Labor's Downbeat Labor Day

By Alexander L Taylor III

Unions fight a decline in membership and new wage concessions

It was on a forgotten day in May 1882 when Peter J. McGuire, the energetic president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and a leader in the Knights of Labor, first publicly proposed that a holiday be set aside to give special honor to the "industrial spirit" of American workers. McGuire thought that the day should be halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving, so that it could be celebrated in pleasant weather. Thus on Sept. 5, 1882, 10,000 workingmen risked dismissal from their jobs by marching to Union Square in Manhattan. According to a contemporary account in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, "Their orderly appearance and sobriety of manner won hearty applause from the spectators who lined the sidewalks."

One hundred years later, workers were scheduled to gather again in New York City on what has become the legally recognized holiday of Labor Day. This latest celebration of the industrial spirit, however, could not obscure the fact that the fortunes of organized labor have sunk to their lowest level in half a century. The Great Depression in the 1930s was the impetus for the greatest push toward unionization in American history, but the economic crisis of the 1980s threatens to undermine the organized labor movement.

The number of union members has fallen from 22.8 million in 1978 to 22.4 million in 1980, the last year for which statistics are available. What is more dramatic, their percentage in the work force has fallen almost continuously for more than a decade, from 25.2% in 1968 to 20.9% in 1980. Since 1975, unions have lost more elections to represent new companies than they have won.

The most heavily unionized industries, such as automobiles, steel, mining and railroads, have been in decline. While organized labor has been expanding into other sectors of the economy, including high-technology manufacturing and service industries, it has not been able to keep pace with the fast employment growth in these areas. Labor has also been slow in attracting the millions of women who are entering the work force, and it has lagged in signing up workers of all kinds in the growing Southwest and West. The AFL-CIO is coordinating a $1.2 million campaign of local unions in the Houston area to win members, but the project has got off to a slow start.

The public image of unions has perhaps never been lower. Organized labor is blamed for making the U.S. less competitive in world trade, for contributing to inflation and for hampering increases in productivity by demands for high wages, seniority protection and restrictive work rules. Several unions, like the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen's Association, are believed to be dominated still by organized crime.

There are no visible signs of an early upturn in labor's fortunes. The weak U.S. economy is likely to keep unions on the defensive. Last week the Government released figures showing that unemployment remained at 9.8% in August, the highest level since 1941. The number of jobless workers in the U.S. now stands at nearly 11 million. Laments William Winpisinger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers: "You cannot organize workers who don't have jobs."

During the years of heady economic growth during the '50s, '60s and early '70s, organized labor generally fulfilled an unwritten compact with its members by getting them more of everything. With the implicit partnership of employers, who often agreed to an expensive settlement rather than risk a painful strike, union leaders regularly won new contracts for the rank and file that guaranteed more pay, better benefits, improved working conditions and additional days off.

No longer. Falling profits, foreign competition, plant closings and layoffs have forced a dramatic change in the relationship between management and labor in some key areas. Union negotiators must now trade higher wages for job security, restrictive work rules for improved productivity, cost of living escalators for guarantees against plant shutdowns. Over the past 18 months, workers have been forced to take less, not more, in the automobile, steel, rubber, airline, meat packing, printing, trucking and newspaper industries. Top union leadership claims that this is an inevitable consequence of the recession. Says AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland: "There are pressures that exist in this environment, and no one is immune from them."

Other experts, though, say that the paybacks represent a permanent deterioration in the power of unions. Says Malcolm Denise, a labor lawyer and former head of labor relations at Ford Motor Co.: "Unions are experiencing a long-term decline because of shifting employment patterns. I don't see them disappearing from the industries that they have dominated, though some of those industries may disappear." David Lewis, a professor of business history at the University of Michigan, supports that view. Says he: "The prognosis is not good. Blue-collar workers have moved to the suburbs and lost interest, and unions have never found the key to organizing white-collar workers."

With organized labor at its weakest point in years, companies are flexing their muscles as never before. Negotiators representing eight major steel producers last month turned down a union offer to give up $2 billion in wage and cost of living increases over three years. Management held out for concessions worth $6 billion. By taking a hard line, the companies are risking their first strike in 24 years when the current contract expires at the end of next July. Yet with the steel industry still suffering from excess capacity and slack demand, the union has little leverage in the talks.

Companies and unions have always existed in a peculiar symbiosis, and many people hope that hard economic times will bring them closer together. Particularly in Detroit, there is talk about labor cooperating with management to build better cars more cheaply. Workers now sit down in quality-control groups to discuss ways to improve production and pass along moneysaving tips to plant managers. Last month, Ford Motor Co. Chairman Philip Caldwell flew to Norfolk to tell 946 union workers that the reason their plant has remained open is that it builds better quality pickup trucks than other Ford plants.

