Next to Yogi, I always like to harken back to Deep Throat when I’m looking for an appropriate analogy. Not Linda Lovelace but the mysterious figure from Watergate who, apparently, said, when asked how to unravel the political scandal, “follow the money.” Well, to twist this slightly, if you want to know if a union is ready to leave the AFL-CIO, follow the no-raiding agreements (okay, so it doesn’t have much of a ring…I’ll work on it).

If you’re not a fan of the AFL-CIO, you have to still admit that two of the concrete bennies a union gets from being a member are Articles XX (settling of internal disputes) and XXI (organizing responsibility procedures). These two Constitutional provisions are what I call the “sandbox rules.” Two or more unions, fighting over who has the right to organize a certain group of workers and unable to resolve this between themselves, can use this process to get a ruling on who should be assigned the unit. Sometimes it just boils down to a “I got there first, no you didn’t, yes I did” argument. I’ve never quite understood why, when labor represents less than 8 percent in the private sector, unions even end up competing with each other. Don’t we have enough to do? Anyway, that’s a story for another day.

But, fact is, once you leave the AFL-CIO, it’s open season. The union that left can now go after any workers it wants; the unions that stayed inside the Federation can now poach on the now-AFL-CIO-less union. One high-ranking labor person stated the obvious:”Jurisdiction is the heart of the labor movement.”

So, if there is a union ready to leave in the next couple of months, or after that, forget the high-minded rhetoric: watch whether it or its potential organizing rivals reach any bi-lateral no-raiding agreements. In particular, watch whether AFSCME and SEIU reach such an agreement (remember, the two just engaged in a bitter battle over 49,000 child care workers in Illinois, with SEIU winning). If they do, it’s almost a lock that SEIU will be leaving the Federation, as has often been speculated. AFSCME has very large public units around the country where it has bargaining rights but very low membership–a potential target for SEIU if it leaves the Federation.

Of course, the other challenge will be for the insurgents: if one or more of them leave the Federation but some stay, they will have to figure out how to resolve jurisdictional disputes amongst themselves.