SeaTac voters will apparently decide the fate of Proposition 1 ($15 minimum wage for some workers plus a slew of HR regulations) in November. That’s the result of Friday’s ruling by the state Court of Appeals.

The New York Times featured the initiative in a long look at dwindling union membership.

“The crisis for labor has deepened,” [AFL-CIO president Richard] Trumka said in an interview. “It’s at a point where we really must do something differently. We really have to experiment.”

Proposition 1 is part of that experiment, as the NYT notes.

Unions and community groups have joined forces to try to create the nation’s highest minimum wage through a referendum in SeaTac, a community south of Seattle. The proposal would establish a $15-an-hour minimum wage — more than twice the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum — for 6,500 workers at Sea-Tac International Airport and its nearby hotels and car rental agencies. The $15 wage would be 63 percent higher than Washington’s $9.19-an-hour minimum, already the highest state minimum wage.

…Labor groups hope the measure will be a model for other communities.

As the NYT reports, there’s some disharmony within the union family on some of Trumka’s proposals, some of which I mentioned in my column last week. Walter Russell Mead offers his thoughts on the debates playing out today at the labor convention in LA.

The AFL-CIO, the biggest alliance of labor unions in America, is feeling feeble these days. You can tell because lately it’s been trying to regain some of its old clout by partnering with non-labor progressive groups, effectively bringing millions of non-union members into the fold. … Far from seeming like a strong, confident coalition, Big Blue seems more like it’s circling the wagons. Pleading with disparate factions of a party to stick together under a single, unwieldy umbrella is generally a sign of insecurity, not confidence.

WRM references coverage from the Hill highlighting dissent in the ranks.

“However, to say that we are going to grow this labor movement by some kind of formal partnership, membership, status, place in this federation, I am against. This is the American Federation of Labor. We are supposed to be representing workers and workers’ interests,” [International Association of Fire Fighters president Harold] Schaitberger said. “We are not going to be the American Federation of Progressive and Liberal Organizations.”

Others in labor, especially in the building and construction sectors, have aggressively pushed back against the proposal. Those unions have clashed repeatedly with environmental groups over building the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Does that mean we are going to turn energy policy of the AFL-CIO over to the Sierra Club? I have concern about that, as well as I should,” said Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA).

Our state is cast as the model for the new organizing strategies, a role celebrated in The Stand.

Interesting days ahead.