Labor Leaders Foresee a Turning Point From Setbacks of Early 1980s

Throughout Ronald Reagan’s tenure in the White House, the leaders of organized labor have gone to their annual meeting here facing unmitigated disaster. The crushing of the air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981 was followed by hostile rulings from the National Labor Relations Board and a steady decline in union ranks. They adjourned this year’s meeting Friday, however, in the most upbeat mood in several years.

The AFL-CIO chiefs said they were cheered by the return of a Democratic majority to the Senate, the “defanging” of President Reagan through the Iran- contra affair, improved cooperation among unions and the prospect of increasing membership in 1987.

“I see a lot of good signs,” said John Sweeney, president of the Service Employees International Union, one of the labor federation’s fastest growing affiliates, with nearly 850,000 members. He cited new, coordinated organizing projects, increased political involvement of unions and the development of new benefits for union members, such as lower-cost credit and a discount program of legal services.

‘Positive Things Ahead’

“I see some positive things ahead,” said William Bywater, president of the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Technical, Salaried and Machine Workers. “As far as attacks on labor, Reagan’s been defanged by Irangate,” he said.

When Reagan came into office, 23% of Americans in private-sector jobs belonged to unions; that figure has shrunk to 17.5%. This year, however, union membership is expected to show a net gain for the first time in nearly a decade, said Charles McDonald, director of organizing for the AFL-CIO.

Robert McGlottin, legislative director for the 12.8-million-member labor federation, said the Democratic control of the Senate bodes well for trade legislation that may help curb the loss of American jobs and lead to an increase in the minimum wage--two long-sought AFL-CIO goals whose chances were dim at this time last year.

Yet there is still no sign of a dramatic upturn in labor’s fortunes, according to various academic experts and union officials here. Unions are still confronted daily with plant closings, tough employer resistance to organizing efforts and demands for concessions at the bargaining table.

A Shifting Membership

“The picture is mixed,” said Charles Craypo, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. He said that while unions have made progress in organizing areas such as medical services, there is a continuing loss of jobs in traditional union strongholds such as the auto, steel and machine tool industries. He said that companies will continue to demand that employees accept pay cuts and agree to modify work rules. “There’s still a lot of momentum for concessions.”

“I’m not ready to say we’ve turned any corners, because I think the country is in very fragile condition,” AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland said. “Everything that affects the country is reflected in the trade union movement.”

Richard Belous, a labor economist for the Conference Board, a business research organization, said that he sees plenty of opportunities for labor organizers in the rapidly growing services sector.

“The resentment a worker feels sitting behind a video screen is not so different from the resentment a worker feels on the Ford assembly line,” Belous said, but he added that unions have not yet shown that they can organize the “knowledge factories” of today as successfully as they organized the auto plants of 50 years ago.

Beginning of ‘Renewal’

“The movement is at a critical stage,” said Robert Harbrant, president of the AFL-CIO’s Food and Allied Services Department. He is considered one of the most innovative of the contemporary labor leaders.

“The movement is leaning toward renewal, compared to two years ago,” when the AFL-CIO issued a landmark, self-critical report saying that unions had “fallen behind the pace of change,” he said.

Harbrant said he sees three major challenges to labor: “Trying to rekindle a spirit of trade unionism among young workers, tapping the vast, untapped potential women and minorities can bring to unions, and addressing the need to launch massive organizing drives” in growing fields such as banking and insurance, health care, food services and technology.

There also is some evidence that union organizers are sharpening their efforts to recruit women. The number of women carrying union cards rose by 70,000 in 1986, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The study also revealed, however, that the union movement’s share of all female workers continued to fall--from 13.2% in 1985 to 12.9% last year. This is because the overwhelming majority of women entering the work force are taking jobs in service industries, where union representation is low.

Losses Were Smaller

The study also showed that the number of working union members declined by 21,000 in 1986, from 16,996,000 to 16,975,000. Still, that shrinkage was considerably smaller than the losses of 344,000 members in 1985 and 377,000 in 1984.

McDonald, the AFL-CIO organizing director, predicted a small increase in union membership this year, but he would not set a number and said that losses in the manufacturing sector will continue. Representatives of several of the unions that have been growing recently said they still were having to run twice as hard just to stay in the same place or make small gains.

For example, the United Food and Commercial Workers organized 82,000 new members in 1986, according to union spokesman Al Zack, including 1,100 employees of a Mississippi catfish processor that were the largest group of workers to vote in a National Labor Relations Board union election last year. He acknowledged, however, that the net union membership gain was considerably smaller--15,000--due to retail store closings, including the loss of 14,000 workers it had represented at Gemco stores.

Recruitment of public sector workers continues to flourish. Currently, 3.5 million government workers account for 26% of AFL-CIO members, up from 2 million, or 15%, 10 years ago.