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All these "union cities" sit in the old union heartland. Labor’s real survival test hinges on its ability to plug into the new economy and a business culture that considers unions as relevant to the digital age as the linotype. But labor is making inroads even in Silicon Valley. In San Jose, where half the jobs in the hottest employment categories pay $10 an hour or less, the South Bay Labor Council managed to push through a living wage ordinance for the city, reports Douglas Foster in Mother Jones (Sept./Oct. 2000). The council’s chief executive, Amy Dean, has even bigger plans: a think tank; a job-training and placement program for clerical workers; and a campaign to get better pay and working conditions for temps, the new white-collar proletariat.

The council is also beginning to hear from scientists and engineers, to whom union membership no longer seems out of the question, shell-shocked as they are by frequent job changes, no-benefits contract work, and employer surveillance. As Dean puts it, "The next generation of em-ployee organizations will have to be as flexible and as decentralized as the new economy itself."

That’s sometimes a tough sell in a movement built on tight jurisdictional borders and closed-door political maneuvering. But if the growing influence of these open and innovative central labor councils is any indication, "union cities" may someday be more than a curiosity. They could be the harbinger of a revitalized labor movement.

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