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The State of the Unions

Think Tank Transcripts:Unions

ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, arecipient of the Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen,bringing better, healthier lives to people worldwide throughbiotechnology.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. The recent AFL-CIOelection brought new leaders to America's labor movement. Whathappens next?

Joining us to discuss the state of American labor are: AlbertShanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers; BarryBluestone, professor of political economy at the University ofMassachusetts and author of 'Negotiating the Future: A LaborPerspective on American Business'; Samuel Estreicher, professor oflabor and employment law at New York University and author of 'TheLaw Governing the Employment Relationship'; and Leo Troy, professorof economics at Rutgers University and author of the forthcomingbook, 'The Twilight of Private Unionism.'

The topic before this house: The state of the unions. This week on'Think Tank.'

Unions have a proud tradition in the United States. They foughtfor better wages and working conditions for workers in the first halfof this century, led by activists such as Samuel Gompers. From 1945to 1973, a period of strong union participation, the median paycheckof American workers doubled. But unions are now in decline. Shortlyafter World War II, almost 36 percent of all workers were in a union.That number has dropped now to only 15 1/2 percent. And as unionmembership declined, so did confrontation with management. In 1970,2.5 million workers participated in 381 strikes. Twenty-five yearslater, 182,000 workers walked out in only 35 strikes.

But all that may change. The AFL-CIO recently voted in newleadership vowing to revitalize organizing and activism. It has beencharacterized by some observers as a victory for the left wing of thetrade union movement.

Unions have a tough road in front of them. Many businesses arerelocating to right-to-work states, where workers have the right notto pay union dues even in a unionized workplace. The 21 right-to-workstates have gained 2.7 million manufacturing jobs since 1960 whilestates that maintain pro-union laws have lost 1.4 million jobs.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us here. President Al Shanker,let's go around the room once beginning with you. Al, is indeed theAmerican trade union movement in decline?

MR. SHANKER: Well, the private sector has been in decline, but thepublic sector has been growing, so the overall effect over the lastthree years is that the actual number has remained pretty constant.Of course, since there are more and more jobs, it does mean that it'sa smaller percentage of the work force. But there's still a lot ofeffective organizing going on in the public sector. That in itself isa problem because if the union movement should become all publicsector 80 percent public sector, I think that the union movement willbe in very serious trouble.

MR. WATTENBERG: Leo Troy.

MR. TROY: Yes, the private sector union movement has been indecline, in fact, relative to the work force since 1953; in terms ofthe total number of members, since 1970. They have shed over 7million members in the private sector. This is an internationalevent, by the way. It's not limited to the United States. Everysingle major industrial country is experiencing this sameconsequence.

And I forecast that for the U.S., the percentage of the privatesector union movement which will be unionized come the new centurywill be what it was at the beginning of the 20th century, 7 percentof the work force.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, Sam Estreicher, is it a real decline?

MR. ESTREICHER: The union movements have two problems. One is theyhaven't organized sufficiently to keep pace with the changes in thework force, and it appears that the Sweeney (sp) slate will beaddressing that. But the more fundamental problem is they have tocome up with a product.

MR. WATTENBERG: The Sweeney slate is the --

MR. ESTREICHER: The new slate at the AFL-CIO.

MR. WATTENBERG: -- the new slate at the AFL-CIO led by --

MR. ESTREICHER: John Sweeney.

MR. WATTENBERG: -- John Sweeney.

MR. ESTREICHER: Of the Service Employees.

MR. WATTENBERG: Right.

MR. ESTREICHER: And he promises a good deal more organizing, andthat remains to be seen.

But the second problem, which is a much more fundamental problem,is that the union movement has to come up with a product that makessense to private-sector workers, that meets the needs of firms in anincreasingly competitive environment and provides effective voice forthose workers. And that's where the new thinking has to go on.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, Barry Bluestone, you have written about thelabor movement for many years.

MR. BLUESTONE: I think Sam's (may mean Leo) got it right. Theunion movement is obviously in decline in terms of the numbers. Ithink probably even more importantly, it's in decline in terms of itspolitical strength. Both with the changes in what's going on in statelegislatures and what's going on in Congress, the union movementdoesn't have as many friends as it used to have, and thereforepolitically it's not as strong.

But I think Sam is also right. It really -- the struggle for thetrade union movement is to win back the hearts and minds of theworkers of this country, and that's going to require a reinvention ofwhat the trade union movement is like. At the bottom of the incomedistribution, of the low-wage workers, we're going to see some realexciting new organizing campaigns. At least Mr. Sweeney and the newleadership have promised that.

