I have not yet begun working, and I may still reconsider, but I can't help to feel that part time employees exist in this store only to support the union retirement plan and union organizer.

Do unions do anything these days but perpetuate themselves in order to fund the retirements for the organizers, in between destroying american industries?

but how can I square with working for a union when I just sent off an email to the Californian Libertarian Gubernatorial candidate offering to help with the campaign?

As an aside, has anyone else worked in a grocery store, and if so, how much does it suck?

I have no philospohical problem with organized labor at all. I'd much rather see unions regulate companies within than getting the gov't involved.

A new program to enforce fiscal transparency within unions by the Department of Labor is well-timed to help unions conduct a much-needed self-examination. For decades, big labor rightfully decried shady accounting in corporations, but never faced up to their own shady accounting. Laws dating back to 1959 require union reporting of finances, but until the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards began enforcing the law, very few filings occurred. That environment changed significantly on March 31, 2006, the deadline for filing a new LM-2 form that details the finances of any union with $250,000 or more in dues.

Those who support American workers can hope that the new transparency will foster the necessary change in the character and principles entrenched in union leaders. The splintering of the AFL-CIO may prove to be the tipping point needed to kick off some diversification, experimentation, and evolution in what a union is in the modern economy. This is how unions can survive. In that sense, more transparency and scrutiny are best interpreted as useful tools for rank-and-file members to reassert what they want.

Polls reveal that American workers do not see their workplaces in the negative light that union leaders do. A full 67 percent of Americans say their company has a strong sense of loyalty towards them.

And conventional wisdom is wrong: American workers are not frightened. Just 9 percent of workers fear their job will be shipped overseas. Moreover, workers are satisfied with their job security by an 82 to 15 percent margin.

What do American workers want? According to one survey, 62 percent of workers rated excessive bureaucracy as their largest barrier to job satisfaction, while 59 percent rated co-workers who focus on assigning blame instead of accomplishing tasks. In another poll, 60 percent of workers said that flexibility was very important to their job satisfaction. Unions have not put the effort into addressing these concerns that they have into fighting outsourcing, but these are the issues that matter to workers.

In this sense the discord among splintering unions is perhaps a sign of hope. For example, AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney is denouncing immigration reform proposals that would legalize guest workers, while Service Employees International Union boss Andy Stern has championed poor migrant workers. This is exactly the kind of diversity that will be essential for the union movement to evolve by trying different approaches to the challenges of the 21st century, not simply applying outdated approaches to modern problems.