National Public Radio (NPR), November 12, 2004, Friday

National Public Radio (NPR)

SHOW: Morning Edition 10:00 AM EST NPR

November 12, 2004 Friday

HEADLINE: Labor unions need to increase membership

ANCHORS: RENEE MONTAGNE

REPORTERS: LUKE BURBANK

BODY:
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
John Kerry phoned labor groups this week to thank them for their support. He called the executive council meeting of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest group of unions. Labor leaders were meeting to analyze the presidential election and try to figure out how to reverse decades of dwindling membership. NPR's Luke Burbank reports.
LUKE BURBANK reporting:
If you were to go back 50 years, you'd find a work force in which one-third of Americans had union jobs. But a lot has changed since then, and these days, just 13 percent of American workers are unionized. That decline has organized labor wringing its hands. Andy Stern is president of Service Employees International, part of the AFL-CIO.
Mr. ANDY STERN (Service Employees International): Unions created the middle class with good wages and health care, and today union wages are not bringing everyone up, and so workers' lives are not being improved, and we need to change.
BURBANK: Stern made waves in the labor community this week when he called for major changes in the AFL-CIO. Among other things, he wants the group's 65 unions to consolidate into roughly 10, and he wants all the member unions to focus their money, time and energy on organizing.
Mr. STERN: And I think there's a lot of leaders of unions who are very well-intentioned but have not been able to organize their industry.
BURBANK: John Sweeney, who heads the AFL-CIO, concedes there's a problem. He says some of his member unions have been too concerned with negotiating good contracts instead of recruiting new members. Plus, he says, unions are up against powerful forces, globalization and outsourcing, for instance.
Mr. JOHN SWEENEY (AFL-CIO): The fact of the matter is that we've organized two million new members in over the past three and a half years, but we've lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, good middle-class jobs with good health benefits, and those jobs aren't coming back.
BURBANK: The loss of manufacturing jobs means that unions have to look for new members in industries that don't have a history of being organized. And there's a catch.
Ms. KATE BRONFENBRENNER (Cornell University): It's hard.
BURBANK: Kate Bronfenbrenner, directs the Labor Studies Program at Cornell University.
Ms. BRONFENBRENNER: It takes a lot of resources. You have to convince your existing members that it's in their interest to pull dues away from servicing to spend it on organizing. That's not easy. You have to get leaders to take risks. That's not easy. And you have to really change the whole culture of the organization.
BURBANK: And unions will have to focus more on white-collar workers, people in high-tech, financial services and health care. But first, says John Sweeney, they have to get to know these people.
Mr. SWEENEY: We have to find what appeals to these workers. What are their issues? We have to use focus groups and polling to get a better handle on what are the issues that are important to them.
BURBANK: AFL-CIO leaders frequently mention health care as a promising area, but union recruiters could find many of these workers a tough sell, workers like Dorothy Platt(ph), a nurse at George Washington University Hospital for the last 42 years.
Ms. DOROTHY PLATT (Nurse, George Washington University Hospital): I don't like the idea of unions. Now my father was a railroad worker, and he belonged to a union, the AFL-CIO, and he--there was a need for a union for him at that time. In the health-care situation, I think that management and administration can meet in the middle and come up with an agreement.
BURBANK: Some labor leaders, like Andy Stern, say the best chance for a long-term survival of unions is for all of them, from steel workers to housekeepers, to stick together. Kate Bronfenbrenner agrees that there is strength in numbers but says it won't be easy.
Ms. BRONFENBRENNER: All of the labor movement is always like herding cats, but these cats sometimes get herded, and we've seen historically the labor movement make changes, but this is something much more painful.
BURBANK: The next cat roundup will take place in February when the AFL-CIO executive committee considers Stern's proposals. Luke Burbank, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: It's 11 minutes before the hour.