Radio, TV : Unions Take to the Air to Boost Image

For the last seven months, the Communications Workers of America have been doing what Pepsi, GM, Burger King and a host of other corporations have done for years: They are trying to sell something on television.

What is different about the union’s nationwide advertising campaign is the product--the telephone operator.

The $2-million effort is designed to encourage telephone users to choose a unionized carrier in selecting their long-distance service. That choice will be made over the next two years, and it threatens thousands of unionized jobs because AT&T;’s competitors--such as MCI--are not organized by any unions and use vastly fewer operators.

Throughout the nation, consumers are seeing three highly sophisticated television spots and hearing similar pitches on radio. Produced by Ogilvy & Mather, one of the nation’s leading advertising agencies, the ads urge consumers to stick with a service-oriented phone system and conclude with a simple slogan: “It just wouldn’t be the telephone without the operator. Don’t give it up!”

Flirting With TV

Since 1975, when the International Ladies Garment Workers Union launched the first major union television effort with its “Look for the Union Label” campaign, labor has been flirting with the medium as a way of getting its message across.

It was slow going at first. William Winpisinger, president of the International Assn. of Machinists, had been trying to convince George Meany, the longtime AFL-CIO president who died in 1980, that workers were poorly portrayed in the media and that this was damaging the labor movement. He urged Meany to consider using television as one way to solve the problem. Winpisinger’s pleas were largely ignored, however, until Lane Kirkland succeeded Meany.

A Vital Tool

Now, as the communications workers’ campaign indicates, unions see television as a vital tool in reversing the major losses of members and bargaining power that labor has suffered in recent years.

In the last year alone, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Postal Workers Union, the National Education Assn., the United Auto Workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers, among others, made increasing use of television advertising and multi-city television press conferences to enhance their position during organizing drives, contract negotiations and strikes. And, for the last three years, the AFL-CIO has had its own television production unit, the Labor Institute for Public Affairs.

“If you’re not on television, you don’t exist in our society,” said Rozanne Weisman, public relations director of the communications workers. “People form the bulk of their opinions through television. Certainly the Reagan Administration has demonstrated the importance of TV, and it behooves people in the labor movement to learn how to deal better with electronic media,” she said.

Still, there is no unanimity in the labor movement about just how to use television. Some favor concentration on slick, image-building spots. Others think it should be used more in organizing campaigns and strikes.

“It’s a way of extending the picket line,” said Washington consultant Ray Abernathy, who does considerable public relations for the Service Employees International Union and its small but celebrated office workers unit, Local 925.

Others, like Washington consultant Gary Nordlinger, think radio is often more effective for labor’s purposes.

In any case, most of the top union leaders who will be gathering next week in Bal Harbour, Fla., for the AFL-CIO executive council meeting recognize that labor has an image problem and that they must do something about it.

“I don’t think we’ve told our story, and I don’t think the press has told what we do,” said Jack Sheinkman, secretary-treasurer of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers.

“Who fights for civil rights, Medicare, Social Security, education--this is a special interest?” he asked, responding to the assertion made by Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) and other politicians in last year’s presidential campaign that labor had become just another special interest.

Image Problem

Sheinkman, along with many other labor leaders, noted that the persistence of the special interest charge in the 1984 campaign had heightened the consciousness of the labor movement about its image problem. But, he said, Kirkland began to grasp the extent of the problem during a cross-country tour shortly after Ronald Reagan was elected to his first term as President in 1980.

What Kirkland heard then--in no uncertain terms--was that union members believed that they were being beaten on the nation’s airwaves. Kirkland said that everywhere he went, union members had the same lament: “They told us labor had no presence on the dominant medium--television.”

Kirkland paid attention. At the labor federation’s convention in October, 1981, the AFL-CIO voted to appropriate $3 million to launch its public affairs institute. It was given a dual mandate: to give labor greater and more positive visibility on television and to improve the federation’s communications with its members.

The institute, headed by Larry Kirkman, former director of television at the American Film Institute, has produced news shows, documentaries and advertisements for commercial, public and cable television and for internal use. Recently, it opened a Hollywood office to develop a television variety show to present working people in a favorable light.

“Our job is to really show labor’s effectiveness in fighting for worker interest, to show the advantages of a union workplace and to show that unions are the agents and the vehicles of participation with employers, that it’s through unions that workers can express themselves and find their personal freedom,” Kirkman said. “The messages that we’re trying to get across about unions in the mass media are close to the ones that have to be communicated by organizers.”

Not a ‘Substitute’

Kim Fellner, public relations director of the Screen Actors Guild, applauds the work the institute has done. But, she cautioned, “media should not be used as a substitute for doing the real work of the labor movement. It’s only a way of letting people know what you’re doing. Substance is more important than gloss.”

Some labor leaders go further. “Advertising is not going to resurrect this movement,” said Anthony Mazzocchi, a former vice president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers. Now the director of a New York-based think tank called the Workers Policy Project, he said labor is no longer the dynamic force it once was. “And without vitality,” Mazzocchi added, “you can’t, by slick advertising techniques, change the image of a movement that is very moribund.”

Mazzocchi, like those he criticizes, also acknowledges that television is a powerful medium that labor has to use.

Murray Seeger, the AFL-CIO’s director of information who played a key role in the development of the public affairs institute, agreed. “The great virtue of television is reaching right into people’s homes,” he said. “A long time ago, our people stopped coming to meetings, like (members of) all other organizations. With television we can get into their homes.”

