The AFL-CIO split: is it a bad thing or good thing and for whom? Yes, this is time for big questions asked idiotically.

I've worked with the AFL-CIO of North Carolina and spent most of grad school (and almost none of my working life) thining about labor issues, so I feel that I have the necessary gravitas to answer my own dumb question ambiguously. Thus: I'm inclined to say both or neither. The talk about SEIU courting Republicans chills me to my core. However, it seems fairly obvious that the AFL-CIO is a dying giant bereft of new ideas. It seems even more obvious to me that the only way the US labor movement can survive is by reaching out across borders and into white-collar jobs and contract-labor jobs. How it's supposed to do this, I have no idea. But the way that people work has changed over the last 20 years, making connection with other workers on the economic issues that bind us a far more difficult prospect.

Here, as with so many social changes, I'm hoping for the best and doing jack.