text: Unions return to their roots | The Spokesman-Review
  Unions return to their roots
  NEW YORK — Laura Tapia is the union movement's equivalent of a beat cop.
  A tiny, fast-talking woman from Puebla, Mexico, she's spent two years walking the 99-cent stores, fruit stands and sneaker shops of Brooklyn's immigrant Knickerbocker Avenue. She made her rounds recently, hugging the woman selling tamales from a cart, pointing to the car wash, which she says is usually staffed by underage kids, and clucking that the combination Laundromat-post office was robbed in the middle of the day.