As the spiraling decline of organized labor continues unabated, the U.S. labor movement is becoming more insignificant to workers. In 2004, union density in the private sector declined to a postwar nadir below 10%. As membership drops, so does union capacity to mobilize members in the electoral sphere. But since 1995, when John Sweeney and the New Voice slate toppled Lane Kirkland as president of the AFL-CIO, Peter L. Francia argues, labor unions are more effective politically than ever. This belief is rooted in Francia's quantitative research of congressional elections in the Sweeney era from 1994 to 2002.

Francia candidly asserts that his work “is not a book about unions in the economic arena” (p. 17) and “not a historical analysis.” The primary data for the book are statistics derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Research Association, Federal Election Commission, other polling organizations, and some interviews with union officials (pp. 18–19). While the data analysis is meaningful, the absence of history complicates an evaluation of Sweeney vis-à-vis his two predecessors, George Meany and Kirkland.

At its core, The Future of Organized Labor in American Politics portrays Sweeney as if he were a venerable captain of a sinking ship. That unions are relevant in the political sphere is significant to Francia inasmuch as labor is using a strategic approach to spending on advertising a new ideological program more popular among workers, and is allocating money in competitive elections (pp. 21–51).

Francia's finding about mobilizing members to vote at a higher rate even as Republican power grows is already well known among labor scholars. However, his data analysis provides fascinating new evidence of the magnitude of spending in congressional races. In 1996, Sweeney and the New Voice political operatives were certain that greater political spending and activity would elect sympathetic members of Congress. As corporate PACs “decreased spending from 1988 to 2002” (p. 29), labor expenditures on campaigns expanded “twenty-eight-fold … from 1994 to 2002” (pp. 29–30). Francia asserts that the “strategies changed in the Sweeney era” (p. 31) as campaign expenditures went to candidates in competitive congressional races; however, he does not comparatively examine the Kirkland era when Democrats controlled the Congress.

In Chapters 4 and 5, Francia examines Sweeney's record in communicating and mobilizing members and advertising its positions to the public. He shows that strategic allocation of money elected several Democratic candidates and reduced the margin of Republican victories. While corporate spending declined marginally, union spending expanded significantly as corporate PACs outspent labor by a reduced 4:1 ratio. Yet the fact that corporate spending continued to decline between 1994 and 2002 as Republicans actually gained and expanded their majority in Congress leaves one to wonder if corporate contributions to candidates translate into greater influence than does labor money.

As a political scientist studying interest groups, I know that pondering labor in the electoral arena is complicated, perhaps accounting for Francia's problematic assertion of the dearth of scholarship in the field on labor. To many political scientists, including Francia, the AFL-CIO and constituent unions are part of a broader labor movement. But conflating organized labor with other interest groups diminishes the centrality of labor in U.S. society.

Nonetheless, the author's data are intriguing. In 2001, the AFL-CIO spent less on lobbying than did the National Rifle Association, the American Association of Retired Persons, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Trial Lawyers of America. Most likely the federation's diminished spending on lobbying is due to a hostile Republican Congress.

One of Francia's suggestions to reverse labor's decline is to try to appeal to moderate Republicans, who are more likely to hold key committee chairs than Democrats. But labor does not seem to have had much influence even when Democrats were in control. From the 1950s to 1990s, for example, unions failed to reverse the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 (though, granted, Senate Republican filibusters explain many such failures).

The passage of NAFTA severely weakened unions and laid the groundwork for Sweeney's triumph over Kirkland. Under Sweeney, the hemorrhaging of union power is a matter of life and death for the federation. Why then is Sweeney so cautious in pursuing what Francia maintains is a progressive ideological agenda? Sweeney initially opposed organized labor's protesting the November 1999 World Trade Organization negotiations in Seattle, a defining event that seemed to push labor's agenda more than any election could.

Throughout, the book emphasizes the need for unions to devote resources to organizing in order to succeed in the electoral arena, because union members provide “the manpower to counter the financial power of business in congressional elections” (pp. 142–43). But in the fragmented AFL-CIO, national unions set policies independent of the federation. Sweeney's prescription for union revitalization through organizing is bound to fail. Ironically, those national unions that bolted the AFL-CIO in 2005 to form the Change to Win (CTW) federation are the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), UNITE/HERE, and others that have devoted more money to organizing new members.

Organized Labor has failed to mobilize electoral support for its platform during Sweeney's ten years as president despite success in mobilizing its own members. But for most observers unions are in rapid decline. The book's primary failure is methodological. While Francia asserts at the outset that his study is not historical, fundamentally Francia compares the AFL-CIO under Sweeney to the Kirkland era, and does not provide any framework for the crucial legal obstacles that must be removed if labor is to rebuild a robust labor movement. The statistical data on union spending in the electoral arena is illuminating to those studying interest groups and unions today. But Francia asserts repeatedly that recruiting new members is essential to the revitalization of organized labor, which he believes will use the Democratic Party to challenge Republicans. By failing to root the labor movement in American historical development, Francia is unable to identify signal moments when unions rapidly expanded (for example, in the postwar strikes and insurrections that were crucial to galvanizing organized labor power in the electoral arena). Unfortunately, Francia's methodology fails to provide the analytical framework to comprehend the relationship between labor power on the ground and organized labor's influence in the electoral arena.