AFL-CIO National Convention Comes to County for First Time

For the first time in its 30-year history, the AFL-CIO is holding its biennial convention in Orange County, where one might expect unions to be less a way of life than say, surf boards, Young Republicans or even yuppies. Nevertheless, said John Henning, executive secretary-treasurer, California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, “This isn’t a foreign country.”

“It is more on the conservative side,” he said, but added, “no territory is alien to us.”

About 1,000 international union delegates, hundreds of them with families in tow, have converged at Anaheim’s Hilton Hotel across the street from Disneyland for the four-day convention that officially gets under way today. For the delegates, it is the customary mix of business and pleasure. For the Hilton Hotel, it is an opportunity to win return business from individual international unions that will be seeing the 1 1/2-year-old hotel for the first time.

And for the AFL-CIO, it is a rare opportunity for exposure in Orange County.

The county is somewhat less unionized than the nation as a whole, according to Mary Yunt, secretary-treasurer of the Orange County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. In Orange County, about 15% of companies are unionized, compared to about 19% nationwide, she said.

Still, all of the international unions represented at this week’s convention have locals in Orange County, Yunt said. There are about 150 AFL-CIO locals operating in Orange County and about 150,000 union members who live here, Yunt said.

“To be chosen as a host city is very much a plum,” said Yunt, who will open the convention today, then turn over the gavel to AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. “It gives exposure to the union movement.”

“And the AFL-CIO is very pleased with the hotel,” she said. “I’m sure (the hotel) will be a real showpiece for other internationals” that will be deciding on where to book their own conventions.

Bob Neopolitan, the Hilton’s director of sales, said the convention, which has booked about 1,400 of the hotel’s 1,600 rooms, represents “a tremendous amount of revenue for the hotel.”

“But more important, the attendees are officials of the other union groups,” Neopolitan said. “There are about 50 or 60 union organizations (represented among hotel guests) that do have meetings we could be considered for down the road. I would like to book all of them.”

Bidding for Union Business

Neopolitan apparently is not the only hotel booking agent hoping to lure union business to his hotel, according to Murray Seeger, AFL-CIO spokesman.

“I think I have met at least six Hilton managers and at least one Hyatt and one Sheraton” hotel representative since arriving at the hotel last week, Seeger said. “The big chains bid on our business furiously.”

“Unions are good business. The services we buy--there are people here selling group insurance, pension plans, (plans on) how to invest our money--advertising and PR (public relations) people trying to sell services. . . .”

There also are those who sell their services to the union. Vicki Lawrence, television actress and a Republican who worked on behalf of President Reagan’s campaign, met reporters Sunday to talk about commercials in which she appears as her TV character “Mama” on behalf of United Food and Commercial Workers International, AFL-CIO.

“I’ve been hired as an actress,” Lawrence told reporters. But she added that the “UFCW won me over.”

Lawrence, who belongs to four unions, characterized her commercials as “trying to get the message to Americans about these grass-roots union workers.”

She said “there have been a few instances that (Reagan’s positions) have been anti-union,” Lawrence said. “Nobody’s perfect.”