Although much remains to be done, progress has been registered in chipping away at gender and racial divisions within our membership, reaching out to immigrant workers, and combating xenophobic prejudices with appeals to global working class unity. The recent Los Angeles rally of 20,000 in support of immigrant worker rights was quite an achievement. Unity in action with family farmers, students, environmentalists, and people of faith who genuinely care about the human condition a unity that is beginning to take shape around globalization issues is absolutely necessary in our battles against corporate power. It hasn t all been rosy of course. Many organizing drives still fail.
Some strikes are still broken.
We take our lumps now and then. But, by and large, most working people now believe that the trade union movement has touched bottom and is on the way back up. You must feel proud of this accomplishment as you should. But precisely because progress has been made in many areas, it is extremely frustrating for many of us to see atrophy in an important sector that consumes so much of our energy and money electoral politics. Defeating the China trade bill was certainly the federation s top legislative priority in this session of Congress.