Even so, the shared misery of economic hard times does not always lead to better management-worker relations. In the early '70s, General Motors' Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant was the leading example of "blue-collar blues," a malady caused by repetitive, dehumanizing assembly-line work. Today Lordstown workers are still angry because of the wage and benefit concessions they have been forced to accept. Says Bill Bowers, vice president of United Auto Workers Local 1112: "The people in this country expected us to do something to help the auto industry and the consumer. But the contract that the union brought back to the rank and file was distasteful to 48% of our members. It left a bad taste in our mouth." Bernie Brown, the plant personnel director, agrees. Says he: "When you have had an adversary relationship with the UAW for 45 years, it's very difficult to change it."

Former Labor Secretary John Dunlop, now a Harvard University professor, does not believe that labor and management will eradicate their basic antagonisms. Says he: "I rather think that unions' attitudes are 'Well, this is management's inning. We've got a recession. There'll come a day when we'll get our innings again.'" Dunlop believes that unions in ailing companies were wise to go along with concessions, but he does not expect other workers to follow suit. Dunlop flatly dismisses any argument that the recession will lead to any Japanese-style harmony between unions and industry. "Any notion that this is transforming American labor relations or that people are now going to be more cooperative and less confrontational I regard as completely wrong."

UAW President Douglas Fraser, 65, is the union leader who has been most intimately involved in labor and management's struggle with the issue of conflict or cooperation. Since May 1980, he has been a member of Chrysler's board of directors, and it was Fraser who urged his members to accept wage concessions in 1979 so that Chrysler could qualify for $1.5 billion in Government loan guarantees. He has also backed reductions in pay increases to help Ford and General Motors. But at the same time Fraser must figure out how to keep his membership satisfied. He is leading the union negotiations with Chrysler for a new contract to replace the one that expires on Sept. 14. Says he: "These may be the hardest times since unions were organized in this country."

Such a statement is undoubtedly true for the UAW. Its membership has tumbled from 1.5 million in 1979 to 1.2 million today. Over 250,000 of those workers are laid off, and most have dim hope of regaining their positions. At the same time, the influx of new members has virtually dried up because any auto-company hiring is now almost exclusively from the ranks of the jobless.

Like many workers of his generation, Fraser has been a union man all his life. Born in a Glasgow, Scotland, tenement, he immigrated to the U.S. when he was six and later, like his father, went to work in a Detroit automobile plant. During the strong union years, Fraser helped win extensive benefits for his members. He won early-retirement pay for auto-workers in 1964 and safety and dental-care programs in 1973. Says a senior auto company official: "Fraser is a very bright, shrewd guy with a pretty good feel for his constituency."

On the surface, at least, Fraser seems unchanged by the regular meetings he attends in the Chrysler boardroom. Unlike other directors, he does not accept the loan of two free Chrysler cars. Last month he lashed out at "corporate America and the captains of the auto industry specifically" for continuing to support the Reagan Administration's economic program. In an effort to create jobs for union members, he is leading a congressional lobbying effort for a bill that would force the two largest Japanese auto manufacturers, Toyota and Nissan, to build cars in the U.S.

But at the same time, Fraser recognizes that unions cannot just stand still and hope that their problems will go away. While working to safeguard the benefits of his members, Fraser is willing to accept change. Says he: "Automation and robots are an inevitable trend. You can't resist the introduction of robots or else you forget all about competition with the Japanese. But it has to be done in a rational, civilized way."

Despite all labor's troubles, there are a few bright spots in the movement. The Communications Workers of America, for instance, is solidly entrenched in the blossoming telecommunications industry, and has formed a 13-person committee to plot future strategy. One of its objectives is to organize skilled microelectronics workers who, unlike in the past, will keep their union cards when they change companies and even industries. The United Food and Commercial Workers last year had their best organizing year in history, winning 63,767 new members. Says Union President William Wynn: "These workers opted for the protection of a union contract in the face of genuine fears about losing their jobs."

Experts maintain, however, that unions can do still more organizing in the mushrooming service industries. Says Professor Oscar Ornati of New York University's Graduate School of Business Administration: "There will be unionization regardless of how unions are doing in the auto or steel industries. Probably in the next decade there will be unionization in areas that we don't even think of--banking, financial services. The people who work in these areas are becoming the factory workers of today."

Some of labor's leadership clearly recognize the problem they face. Says Glenn Watts, president of the 650,000-member Communications Workers of America: "Unions must be prepared to change with the times, or they run the risk of being run over by them." Watts suggests, for example, that unions in the future should be less preoccupied with protecting specific jobs for their members and more interested in setting up training programs so they will always have market-oriented skills.

Unions fulfill an essential function in American economic life. Within the large corporations that increasingly dominate business, there will always be a need for some formal method of dealing with problems between workers and management. Even in largely nonunionized companies like Motorola and Northrop Corp. a framework exists for handling those issues. The challenge for organized labor will be to convince a new generation of workers that they are best served by wearing the union label. --By Alexander L. Taylor III. Reported by Gisela Bolte/Washington and Paul A. Witteman/Detroit

With reporting by Gisela Bolte, Paul A. Witteman

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.