Stars to Sport the Union Label

Five well-known Hollywood performers have accepted featured roles in a major television and radio advertising campaign extolling the virtues of unions, AFL-CIO officials disclosed in weekend interviews.

Commercials with Jack Lemmon, Tyne Daly, Martin Sheen, Howard Hesseman and Dionne Warwick will be filmed in Hollywood in mid-April and will begin airing on May 11, according to Larry Kirkman, executive director of the Labor Institute of Public Affairs, the AFL-CIO’s television unit.

The spots, which will also feature ordinary working people, are designed to improve the public image of unions. Although several unions have used television and radio ads in organizing battles, this $13-million campaign is unprecedented in size and scope for organized labor.

Influential labor leaders have said that the campaign, called “Union Yes,” reflects a realization that labor must either have a greater presence on television and radio or its strength will continue to decline. Unions now represent only 17% of American workers, down from 24% at the start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and less than half of its high-water mark of 35% in 1955.

“The public generally sees unions in the media mainly through stories about strikes,” Thomas R. Donahue, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, said when the campaign was announced last October. “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.”

Kirkman said the goals of the campaign are to improve the public’s understanding of what unions do and to make young workers between 20 and 30 years old more receptive to union organizing.

The campaign is sure to be closely watched in labor circles and may be controversial, if for no other reason than it’s the largest single cash expenditure the federation has made on one project. The ads are being financed by a special 4-cents-a-month dues assessment on AFL-CIO members over two years.

By now, the 14.3 million-member AFL-CIO had hoped to have the ads on the air, but efforts to line up stars proved more time-consuming than expected, said Kirkman and Nick DeMartino, the Labor Institute’s deputy director.

Leaders of Hollywood unions--particularly Patty Duke, president of the Screen Actors Guild, and Arthur Hiller, a member of the national board of the Directors Guild of America--helped the AFL-CIO line up talent, according to Kirkman and Hollywood sources.

All performers who agreed to appear have been associated with liberal causes and are members of the Screen Actors Guild who will be paid “an honorarium,” Kirkman said.

“These stars have a personal integrity and a credibility that makes them fit into a spot with ordinary workers talking about what unions have meant to them,” Kirkman said. “We’re very aware if we had the wrong star, it could backfire.”

He referred to Warwick’s singing on behalf of AIDS victims, Lemmon’s frequent portrayal of individuals whose personal integrity was tested, Hesseman’s role as a teacher on the television show “Head of the Class,” Daly’s handling of “the conflicts between work and family” on the television series “Cagney & Lacey” and Sheen’s long-time activism and recent role as an idealistic union representative in “Wall Street.”

Ironically, Sheen is also the unseen “voice of Toyota” in television commercials. In recent years, the AFL-CIO and numerous American unions have decried the loss of U.S. jobs caused by the decline of traditional manufacturing industries and the increased penetration of imported products--a prime example being Japanese-made cars.

Asked about Sheen’s work for Toyota, Kirkman and DeMartino said they were unaware of it. “The strength of Sheen is represented by the roles he’s played and the causes he speaks for,” Kirkman said. “They are the right associations for the labor movement--his role in ‘Wall Street’ and his involvement with the homeless.”

To avoid confusing viewers, DeMartino said, the union will try to make sure its commercials don’t run back-to-back with Toyota’s.

Kirkman said he hopes to sign up two or three more stars for future commercials. He declined to say who else had been approached, but other sources said the campaign needs some younger performers. Daly, who is 40, is the youngest of the five currently scheduled to appear in the ads.