Credit Card a Key Part of Effort : Unions Adding Benefits to Attract New Members

Shortly after 2 p.m. Monday, Charles McDonald, the AFL-CIO’s new organizing director, left the Sheraton Hotel here for an important meeting with some officials of the Bank of New York--a meeting that is symbolic of the winds of change that are moving through the labor movement.

Last week the AFL-CIO and the bank reached tentative agreement on a Mastercard that union members could use at interest rates as low as 14.5%, a rate four to five points below those normally paid by the nation’s 70 million bank card holders. Late Monday, the meeting was still under way.

The bank card deal is considered a key element in a broad plan to make the labor movement more attractive to the unorganized workers that unions want to add to their ranks. Membership in the federation’s constituent unions has declined by 1.6 million persons since 1975.

McDonald has said that a labor credit card is merely the first step in developing a comprehensive package of benefits and services for current and prospective members.

Critical Self-Assessment

The bank card plan evolved out of a critical self-assessment that the AFL-CIO’s Executive Council issued at its annual winter meeting here last year.

That report, entitled “The Changing Situation of Workers and Their Unions,” acknowledged that, “despite their accomplishments, unions find themselves behind the pace of change.”

The study said that unions have to strengthen communications with their own members, devote more thought and resources to organizing the unorganized, consider new forms of membership, alter some of their bargaining techniques and goals, give serious thought to mergers of unions to increase economic power and to improve the way unions present themselves to the public.

By offering an appealing package of benefits and services, the report said, unions might be able to lure new recruits as “associate members,” even though they would not be under a collective bargaining agreement.

Insurance, IRA

Other benefits may include supplemental group health insurance, an individual retirement account program and group legal insurance.

The federation’s Executive Council is expected to determine how much of the program to implement in its meetings this week.

Lane Kirkland, the AFL-CIO’s president, said in his initial press conference of the meeting Monday that he has no doubts about the future of the labor movement.

He said the movement is “vigorous, energetic, and exceedingly well led.” However, he acknowledged that it is currently afflicted by a number of serious problems.

Number of Problems

Among them are increased penetration of the American economy by foreign goods--often “the products of exploited labor”--the ease with which domestic companies can close down operations in the United States and move abroad and the “madcap approach to deregulation that has led to some of the things that have been happening in the airline industry particularly and in other areas of our society.”

“I believe that we are in the painful process of relearning why some of those regulations were necessary in the first place,” Kirkland said.

When asked if re-regulating the airlines would preserve jobs in that industry, Kirkland said that broader concerns are involved. “I don’t think it’s simply a matter of jobs. I think it’s a matter of the sound operation of a fine transportation system and a safe transportation system.”