Harold Meyerson on Andy Stern and John Lewis: This level of global union cooperation is new, but much about this campaign takes a leaf out of John L. Lewis's 70-year-old book on industrial organizing. Like Lewis, whose United Mine Workers funded the rise of such new unions as the United Auto Workers, the SEIU and UNITE-HERE envision a new union rising for the workers in these three companies. Like Lewis, who signed the first company-wide contracts with General Motors and U.S. Steel, Stern and UNITE-HERE's leaders, Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm, believe the only way to build back union strength is to organize entire companies at a time, rather than go facility by facility. And like Lewis, whose frustration at the American Federation of Labor's opposition to industrial organizing led him to break away and found the CIO in 1935, Stern called on Monday for the AFL-CIO (the two groups got back together in 1955) to radically change its structure. Currently, the AFL-CIO has 65 member unions, the vast majority too small to fund organizing campaigns, though some -- or their locals -- have been known to pick up new members when employers, facing the prospect of real unionization by the likes of the SEIU, have cut sweetheart deals with them. Stern would like to see the unions consolidated into about 15, with clear sectoral responsibilities and enough resources to organize. On Monday Stern told his delegates that it was time either to "change the AFL-CIO or build something stronger." At that, the floor erupted; delegates stood and whooped for a full minute.