AFL-CIO Seeks to Widen Ranks : Convention Likely to OK Associate Memberships
The 13.2-million-member AFL-CIO will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its formation at its convention that begins in Anaheim Monday by inaugurating a series of programs that union leaders say could add hundreds of thousands--perhaps millions--of associate members to organized labor’s ranks.
The nearly 1,000 delegates to the biennial convention are expected to give overwhelming approval to the new programs that were first conceived in a special “evolution of work” committee report issued last year.
The federation envisions associate members as workers who might be willing to affiliate with a union even though they are not covered by a union contract.
Presidential Endorsements
The delegates are also certain to give full backing once again to the policy of endorsing a presidential candidate before the political parties nominate their own candidates, federation officials said.
The federation first did so in 1983 at the instigation of AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, endorsing former Vice President Walter F. Mondale. Mondale lost by a huge margin to President Reagan, leading some critics to contend that unions should abandon the tactic.
Previously, individual affiliates of the labor federation usually battled one another by endorsing different candidates in the presidential primaries. After the major-party conventions, the federation, with rare exception, would then almost automatically throw its support to the nominee of the Democratic Party.
But this process excluded the labor federation from playing a major role in the choice of the nominee.
Emphasis on Solidarity
The AFL-CIO Executive Council Saturday unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that while its choice in the 1984 election obviously did not win, “the solidarity demonstrated by labor made it clear that we will no longer permit others to name the (presidential) candidate and determine the issues without the full participation of working men and women.”
The pre-primary endorsement will be made again for the 1988 election if the affiliated unions--as they did in 1983--give a two-thirds majority to one presidential hopeful.
Before that next test of strength, however, the federation is again asking all of its affiliated unions to refrain from making a public endorsement of any candidate.
At present, there is no candidate likely to get the federation endorsement. Individual union leaders have a wide variety of their own preferences, including such potential candidates as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and New York’s Gov. Mario Cuomo.
Smaller Percentage
The plan to recruit associate membership to swell labor’s ranks stems, in part at least, from the fact that union membership has taken a dramatic drop as a percent of the national work force.
Specific plans for the associate membership program, drawn up from general recommendations from the federation, have been prepared for the convention in a report by Washington-based Peter D. Hart Research Associates Inc.
Even though the actual number of union members has remained relatively stable over the years, union members now make up less than 20% of the work force, down from a high of 35% in 1955.
There are millions of former members and potential new members who might affiliate with a union even if they are not covered by a formal union contract, the Hart report said. When a union loses a representation election by, for example, a vote of 500 to 400, those 400 union sympathizers are obviously potential associate members.
Advantage in Benefits
These workers, while not represented in collective bargaining by a union, might be attracted by the benefits the massed purchasing power of a large organization could offer them, the report said.
The unions, in effect, would offer associate memberships for a relatively small fee to provide associate members with benefits ranging from medical and auto insurance and credit cards to prescription drugs and dental plans.
The benefits would also be available to union members, but would be an addition to the benefits they now get under their union contracts.
Somewhat analogous to the proposal is the organizational structure of the American Assn. of Retired Persons, which charges its estimated 17 million members $5 a year for a similar variety of services. The AARP also provides information and assistance designed specifically for retired workers.
Insurance Programs
The AFL-CIO estimates that among its present members, at least 2 million will purchase one or more of the insurance plans envisioned in the Hart report.
The concept of a credit card benefit to be offered has already been explored with credit card companies. MasterCard, for one, has indicated “a willingness and ability to begin testing by February, 1986, the appeal to members of a union-sponsored card that would bear the name of the individual’s union.”
MasterCard officials have indicated that the union-sponsored card would require no annual fee, and would offer sharply reduced interest for unpaid bills as well as a low-income qualification rules.
Legal services may also be offered at discount rates by putting together “a nationwide network of law firms willing to offer their services at reduced rates to union members, and to offer initial free consultations and free phone calls for advice,” the Hart report said.
Investment Lure Seen
Also being considered is an investment program that would create individual retirement arrangements (IRAs) with “one or more relatively low-risk or risk-free options.”
Each AFL-CIO affiliate will have to decide whether to implement the associate membership concept, and also how to deal with such questions as whether those memberships would mean direct attachment to a local union, a national or an international federation.
Federation officials note that another advantage to unions of associate members would be that they would serve as supporters in union organizing campaigns at the plants at which they are employed.
Federation President Kirkland indicated in a pre-convention statement that the political orientation of the giant labor organization has not significantly changed.
“We have endured and are still reeling from the effects of the devastating Reagan recession and inexcusably high unemployment,” he said.
Response to Report
He said also that unions around the country have already given an “enthusiastic response” to the Executive Council’s report last year entitled, “The Changing Situation of Workers and Their Unions.”
In that report, the labor federation for the first time seemed to accept some of the blame for the decline of its membership as a percentage of the work force. It introduced, although in broad terms only, some of the proposals that will be presented for more specific action at the convention here.
Kirkland said that, “Clearly, many members of Congress have seen that Reagan policies have succeeded in producing little but the largest federal budget deficit in any nation’s history, the highest trade deficits ever recorded by any nation, and the first increase in the number of poor American adults and children in over 20 years.”
The current economic recovery, he said, is being enjoyed “by some corporations and some sectors of industry,” but is a “myth to the more than 8 million Americans who cannot find jobs.”
