ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 18, 1997 TAG: 9702180101
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: Associated Press
The AFL-CIO stemmed the decline in membership last year, according to federation officials who on Monday outlined a broad organizing strategy to bolster labor's ranks.
Recruiting new union members on a large scale is essential to reviving labor as a social and political force. With steadily declining numbers over the last few decades, its strength has waned.
``America needs a raise, and one of the most effective solutions is a bigger and stronger labor movement, one capable of acting as a counterweight to the corporate forces now dominating our economy,'' said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
As the federation's executive council met this week, there was widespread support for Sweeney's call to energize the labor movement.
Sweeney said membership in affiliated unions increased by about 12,000 members in 1996, to slightly more than 12.9 million. With the AFL-CIO's help, the labor movement over the past year has notched up organizing victories among state workers in Maryland and hotel workers in Las Vegas.
Yet, labor's strength is a far cry from when unions represented nearly 35 percent of the nonfarm work force three decades ago. Unions overall showed a decline in membership in 1996, from 14.9 percent of the labor force in 1995 to 14.5 percent in 1996, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the past, the federation left organizing to its affiliates. But Sweeney's insurgent campaign was based on a promise to commit resources and staff to recruitment.
The federation announced a three-pronged campaign to draw more women into unions and promised to intensify efforts to organize 20,000 California strawberry pickers.
Karen Nussbaum, director of the AFL-CIO Working Women's Department, said the federation would survey women and meet with hundreds of them to get a better picture on how unions might help them in the workplace. A national agenda to help working women is expected to be developed in the fall.
By bringing other unions in to support the United Farm Workers in their efforts on behalf of strawberry pickers, the federation hopes to convince growers that a nickel increase in the cost of a pint of strawberries could be used to pay workers a living wage.
Doug Dority, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, pledged to support the strawberry campaign after visiting the fields and the homes of low-wage farm workers.
No consumer boycott has been organized, but Dority said he would ask company executives at the more than 100 grocery stores to not stock California strawberries.
``What we want to do is to get the word back to the strawberry growers that they have to improve the conditions in the field,'' he said.
But the federation's successes were tempered by what was widely perceived as the defeat of the Detroit newspaper strikers, who were led by the AFL-CIO's largest union, the Teamsters.
More than a year after six unions representing 2,500 workers walked off the job against The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, the unions announced an unconditional back-to-work offer last week.
The federation also has kept a low profile during the standoff between American Airlines and its pilots, in part because the pilots don't belong to an affiliated union.
Privately, some union leaders said they are concerned that other airlines will be emboldened by President Clinton's decision to invoke emergency powers and delay the strike.
While Sweeney didn't directly criticize Clinton, he said he ``had hoped that the process of collective bargaining could have continued.''
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. AFL-CIO president John Sweeney announces the launchby CNBof the "Ask a Working Woman" campaign. color.