Nordstrom’s Employees in Seattle Cashier Union : * Labor: Workers decertify the local at five stores. They said they were weary of a publicity war between the chain and the union.

In an embarrassing blow to organized labor, the Seattle union local that ran a massive publicity campaign protesting Nordstrom Inc.’s alleged mistreatment of workers was decertified Friday by a strong majority of employees in Nordstrom’s five Seattle stores.

The 1,022-407 vote ended a 60-year relationship between store employees and Local 1001 of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, which spent most of last year loudly accusing Nordstrom of forcing workers to perform many of the chain’s vaunted customer-service activities on their own time.

While it is not unusual for disgruntled workers to decertify a local union, opponents of organized labor are certain to use the Nordstrom case to portray unions as an increasingly irrelevant institution.

The decertification was especially painful to labor because it involved the service sector.

For years, as union jobs in the industrial sector of the economy disappeared, unions have desperately attempted to reclaim members by unionizing the largely unorganized service industries. They have made little progress. Only about 1.4 million of the nation’s 23 million service-sector workers--less than 6%--belong to unions. Although service-sector employment grew by 1.3 million between 1988 and 1990, unionized service workers increased by only 26,000.

Nordstrom employees who organized the decertification campaign said they had become disenchanted with union representation. A union official acknowledged that employees had grown weary of the union’s publicity war with Nordstrom, even though the war was waged ostensibly on their behalf.

“I think that the Nordstrom employees as a group were tired of this dispute. It has gone on more than two years,” said Local 1001 president Joe Peterson, a former Nordstrom shoe salesman. “You can only deal with so many problems for so long before you reach the breaking point.”

Beginning in 1989, Local 1001 launched a series of rallies, lawsuits and complaints to state agencies contending that the gracious service of Nordstrom workers was coerced by managers. The charges, in some cases corroborated by current and former workers, received widespread media attention.

The attacks were the union’s prime leverage in an effort to negotiate a contract that expired in mid-1989.

Nordstrom sought a new contract that would weaken the union by removing mandatory union membership and dues payments for the 1,800 employees at the five Seattle stores.

The union also coordinated a class-action lawsuit in which hundreds of ex-employees are seeking $300 million in back pay. In its fiscal year ending Jan. 31, Nordstrom established a reserve of $15 million to pay retroactive claims if necessary. The pending case is not affected by the decertification vote.

Seattle-based Nordstrom, which last year earned $116 million on sales of $2.9 billion, is largely non-union. Of its 59 other stores in California, Alaska, Utah, Virginia, New Jersey and Washington, only one--in Tacoma--is unionized. It is covered by another UFCW local. However, UFCW officials had hoped to exploit the Seattle dispute to stir interest in unionizing among other Nordstrom workers.

Despite the union’s publicity campaign, Nordstrom would not budge on its demand to end mandatory union membership--a demand the company said was supported by many workers. Last December, the union agreed to sign a contract with optional membership, saying it preferred to marshal its resources behind the class-action lawsuit.

From that point there was a dramatic drop in the number of Nordstrom workers at the five Seattle stores who continued to pay union dues--a clear sign that decertification was likely.

Workers who organized the decertification campaign argued that Local 1001 had been fighting primarily to maintain its dues proceeds, not for the workers’ welfare.

“Unions want to take our money and we have said ‘no,’ ” said Diane Aldrich, a leader of Nordstrom Employees Opposed to Union Representation.

“Our people finally had a chance to be heard. That’s what they wanted all along,” said Joe Demarte, Nordstrom corporate vice president for personnel.