Harold Meyerson

In 2003, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) found itself embroiled in a major contract dispute with Yale University. Yale, in a sense, was the birthplace of the modern HERE, for it was at Yale, two decades earlier, that a Yale alum named John Wilhelm had led a brilliant and successful campaign to organize the university's clerical workers.

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Since the 1960s, when public sector workers across the country risked jail to win the right to organize, American labor hasn't had many struggles it could boast of -- those David-and-Goliath battles where long downtrodden workers won against all odds. Instead, there have been a relative handful of dramatic victories that demonstrated that fiercely dedicated workers within smart and determined unions could still prevail.

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In March of 2004, a few days before the Illinois Democratic senatorial primary, I wrote a column for this page headlined "A Bright Hope in Illinois." It was, I believe, the first column for a daily newspaper outside Illinois devoted to a rising young pol named Barack Obama. Bolstered by polling that showed Obama to be the clear leader in the race, I fearlessly predicted that he'd become Illinois' next senator and quoted the assessment of Jan Schakowsky, the Democratic member of Congress from Chicago's Gold Coast district, that Obama would "march right onto the national stage and the international stage."

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In March of 2004, a few days before the Illinois Democratic senatorial primary, I wrote a column for this page headlined "A Bright Hope in Illinois." It was, I believe, the first column for a daily newspaper outside Illinois devoted to a rising young pol named Barack Obama.

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We are hemorrhaging jobs just now, but by historic standards, unemployment may look a little low. The official unemployment rate (which understates actual unemployment, to be sure) is at 7.6 percent, a far cry from the 10 percent-plus during the downturn of the early 1980s. In those years, Midwestern manufacturing shed more jobs than it is shedding today. Where's the comparable unemployment now?

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We are hemorrhaging jobs just now, but by historic standards, unemployment may look a little low. The official unemployment rate (which understates actual unemployment, to be sure) is at 7.6 percent, a far cry from the 10 percent-plus during the downturn of the early 1980s. In those years, Midwestern manufacturing shed more jobs than it is shedding today.

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