AFL-CIO chief organizer brings expertise to Southern efforts

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071020/BUSINESS/710200412/1003

By Jere Downs
[e-mail]
The Courier-Journal

As national organizing director for the AFL-CIO, Stewart Acuff understands why it's harder to have workers join unions in the South. He is from the region.

Southern states have the lowest union membership, according to the Labor Department, with most percentages in single digits. In Kentucky, the number only slightly exceeds that, at 11 percent.

The reason may be that every Southern state except Kentucky allows union membership and dues payment to be optional for workers. That makes it harder for unions to organize and bargain collectively.

But that doesn't faze Acuff, a native Tennessean and son of a Baptist preacher. He knows that Southerners don't have the same experience that workers in parts of the Northeast and Midwest have had with union contracts in years past.

"There never was the good old days here," said Acuff, 52. "It's always been harder."

As U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell faces re-election next year, the labor movement is gunning for the Senate minority leader. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, sided with President Bush's opposition to a children's health insurance bill, the minimum-wage increase and a failed reform of the nation's 72-year-old labor law.

FULL story and photo at link.