By Andrew Stern
Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. unions, taking lessons and tactics learned from the effort to arrest organized labor’s long decline, say next year’s presidential election will be crucial to their resurgence.

“You have more ground-level, grass-roots excitement about this election — this is our election,” said Greg Denier of the Change to Win coalition, which is composed of seven unions representing 6 million workers.

Denier said union polls showed most Americans wanted their government to redress the balance toward workers hurt by spiraling health-care costs and the outsourcing of work by “abusive” corporations.

Despite the overall decline in union membership, some American unions led by the fast-growing Service Employees International Union have expanded by targeting entire industries, instead of individual employers, and by focusing on sectors where the jobs cannot move, such as janitors, health-care workers and retail workers.

Similarly, unions have tapped into technology that will help them get their members to the polls and identifies receptive voters by learning what magazines they subscribe to and other data.