But, he added, “you still have to compete against the Pittsburgh Pirates or ‘Dallas’ or ‘Cheers.’ ”

‘American Works’

Although neither Seeger nor Nick DeMartino, marketing director of the public affairs institute, has any dreams of their programs topping the ratings in prime time, they said they are pleased with studies showing that the institute’s “America Works” news feature series, which was broadcast last year on 155 public television stations, had been well received by the stations and viewers.

The program usually featured a union activist--such as laid-off Los Angeles steelworker George Cole, who organized a food bank for the unemployed--battling difficult odds to achieve some noble end that would be favored by the public at large, followed by an in-studio debate on an issue like hunger in America or plant-closing legislation.

DeMartino acknowledged that labor will never have as much money as it would like to spend on programs like this or on other television and radio activities. In the television world, the institute’s $3-million-a-year budget is not much. After all, PepsiCo Inc. spent $195 million on television advertising alone in 1983, according to Advertising Age.

The key, DeMartino said, will be proper use of the limited funds.

This year, he said, a lot of effort will go into helping middle-level union leaders--many of whom are wary of the press--develop better skills in dealing with the media. The public affairs institute has produced a “how to” tape toward this end. “We’re missionaries in labor,” DeMartino said. “It’s really great to show our materials to a local union and get a positive response.”

‘The Hot Buttons’

Most agree that unions have to do market testing to see what will go over well before launching a major campaign. “You’ve got to find out what are the hot buttons,” said Michael Dowling, former public relations director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and now a vice president for Ogilvy & Mather, the agency doing the ad campaign for the communications workers.

One “hot button,” some unions have discovered, is the employer.

Allen Zack, public relations director of the United Food and Commercial Workers, one of the nation’s largest unions, said one of its locals won a major victory simply by threatening to use television to embarrass a corporation.

He said the union, working with the Kamber Group, a Washington-based public relations firm, developed a campaign for New Mexico television about a dispute its Local 1564 was having with a supermarket chain there. The spots chided the chain for failing to pay $250,000 in back wages after a strike settlement.

But the spots never hit the airwaves. Zack said the company paid up shortly after being told that the spots were about to run.

Philip Sparks, director of public relations for the municipal employees’ union, also said his union’s television advertising has paid dividends. Last year, the million-member public employee union succeeded in organizing 7,500 Chicago and Cook County employees, and he thinks the ads helped.

‘A Major Factor’

“The Chicago Tribune credited our ads as being a major factor in our organizing success,” he said.

The municipal employees’ ads stressed giving workers stronger representation on the job. Sparks said that the union’s polls had come to the same conclusion presented by Harvard economists Richard Freeman and James Medoff in their recently published book “What Do Unions Do?”: that unions win the most sympathy from potential members when they emphasize that they will give them a greater voice in their work life.

“We’re emphasizing that theme,” Sparks said, and the union will spend $500,000 airing the same kind of ads in Ohio this year as it ran in Illinois last year.

The union has presented the simple message about the workers’ voice in several ways, some rather sophisticated. For example, one of its television ads featured the popular mimes Robert Shields and Lorene Yarnell. As they enact some scenes depicting office life, a woman’s voice asks off-camera:

“Know what’s great about being a clerical worker? Well, you get to work with state-of-the art, high-tech equipment.

“Know what’s not so great? Some people treat clerical workers like machines!”

The off-screen announcer also says that what is not so great is that many clericals get low pay. She tells the audience, “AFSCME is working to get clericals the respect and pay they deserve.” She concludes, “Best of all, AFSCME gives clericals a voice!” just before the union’s logo appears on the screen. As it fades off, Shields and Yarnell chime in, “We’re with you AFSCME!”

Interviews Offered

The municipal employees’ union has spent almost $14 million on television since 1977, more than any other union, according to Sparks. The union has had its own television studio since 1981. In 1983, it added a satellite link and can provide local television stations with interviews with its own officials and other individuals sympathetic to its point of view during strikes or legislative campaigns. For example, it presented lawyer Winn Newman, one of the nation’s experts on comparable worth, when its members were involved in a battle on that issue in San Jose.

Sparks said his union got active on television because his predecessor, Dowling, and Jerry Wurf, the union’s late president, reached the conclusion that they had to combat a lot of negative images that had developed about public sector workers. And, he added, the union had already seen how the “Look for the Union Label” campaign had been such a success for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

“It made the union a recognizable entity,” said Paula Green, the New York advertising executive who wrote the song that was the centerpiece of the ad campaign. “After three years, 87% of the country knew us, according to recognition tests.”

Both Green and Wilbur Daniels, the garment workers’ executive vice president, said one of the keys to their ad campaign’s success was that no professional actors were used.

“We felt we needed to establish an acquaintanceship, a friendship with the public,” Green said. “We started out to establish with the American public what the union was--people, hard-working, honorable people.”

‘Struck a Chord’

She said the union needed the support of the public in its attempt to curb garment industry imports that were causing American workers to lose their jobs. “We struck a chord of recognition and affection.”

“ ‘Look for the Union Label’ has become part of American folklore,” Daniels said. “It eases our entrance into a lot of places.” He said that when the union’s Washington lobbyist walked through the halls of Congress, people would hum the song when they saw her.

But, he noted: “I can’t say that because of the commercials we’ve organized so many workers.”

And Daniels added: “I do not want to exaggerate the impact. I don’t think we’ve come close to solving the problems that brought on the imports.”

Dowling, the advertising executive with longtime labor ties, also acknowledged that a television campaign alone will not solve all of the problems unions are facing today.

Still, he said, “the labor movement, in the area of communications, has to come into the 20th Century. If they don’t, they’re going to be out of business.”