THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 2, 1996 TAG: 9608310003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 82 lines
Labor Day established as a legal holiday in 1894 - informally closes out the summer season, which officially ends this year on Sept. 22. Nobody, not even organized labor, gives a thought to Labor Day's origin as an occasion for honoring American workers - or gives a hoot. Like Memorial Day, which ushers in the season, and most other legal holidays, Labor Day is cherished as Another Day Off by most employed Americans.
Fall political campaigns customarily shift to fast-forward on or immediately after Labor Day. But times have changed. Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole has been campaigning from the moment he became his party's presumptive nominee by winning enough primaries and caucuses. And Democrat Bill Clinton, seemingly on his way to re-election, stands indicted for campaigning without letup during his nearly four years in the White House. Unlike Dole, Clinton can count on re-energized labor unions for help in his quest to stay on in Washington.
Clinton has the Republican takeover of Capitol Hill to thank for that.
Labor unions' power greatly increased during the Great Depression, when the the New Deal-sponsored National Labor Relations Act established a federal right of workers to organize and bargain collectively and barred ``unfair labor practices.''
But a Republican-controlled Congress in 1947 whittled that power by passing the Taft-Hartley Act over President Harry S. Truman's veto. Union racketeering and other corruption exposed by the McClellan Committee in the 1950s prompted a Congress controlled by Democrats to further weaken unions.
Organized labor appeared to be destined for history's dustbin after President Ronald Reagan, fresh in office, fired striking air-traffic controllers in 1981 and decertified their union. Corporate America chased unions from the workplace. Work stoppages became rare. Union membership skidded.
But membership in governmental unions quietly increased during the 1980s. Reformers ousted the corrupt leaders of some unions. And an energetic organizer named John J. Sweeney earned a reputation for effectively unionizing and representing low-wage workers.
Organized labor in the United States is far from being the political force it was in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. For many reasons, including the shipping of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs from the United States to foreign countries and the technological revolution that has transformed the workplace, unions' prospects are not bright.
But Sweeney, who last year won the presidency of the AFL-CIO, is committing tens of millions of dollars - garnered by assessing union members - to the re-election of Clinton and the recapture of the U.S. House of Representatives by the Democrats. Sweeney casts this effort in part as a response to the Christian Coalition's success in electing Republican candidates to the House and Senate in 1994.
Asked by the independent (Congressional Quarterly) Researcher how he could justify a multimillion-dollar campaign ``to help elect Democrats to Congress when nearly 40 percent of union members voted Republican in the 1994 congressional elections,'' Sweeney answered:
``None of that money is going to candidates. None of that money is going to any political party. All of that money is (going) to educate and mobilize our membership. . . . We will hopefully be mobilizing workers to support candidates, regardless of what party they're in, who want to address the issues of working people.''
While Sweeney's statement that no union money is going to candidates or parties may be technically true, the AFL-CIO's endorsement March 15 makes it crystal clear which side the chieftains of organized labor are on, just as statements by Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson and executive director Ralph Reed make crystal clear which side their group, which does not explicitly endorse candidates, is on.
Given the widespread enmity toward labor unions in Virginia, one of the few remaining right-to-work states, a big chunk of Virginians will choose the anti-union side.
But organized labor's aid to Clinton is encountering less hostility this year than it would have during the Reagan/Bush years. Labor unions appeared unnecessary to many when living standards were rising and prosperity touched more and more houses. But unease among Middle Americans is widespread because of wholesale layoffs of white-collar workers, income stagnation and corporations' turn to outsourcing, temporary workers (who get no benefits) and overseas production to cut costs.
Just as labor bosses' arrogance and corruption along with expanding prosperity weakened public support for unions, the financial battering of Middle Americans and the bonanzas reaped by CEOs and other upper-level executives by slashing payrolls and sending jobs abroad has softened public hostility toward union activism. The pendulum of history always swings. by CNB