The real question will be for the vast number of workers in theeconomy, from those who are in white collar, those in blue collar,those who are professional and technical workers, is it possible forthe trade union movement to create a new kind of trade unionism whichappeals to the modern worker?

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, at this AFL-CIO convention that is supposedto design us or move us into a great era of prosperity, the newnumber two man, Richard Trumka of the Mine Workers Union, had beenquoted as saying if his slate is elected, and it was, that it wouldbe 'business's worst nightmare.' Now, is that what labor ought to bedoing now?

MR. TROY: The change in the leadership -- the French have anexpression covering that. 'The more things change, the more they staythe same.' I don't think it makes any difference what he uttered orit makes any difference what Sweeney has promised. The economic, themarket, the international forces, and the weakness that Barry haspointed out, the political weakness of organized labor in thiscountry make it clear to me that we're going to have more of thesame. I mean their rhetoric is not a substitute for results.

MR. ESTREICHER: If I can speak to Trumka's rhetoric, I think thathe has never read Gompers 101. Sam Gompers, who was the former andfounding member of the AFL, understood that unions could only surviveif they could spread the cost of unionization across all competitors,and that was sort of his fundamental insight that brought the AFL tothe place it once had.

MR. WATTENBERG: They never brought it to all competitors. At theirhigh point, they were only a third of the working force.

MR. ESTREICHER: At their high point, they were a third of theworking force, but where they were strong, they organized virtuallythe entire product market. So, for example, in automobiles, you know,the CIO organized all of the automobile manufacturers and theconstruction beforehand.

MR. TROY: What about the Japanese transplants, Sam? I mean,competition still works, and it --

MR. WATTENBERG: The Japanese auto transplants --

MR. TROY: -- are basically -- are non-union.

MR. WATTENBERG: -- are non-union.

MR. TROY: Honda, Nissan. As a matter of fact, the UAW sought toorganize the Nissan plant in Tennessee several years ago. They lostby two to one, and this is a major, powerful, well-organized,well-led, well-financed union, and they flopped.

MR. BLUESTONE: But I think the reason why they flopped, Leo, wasthat they were still coming with the old organizing strategy, andwhat I'm hoping will come out of the new AFL leadership are some newstrategies, some new ideas as to how to appeal to workers.

You're also going to see that the international cooperation isgoing to be important. You're going to have the Metalworkers'Federation in Germany helping the UAW organize the BMW plant here inthe States.

MR. WATTENBERG: Is it -- Barry, is it wise for the new unionmanagement to talk about making a nightmare for American business?Does that make any sense?

MR. BLUESTONE: I think -- I don't think it's wise and I think it'staken out of context. I think what Rick Trumka was saying, what theleadership has been saying is that for those firms who think they canroughshod over labor, they're going to have a new strengthened labormovement out there to contend with. But I've also seen leaders allthrough the AFL-CIO, from George Becker (sp) of the Steelworkers toSteve Yokich (sp) of the UAW, sitting down with responsiblemanagement and developing new forms of unionism which both focus onraising the productivity and quality and innovation of the firm tomake them internationally competitive and give the employmentsecurity to workers as a result.

MR. WATTENBERG: Al Shanker, we have heard about Gompers 101. Whatis Shanker 101 on what happened really in that convention, the emblemof which might be this sort of very tough sort of language thatTrumka used. Is this -- was this a move to the left? Was it a fairconvention?

MR. SHANKER: Well, let me say that I think we ought to notnecessarily take campaign speeches too seriously. We don't in thegeneral politic, and I think we ought to exercise the same judgmentinsight of union elections.

I don't know whether -- I think some of the unions in thecoalition that won are further to the left, traditional or old left,than the labor movement has been in the past, but not all of them.And I think it remains to be seen whether the whole movement goesthat way or not.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let me just question you on one thing. As Iunderstand it, you feel that the actual operation of the conventionwas unfair or rigged. Could you explain what your grievance was?

MR. SHANKER: Well, it was a very unpleasant experience because,first of all, everybody came with -- the people on the Sweeney sidehad manuals, actually, which said, 'Cheer at this point,' or 'Makethis statement,' or -- et cetera. We have a copy of the manual. Wemanaged to get one. So the whole thing was scripted, and each day adifferent shirt, a different uniform, a different cheer, and soforth.

