Labor Shifts Priorities to ‘Work, Family’ Issues : AFL-CIO Seeking Legislative Action on Child Care, Medical Leave, Pay Equity

Organized labor took some small, but potentially significant, steps at its convention here last week toward creating a “new New Deal” for America’s workers in the post-Reagan years.

Over time, these little-noticed moves could prove to be even more important than the headline event of the week--the AFL-CIO’s decision to readmit the controversial Teamsters Union after a 30-year exile.

The actions were both substantive and symbolic. The labor federation adopted a policy statement and a plan for legislative action on issues that are coming to be known as “work and family,” and it announced that it would sponsor a rally next May to celebrate the American family.

Core Elements Cited

The “work and family” issues include child care, family and medical leave, pay equity and services for the elderly. Union presidents, organizers and others say they are likely to become the core of labor’s efforts to come to grips with a dramatically transformed economy and work force.

Several unions have been raising these issues in organizing campaigns and at the bargaining table, and they have been working for them in coalitions with women’s groups and child advocacy organizations.

John J. Sweeney, president of the Service Employees International Union, called these efforts a natural outgrowth of an AFL-CIO self-examination 2 1/2 years ago. That study found unions to be “behind the pace of change” and in need of strategies for dealing with emerging problems in a changing work force.

The development of a “work and family” strategy has given the labor movement an opportunity to concentrate on major problems of broad social concern and to appeal to a new generation of workers who have no historic allegiance to unions and often are quite ignorant of what they do, said Ralph Whitehead, professor of communications at the University of Massachusetts, who has done several studies of the changing work force.

Called Key to Labor

Harley Shaiken, professor of work and technology at the University of California at San Diego, also applauded the strategy. “Labor has to address these issues to sustain itself as a social force in this society,” he said.

“I think what we’re doing now is renegotiating the social contract,” said Karen Nussbaum, executive director of 9 to 5, the National Assn. of Working Women, and president of District 925 of the Service Employees International Union.

“When the American work force shifted from agriculture to manufacturing (a century ago), there was tremendous turmoil and trauma,” Nussbaum said. Over time and after many battles, she said, federal laws were enacted providing for a minimum wage, Social Security, unemployment insurance, a 40-hour workweek and setting limitations on the use of child labor.

“That was the government intervening in the workplace, saying to employers you can’t go below this; this is not negotiable,” Nussbaum said in a telephone interview from her Cleveland office. Those victories were buttressed by union gains at the bargaining table, including the creation of pension programs and guaranteed medical benefits.

While the legal protections remain important, Nussbaum said, they are not adequate to meet the needs of many of today’s workers, particularly the growing army of part-timers, two-earner families with children and working women who head households. Whitehead noted also that many of those workers are unrepresented and do not have the so-called “fringe benefits.”

A growing number of these workers are women “who sandwich a job in between taking care of children and elderly parents,” said Kathleen Christensen, a professor at the City University of New York, who is an expert on home-based work. She said that most such workers are ineligible for benefits because they are working part-time to meet their other responsibilities.

“The unions have an incredible opportunity right now,” she said if they can devise strategies to organize part-time workers and independent contractors, two types of employees not historically attracted to unions.

Women today make up 44% of the work force and 72% of all women between the ages of 20 and 44 work for wages, noted Joyce Miller, vice president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.

The need for increased child care, the attempt to gain acceptance of the concept of family and medical leave and minimum health insurance are all vitally important, according to leaders of several unions interviewed here, including representatives of the Service Employees, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), the Communications Workers of America, the United Auto Workers and the International Union of Electronic Workers.

Statistics tell part of the story. Only one in 10 American families is what used to be called “the Norman Rockwell family,” with a working father and homemaker mother, said Gloria Johnson, vice president of the Electronic Workers.

There are almost 10 million children under the age of 6 and over 16 million children between the ages of 6 and 15 with working mothers. But current public and private programs are failing to meet the needs of these children and their parents, according to union leaders and academic studies.

“Unfortunately we face an ethic--a view promoted by employers and held by some legislators--that family responsibilities are purely a personal concern,” said Sweeney in a speech here. “If our members can not take care of their newborn children except by forfeiting their jobs--well, it’s their problem,” he said.

‘Everyone’s Concern’

“I believe that the children and the families of this country are everyone’s concern,” Sweeney added, asserting that the “work and family” issues cry out for a government strategy and, in some instances, government money.

“This is the only nation in the industrialized world, with the exception of South Africa, that does not have a family policy,” added Miller of the Clothing Workers, who also is president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women.

She said there are only 2 million places in licensed day care facilities currently available for the 10 million children under the age of 6 with working mothers.

ILGWU Vice President Susan Cowell said her union had set up a thriving child care center in New York City’s Chinatown area, “but the waiting list is a mile long.” Other unions, including the Service Employees and the Clothing Workers, have set up day care centers at work sites.

Cowell said that there never would be enough such centers to meet current needs and that major federal spending is necessary to adequately deal with the problem.

Child Care Bill Offered

Sens. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) have introduced a bill calling for a $2.5-billion federal funding program for child care. But most union leaders believe that it will be some years before major government funding for child care can be achieved because of the magnitude of the problem, the amount of money needed and the resistance of conservative politicians.

Nonetheless, Helen Blank of the Children’s Defense Fund, a Washington-based child advocacy organization, said that unions were playing a substantial role in helping to lay the groundwork for such government action. She noted that AFSCME had commissioned a nationwide poll that showed that two-thirds of the public supported increasing federal spending for child care.

Diana Rock, AFSCME’s director of women’s rights, said the poll showed that much of that support was found among lower income and middle income workers. Philip Sparks, AFSCME’s public relations director, said that the union had successfully raised the child care issue in several recent campaigns where workers voted to unionize.

Family, Medical Leave

Much closer on the horizon, union officials believe, is family and medical leave. Geri Palast, legislative director of the Service Employees, said a bill on this issue is the first legislative initiative of the “work and family” campaign and that progress is being made. She said that a compromise on the measure had recently been forged between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It provides for the following:

--Employees would be entitled to 10 weeks of unpaid family leave during a two-year period. An employee could take family leave at the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for a seriously ill child or parent.

--Employees would be entitled to up to 15 weeks of unpaid medical leave when the employee has a serious health condition.

--All employers with 50 or more employees would be covered for the first three years after the bill is enacted, and all employers with 35 or more employees would be covered thereafter.

Palast said advocates of the bill hope for a vote in the House of Representatives early next year and subsequently on a similar measure that is pending in the Senate. “This would be a milestone, the first time the United States has put in place a national sick-leave standard,” she said.

Both the Service Employees and AFSCME already have such leave policies in some of their contracts, as does District 65 of the United Auto Workers in New York. “And we put it on the table for all our negotiations at places where we don’t have it,” said Julie Kushner, vice president of District 65. “We have to keep hammering on it.”

She said that the cluster of issues called “work and family” is “beginning to be seen as one of labor’s priorities. It’s not No. 1 yet.”

Initially, said another woman union official who spoke on condition of not being identified, male union officials had shown some resistance to embracing these issues. But, she said, that has changed in the last year.

In support of that view at the AFL-CIO convention here, Mike Mateka, a representative of the Bloomington, Ind., Building Trades Council said: “These are not female issues. These are human issues. I’m the proud father of a 2-year-old. Child care and family support are key issues for young workers. If we’re going to organize younger workers, we have to work on these issues.”