"George W. Bush has done everything he can to put us down and keep us on the bottom," said AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, whose federation represents 63 national unions with 13 million members. Despite efforts by Sweeney and others to rebuild membership, labor's share of the workforce has declined steadily in recent years and is below 13%.

"It has just been horrible, and workers understand that," he said. "I don't even want to think about what another four years would be like."

Rather than just complaining, they are doing something about it. And they are organized.

The AFL-CIO has identified more than 60,000 union voters in the state, most in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. An additional 15,000 voters are members of union households. All are fair game for persuasion campaigns by union volunteers. It's O'Brien's goal to have each household contacted multiple times, in person and by phone.

After a day of door-knocking, volunteers return with bar-coded sheets that identify Kerry supporters and undecided voters. Over the next two and a half weeks, a list will be compiled and refined, so that on election day, volunteers at precincts throughout the state will know exactly which pro-Kerry union voters they want to cast a ballot.

This isn't the first time they've done it.

....The initiative builds on the same member-to-member outreach that boosted the union share of the total U.S. vote to 26% four years ago from 19% in 1996, according to union-sponsored exit polls. That shift helped the Democrats take some difficult states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan.

We should all be taking lessons from them.