WHEN JOHN SWEENEY was elected president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, he promised a different kind of labor federation. Instead of antagonizing environmentalists, feminists, anti-war protestors, and others on the left, Sweeney pledged to build alliances and coalitions with groups that he considered ideological allies. He also made it clear that the strong and aggressive foreign policy championed by labor legends like Lane Kirkland, George Meany, and Tom Donahue would be a thing of the past.

By and large, Sweeney has fulfilled those promises. Labor unions are now more firmly on the left than ever before. Last year, even the Sierra Club and Steelworkers came together in a new coalition that blends environment and labor causes. Sweeney has also changed the course of the AFL-CIO's foreign policy dramatically, with labor unions now for the most part opposing the Bush administration's approach.

While some of these changes can be traced back to Sweeney's principles, a major part of his reordering of labor's priorities could be attributed to labor's membership dearth. Unions have watched their membership numbers steadily drop since the 1950s. Sweeney thought that a closer alliance with the left would help stop the bleeding.

That plan has not worked out. Labor membership has continued to decline under Sweeney. In the latest figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this past year, only 7 percent of the private sector workforce belonged to a union. The same figure stood at over 10 percent when Sweeney took over, not a dramatic decrease but significant given the

Many theories have been posited to explain this decline. Conservatives and libertarians claim that the workforce has changed and that employees no longer see the need for unions like they did 50 years ago. Labor activists blame corporations, saying that employers now hire a cadre of labor lawyers and professional union-busters to stave off unionization.

One theory that has been largely ignored however is the possibility that organized labor's lurch to the left on foreign policy might be driving away would-be members. Some political opinion polling offers strong evidence for this idea.

Approximately every five years, the Pew Research Center conducts a comprehensive survey and compiles the results into the "Pew Political Typology." The respondents are classified into different ideological groups based upon their responses. While the survey isn't perfect, it does give us a rough picture of the electorate.

In their last typology released in 2005, two groups in particular, what Pew calls "Pro-Government Conservatives" and "Social Conservatives," stood out for their liberal economic/conservative foreign policy views, which used to be the ideological formula that unions followed before Sweeney.

The economic populism of these groups is without question. 79 percent of social conservatives and 94 percent of pro-government conservatives favor raising the minimum wage. 57 percent of pro-government conservatives and 61 percent of social conservatives favor reducing the deficit over cutting taxes. And only 18 percent of social conservatives and 22 percent of pro-government conservatives believe that outsourcing was good for the economy. In describing these groups, Pew said that social conservatives "tend to be critical of business and supportive of government regulation" and pro-government conservatives are "under substantial financial pressure," two descriptions that seem tailor-made for union organizing.