By 1973, the unionized share of the U.S. work force had been declining for two decades and Wurf was appalled that so many unions were "fighting each other for the right to represent workers rather than working together to organize the unorganized." Starting at the Miami Beach convention, [AFSCME president Jerry] Wurf argued, the AFL-CIO had to get serious about wide-ranging reform. The American economy was changing — manufacturing was shrinking, corporations were consolidating — and labor had to change as well. The federation had to merge its small and failing affiliates so that just twenty or thirty large and powerful unions remained. And those mega-unions, instead of "chopping each other up" in a competition for members, should each focus on organizing a particular industry or sector. Only with that strategic focus, Wurf said, could the labor movement reverse its decline.

Not without reason, delegates from many AFL-CIO affiliates read Wurf's article as a scathing attack on their sacred, if no longer sturdy, institutions. Wurf had already earned a reputation as a brash, some said arrogant, leader, one who too often frayed the fraternal bonds of labor. And so, when the delegates arrived in Miami Beach in 1973, they gave short shrift to his reform proposals?and once they got home, they went right on raiding AFSCME's turf. One of the worst offenders in that turf war was an old AF of L affiliate called the Building Service Employees International Union. At least that's what BSEIU was called before its leaders realized they could supplement their sagging janitorial membership by poaching AFSCME's public employees. Thus, in 1968 the BSEIU shed its "B," and the SEIU was born.

There is no small irony in the fact that today perhaps the strongest proponent of Jerry Wurf's vision for labor is Andy Stern, the brash, some say arrogant, president of SEIU, which is now the largest and fastest-growing union in North America. In the run-up to the AFL-CIO's momentous July 2005 convention in Chicago, Stern put forth reform proposals that were eerily similar to Wurf's recommendations from 1973. Of course, given SEIU's history, more than a few unions — especially AFSCME — were peeved to hear Stern preaching Wurf's gospel. How is it, they wondered, that this janitors union, which grew by luring public employees and health care workers, could tell other unions to focus narrowly on their traditional sectors? Where did SEIU get off telling proud unions such as the Autoworkers and Steelworkers that labor could grow but only if they stuck to their disappearing industries?

SEIU officials aren't oblivious to these questions. In "United We Win," a discussion paper the union circulated in February 2003 to spur the AFL-CIO reform debate, SEIU acknowledged that many of the problems it sought to fix in the labor movement "can be found in our own organization." Yes, the paper admitted, SEIU had once been a bottom-feeding union that snapped up everyone from laundry workers to leather workers, from jewelry makers to metal spinners. But in recent years, SEIU had focused its organizing efforts only in those sectors where it had significant membership. Because of that strategic focus, as well as a massive commitment of resources, SEIU has had unparalleled success in organizing workers. Since Stern took charge in 1996, SEIU has organized more than 800,000 new members, far more than any other union.