United we fall? Worker interest in unions may threaten your business. How will you respond?(Smarts)

THE 1990S ARE OVER. And with the collapse of the economic bubble, revelations about horrific corporate governance practices, and the layoffs of thousands of Americans, an institution that some people have long since written off as dead has been revived: the union.

In a recent survey for the AFL-CIO, for the first time in nearly two decades, the number of non-union American workers willing to join a union has increased. "After seeing so many jobs destroyed in the recession, Americans are looking for job protection," says Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, DC, think tank. (Union workers earn 32 percent more than nonunion workers.)

"In the 1990s, workers had the idea they were free agents and that ties to a union would only slow them down as they moved around," says Fred Feinstein, a labor expert at the University of Maryland. "But that idea has been decimated, and now people just want security."

Drawing on public support, unions have launched major battles over the past year. They've increased organizing efforts in Southern and Western states that had prided themselves on their nonunion work forces. West Coast dockworkers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union used a port strike to throttle trans-Pacific commerce. And the Major League Baseball Players' Association, perhaps the most visible union in the country, won enormous concessions from management this past summer.

Organized labor leaders have shifted attention from manufacturing and heavy industry toward white-collar and service professions because it's harder to move them overseas. The effort is paying off. According to a study by the Albert Shanker Institute, a labor research organization, white-collar professionals have become "one of the most organized segments of the work force," forming unions or union-like work organizations.