BY FRANCINE KNOWLES

The nation's biggest union of government workers will gather here next week to vote on an ambitious plan to commit more resources to organizing and electing pro-labor politicians-- an effort that calls for raising dues to fund the efforts.

A 21st Century committee formed two years ago by the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees to do a top-to-bottom review of the union has recommended that 70,000 new workers be organized annually, 5 percent per year.

It also has called for the launch of a year-round strategic program to focus on issue advocacy, legislation, electoral politics and PAC fund-raising, and to galvanize 40,000 AFSCME activists nationwide by 2008.

To fund the effort, the committee has recommended a dues increase of $3 per member per month phased in over three years that would generate about $4 million annually.

In addition, the committee has called for returning its normal minimum dues increase, a projected $22 million annually, to affiliates to help achieve the goals.

The proposals come as workers face continuing privatization of jobs, said labor leaders ahead of the week-long convention, which kicks off Monday. AFSCME, which has 1.4 million members, has organized 350,000 people in the last three years. But it has realized only a net gain of 75,000 members because of privatizing public-sector jobs, said AFSCME President Gerald McEntee.

Other challenges include diminishing health care benefits, and the absence of such benefits among some members in its ranks, he said.

"Every time our people go to the collective bargaining table with the employer, it's 'You have to take less in your health care plan; you can't get a wage increase.' Things are going backwards for workers in America.

"We need a new plan that will make our union more ready, more aggressive to fight the kind of forces we're facing in this country," added McEntee.

The recommendations won the endorsement of the union's international executive board.

Politics will have a high priority at the convention. Democratic U.S. Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York are among scheduled speakers.

The convention comes a little over a year after the AFL-CIO met here for its convention, a gathering that saw the Teamsters and service employees unions disaffiliate from the labor federation to form a competing group, Change to Win. Since the AFL-CIO convention, the farm workers, grocery and restaurant workers, laborers and hotel and needletrades unions also have disaffiliated. Leaders of the new federation split with the AFL-CIO because of disagreements over leadership and because they contended the labor body wasn't doing enough to reverse the slide in union membership.