AFL-CIO Plans Ads to Extoll Unions’ Virtues
In a move that is a sign of significant change in organized labor, the AFL-CIO plans to launch a massive television and radio advertising campaign extolling the virtues of unions early next year.
The labor federation’s Executive Council approved the $13-million, two-year campaign Saturday, just before the start of the AFL-CIO’s biennial convention.
Several influential labor leaders here said the decision to undertake the campaign, which will be called “Union, Yes,” reflects a realization that the public image of unions is poor and that labor must have a greater presence on television and radio or its strength will continue to decline.
Strike Stories Cited
“Americans are exposed every year to thousands of radio and TV commercials,” noted a research report prepared for the federation. “Commercial messages go where shop stewards, union officers, organizers and union leaflets rarely go: directly into the home, the office, the car and on portable radios. If we’re not part of that sea of information, we simply do not exist,” the report said.
“The public generally sees unions in the media mainly through stories about strikes,” said Thomas R. Donahue, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. “Through this medium of paid advertising, we hope they’ll see the positive things a union does--giving an individual a voice in the workplace that is expressed in a collective fashion,” Donahue said in an interview here Sunday.
The campaign, which will be based on extensive public opinion polling, will have two targets, explained Gerald F. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who chairs the public relations committee of the AFL-CIO Executive Council. The first will be the general public, whose understanding of unions and the AFL-CIO the federation hopes to shape. The other target will be workers between the age of 20 and 40, among whom the AFL-CIO hopes to increase receptivity to union organizing.
Positive Attitudes Cited
Those targets were chosen, in part, because the federation’s polling found that a majority of Americans think most employees today do not need unions to get fair treatment and that unions have become too weak to protect their members, along with a number of other negative perceptions. But the polls also showed there is a core group of positive attitudes that a strong advertising campaign could build upon, including the perception that unions improve workers’ wages and working conditions.
The campaign was developed by the Labor Institute of Public Affairs, a unit of the AFL-CIO created six years ago with a mandate to give labor greater and more positive visibility on television and radio and to improve the federation’s communications with its members.
The ads are being designed by a New York advertising agency headed by George Lois, who did spots supporting the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in the 1960s and against the Greek military junta in the 1970s. However, Lois is probably most famous for the “Think Small” campaign for Volkswagen and a number of other commercial advertising triumphs.
Major Stars Featured
Lois’s spots typically feature major stars along with ordinary people and these will be no exception, he said in a telephone interview. Dolly Parton, Dionne Warwick and Kris Kristofferson are among the performers who are under consideration for featured roles in the ads, although no contracts have been signed yet, he said.
He and the Labor Institute’s executive director, Larry Kirkman, said they hope to have the first ads on network television by early February. Advertising storyboards have been designed, some copy written and songs have been prepared.
Dues Increase Sought
The 900 delegates to the AFL-CIO convention will be asked this week to approve an increase in per capita dues from the current level of 31 cents a member a month, up to 33 cents in 1988 and 35 cents in 1989 to finance the campaign. It is considered highly likely that the delegates will respond favorably, since they rarely spurn a proposal by the Executive Council.
Still, some labor leaders and public relations consultants have doubts about the campaign’s value. Some say the potential benefits of the campaign may be blunted by the Executive Council’s decision Saturday to take the scandal-ridden Teamsters Union back into the “House of Labor,” as the 12.7-million-member AFL-CIO calls itself.
One official of a large union who is supportive of the “Union, Yes” campaign said he fears “it will have the hollowest possible ring now. It will be seen and heard as an effort to cover this mess,” he said, referring to the reaffiliation of the Teamsters.
Donahue disagreed. “The campaign has nothing to do with the Teamsters’ coming back,” he said, noting that it had been in the works long before the decision to readmit the Teamsters had been made.
‘Giving Workers a Voice’
“The campaign is not designed to rebut an allegation that we’re not growing or can’t pass legislation,” or any other charge, he said. “It’s designed to show the public the essence of unions--giving workers a voice on the job.”
The “Union, Yes” campaign will not be labor’s first television initiative. Since 1975, when the International Ladies Garment Workers Union launched the first major union television effort with its “Look for the Union Label” spots, more and more unions have been using the medium as a way of getting their message across.
The United Auto Workers alone has spent $6 million on television advertising this year in an attempt to create a more favorable atmosphere both for the union’s negotiations with Ford and General Motors and for trade legislation, according to Peter Laarman, the union’s public relations director. And AFSCME, the government employees union, has spent $20 million in the last eight years on television ads, some of which were considered particularly successful in paving the way for organizing victories, said Philip Sparks, the union’s media director.
Merits of Unionism
What is different about the “Union, Yes” initiative, said Sparks, is that it is the first television and radio blitz by labor that lauds the merits of unionism in an across-the-board way.
Kirkman and Nick DeMartino, the Labor Institute’s deputy director, acknowledged that $13 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the advertising budgets of major corporations.
Done for Less Money
But they said two highly successful advertising campaigns in recent years had been done for less money and showed that memorable, potent advertising is possible on the $13-million budget. Those were the campaign for the California Raisin Board featuring animated raisins dancing to the tune of the popular song “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” and another that featured actor John Houseman declaring that the brokerage firm of Smith Barney “makes its money the old-fashioned way: They earn it,” both of which cost about $8 million.
Advertising man Lois said the themes of the campaign--giving workers a voice, respect and fair treatment--had been developed through polls and focus group interviews with non-union workers, rank-and-file union members and union organizers and shop stewards. “It boils down to simple human needs, human wants,” he said.
Tracking Studies Planned
DeMartino said tracking studies will be done periodically to measure the project’s progress, though he acknowledged that assessing success would be more difficult than in a typical commercial advertising campaign where, for example, “you can see if you’re selling more soap.”
Some union leaders, such as Morton Bahr, president of the Communication Workers of America, were initially skeptical about the effort, but now say they think it can work. Still, some union public relations consultants, speaking on condition they not be identified, expressed serious doubts. One called the campaign “a sugar pill” and another was even more critical: “It never addresses people’s real life experience, people’s understanding or any of the mythology that’s been created by labor’s downward spiral over the past 10 years.”
But Sparks retorted that the campaign can succeed. “The themes--voice, dignity and respect--are the essence of the successful themes AFSCME has used in campaigns for eight years.”
“This is a gamble,” he said. “It’s innovative. You’re using electronic media to promote a service rather than a product, but the public relations committee felt it was a risk worth taking, given the research they were presented.”
