an effete elite; and tradition, as only for those less busy than unionists with barely surviving, better yet celebra-ting anything. They will insist the vast majority of union members are outside the infotech loop, and that this CyberUnion prescription is therefore irrelevant.

In rebuttal, proponents can point out ever more unionized workers co-exist with infotech, and especially with computers, at work. Even if the average unionist's living room does not presently contain a PC, the work station probably does. As well, advances in inexpensive devices to access the Internet without a PC (webservers, etc.) promise to soon vastly expand the reach of the Net (to say nothing of speculation that a voice-activated/voice-responsive Palmtop, or very small computer worn on the wrist, may be commonplace by 2005AD).

The point, in short, is really not that of hardware or access to it. Rather, the point is to rapidly and thoroughly link labor with all that a smart organization can draw out of infotech, and to "bookend" such adaptation with the ballast of tradition and the headiness of futuristics.

Contrary to the misgivings of detractors, adoption of a CyberUnion model is not an implausible or impractical proposal. It builds on initiatives the AFL-CIO and key unions have already begun to take. (The fact that the Sweeney team renamed the AFL-CIO News, their bland and unexceptional house organ, Americ@Work, and transformed it into a bright, brassy, and "hip" publication, is much to the point). This model could invigorate adapters, inspire the membership, favorably impress pros-pective members, intimidate labor's opponents, intrigue vote-seek-ers, and in other valuable ways, significantly bolster labor's chances.

Getting the AFL-CIO On Board. Provided, that is, that the AFL-CIO rises to the occasion. It could create a new Office for CyberUnions@Work, one that could serve as an "R&D" center for the promotion of the Cyber-Union model.

The Office could hire infotech experts, scrutinize the vast infotech literature (hardcopy as well as Net material), represent labor at major infotech conferences, and in 1,001 other ways, help assure that labor stays at the cutting-edge in its employ of infotech potential.

Similarly, the Office could scan the literature in futuristics, interview leading long-range forecasters, represent organized labor at meetings of futurists, and help unions and locals learn how to employ forecasting to advantage.

Where tradition is concerned, the Office could study the success of "Bread and Roses," the art and theater project of District 1199-C, and the Annual Labor Arts Festival at the Meany Center, along with similar sources of lessons for bringing along the best of the past into the future.

With guidance from the Office, the AFL-CIO could devote an entire page in every issue of Americ@Work to CyberUnion innovations field-proven by a union affiliate and available now for adoption by others. It could highlight such advances at its various meetings, run competitions, and award prizes for outstanding projects. It could pioneer CyberUnion tactics, gadgets, and applications itself, taking care always to promote their employ by its affiliates.

The AFL-CIO could ask its educational unit, The George Meany Center for Labor Studies (which President Sweeney enjoys calling Labor's "War College") to create a degree-granting program in CyberUnion Studies. Graduates could be placed with internationals and large locals long ago convince that they either secure infotech craft or fall hopeless behind. Similarly, the AFL-CIO could encourage the University and College Labor Educators Association to begin including CyberUnion material in labor ed programs from coast to coast.

Finally, in recognition of the global nature of this challenge, the new AFL-CIO Office of CyberUnions@Work could sponsor an Annual Inter-national Meeting of interested laborites from nations hither and yon. Daily contact among such influentials via teleconferences and email should vastly increase the international exchange of ideas. Nevertheless, annual opportunities for hands-on demonstrations will probably long make a uniquely valuable contribution.

In short, mind-boggling advances in Information Age dynamics will undoubtedly sow much new confusion. Organized labor, thanks to its CyberUnion use of futuristics, infotech, and tradition (F-I-T), should have good utilization experiences to draw on, pride in accomplishment, and a heady sense of adventure about it all.

Summary. Organized labor, for the first time in 35 years, is moving again, showing its "smarts," and feeling cautiously hopeful. If it is keep up momentum, the AFL-CIO and its major affiliates must speed up their development of a 21st century CyberUnion model. Supporters are encouraged by evidence the Sweeney team and its union allies intend to make the most of futuristics, infotech, and tradition (F-I-T). If they have their way, America's new CyberUnions will show the world that unionism does "compute" in our Age of Information.