Political, organizing climate making life tough

BAL HARBOUR, Fla. (AP) – Organized labor, facing setbacks in bargaining, membership and politics, is in the fight of its life to remain relevant to workers.

Labor leaders meeting this week at a luxury seaside resort said Tuesday they must do a better job of organizing new workers to overcome steep losses in manufacturing and the current flood of white-collar jobs going overseas.

“The fact is that union membership hasn’t kept up with job loss,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. “The jobs drain and the steady assault by the Bush administration has made a hard challenge harder. Manufacturing job losses in particular have socked not only our members but our industrial unions.”

About 400,000 new members were organized last year, he said. But membership is at an all-time low, with just 12.9 percent of the work force belonging to a union last year.

That’s down from 13.3 percent in 2002, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the private sector alone, only 8.2 percent of workers were union members last year.

The nation’s factories have lost 2.8 million jobs since President Bush took office in January 2001. Overall, total job losses in the U.S. economy have reached 2.2 million.

Meanwhile, labor is recovering from a brutal primary election that pitted unions against each other in their support of Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean, both of whom fizzled despite their labor credentials.

A dispute that union leaders labeled the most important campaign for the future of organized labor failed this month to produce a stellar contract on health care for grocery workers in California. The agreement requires employees to pay for health benefits for the first time and contains no raises. It also creates a two-tier system that provides lesser benefits to some workers.

At this week’s meeting, “at the top of our list is the jobs crisis that has become a national disaster,” Sweeney said.

Overseas outsourcing is becoming a hot issue this election year, with hiring at a near-standstill despite a surging economy. As many as 14 million white-collar jobs could be affected, either by being outsourced to other countries or hit by lower wage pressures, according to a study by the University of California, Berkeley.

Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, said company executives need to “stand up and say to the country, particularly corporate America, that we want you to produce here.”

John Podesta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff and a supporter of free trade agreements, briefed labor leaders on the state of jobs and the economy Tuesday afternoon.

“The reaction by the administration has been … almost nothing other than ‘we’re just going to extend the tax cuts,”‘ he said.

Podesta said globalization is here to stay, but remedies exist to help American workers and to create new jobs, such as raising labor standards in other countries, beefing up job training and education programs and revising tax policy to avoid shifting the tax burden from investors to workers.

Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union of North America and the new chairman of the AFL-CIO’s organizing committee, said unions need to take a hard look at their individual efforts to win new members.

His union allocated 25 cents per member for each hour they worked toward organizing efforts. That has generated $103 million for regional organizing funds for the union, which was the second fastest-growing last year.

“We’re on the verge of being insignificant in many parts of the country, and that’s a battle we have to fight,” O’Sullivan said.

The AFL-CIO has created a new organization for workers who may not have access to a union at their jobs. Working America has 100,000 members, with a goal of 1 million by the end of the year.

Ultimately, union leaders view Bush as the main barrier to growth. They will vote Wednesday on a new assessment of 4 cents per member per month for each affiliate union that would help fund a political program to election Democrat John Kerry in November.

A move is under way this week by some union leaders to undercut the authority of the AFL-CIO’s political chairman, Gerald McEntee, president of the 1.5 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

McEntee has been criticized by some of his colleagues for withdrawing his union’s endorsement of Dean before the Vermont governor bowed out of the race.

Leaders are considering creating a subcommittee of the political committee that would let more union presidents decide how the AFL-CIO’s money gets spent, several union leaders familiar with the talks said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

McEntee was unavailable for interviews Monday and Tuesday. His spokesman, Ethan Rome, dismissed the dissatisfaction as gossip.

“I fully expect that President McEntee is going to continue to play a leading role in the AFL-CIO and help bring people together and marshal our collective resources for the goal of defeating George W. Bush,” he said.

Few deny McEntee’s zeal for politics. His union puts more money and manpower into politics than any other. AFSCME was an early supporter of Bill Clinton in the 1992 race, and the union’s money machine helped propel Clinton to the White House.

Sweeney also denied the subcommittee move was related to concerns about McEntee. “Gerald McEntee will continue to be chairman of the political committee – I hope,” Sweeney said. “He has done an outstanding job.”

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On the Net:

AFL-CIO: http://www.aflcio.org/

AP-ES-03-09-04 1735EST