But there were 500 delegates that came from unions that pay a lotof money -- they pay dues, and there were 500 delegates rounded upfrom very central labor bodies. Basically, these were sort of boughtvotes. They were central labor bodies that never sent anybody beforeand --

MR. WATTENBERG: Bought by the Sweeney side.

MR. SHANKER: Yeah, they were brought there. And by having 500people in the hall who were not dues payers, that was enough toprevent a roll call vote on issues, so that one of the things thatpeople left the convention with -- of course that we're all going totry to make it work, we're all trade-unionists, we're all in trouble,and we're not going to continue a whole bunch of in-fighting. We'regoing to pull together, and on some issues we'll differ. But peopledid leave with somewhat of a bad taste, namely, that you couldn't getup and make a statement without being hissed or booed and that youcouldn't really get a roll call vote because 500 people were broughtin who don't pay a nickel to the AFL-CIO, and they had enough votes,really, on the floor to outvote those who pay millions and millionsof dollars.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Barry.

MR. BLUESTONE: I think it's important, Ben and Al, to note thatthere was need for change in this organization. The AFL-CIO did nothave the allegiance of most workers in this country. I'm a unionmember. I'm a member of the UAW and I'm also a member of the NationalEducation Association, which is a union outside the AFL. And I thinka lot of people voted for the Sweeney slate, the one that won, on thebasis that they wanted to see real change and they saw the need tosend a message to workers in this country that there were new peoplein charge. And that's what it basically came down to.

MR. TROY: Could I pick up on this point of change? We heard fromBarry before about new ideas, new leaders. Let's take one of the newleaders. The central new leader, let's call him the operating generalin this, and it's Trumka, what has he accomplished as the leader ofthe United Mine Workers? Here's a union which today if it has 30(thousand), maybe 40,000 members, it has a lot. Once upon a time, theUnited Mine Workers had 600,000 members. This is the person that'sgoing to lead this new onslaught to organize workers? The union'sbeen fined numerous times. I mean, this is the new leadership of thenew ideas. What are the new ideas?

When you say new ideas, Barry, what is a new idea?

MR. BLUESTONE: What am I talking about? Well --

MR. SHANKER: This is the Gary Hart approach, 'new ideas.'(Laughter.) But where were they? And it was a Simonesque campaign.There were no new ideas in the campaign.

Furthermore, all the people who ran for office were sitting atthat table with me, as a member of the executive council, for 5, 10,15 years. If they had a new idea, I would have heard it. (Laughter.)

But there may be new ideas that come out of this now because thereare a lot of promises that were made in the course of the campaign,but there weren't any so far.

MR. WATTENBERG: Your position, as I understand it, is a trend inmotion will stay in motion. I mean that it's gone down in the privatesector and it's going to --

MR. TROY: Exactly. Nothing has changed. You see, look, theinternational competition which has brought down the private sectorunion movement is not only continuing, it's gaining power. Youmentioned movement of companies to the right-to-work states. What youought to also mention is that companies are moving below the RioGrande River, companies are moving to the Far East.

MR. ESTREICHER: Leo, isn't it a mistake -- I mean, the marketforces are very important, I believe in them, but you have this viewthat they are a hundred percent and there's no room for humanbehavior to change some outcomes.

I think that it's a mistake to focus on the AFL-CIO level. TheAFL-CIO is a service provider for the national organizations. Weought to be focusing on what the national organizations do andwhether they're meeting the needs of the companies that they haveorganized. The problem is, companies compete with other companies.Companies don't have an alliance of interests. The internationalrepresents a force, a multi-employer force, that doesn't correspondto the interests of the particular companies they organize.

MR. WATTENBERG: So you think that in this day and age, simply put,unions are not useful?

MR. ESTREICHER: Unions as multi-employer organizations that arefundamentally seeking to push an industry wage pattern that is Ithink a thing of the past. It is not -- and the problem is that theexisting AFL organizations believe that that is still fundamentallywhat they are about. That's what Richard Trumka believes he isfundamentally about. And that has to change or some otherorganization will develop.

MR. WATTENBERG: Barry.

MR. BLUESTONE: What you're finding is it is changing, and it'schanging because of the market forces that Leo talked about. But whatyou're finding is that those same trade union leaders who presumablyweren't making any change are starting to develop whole new ways ofdealing with management.

You take a company like Magma Copper, a big copper producer out inTucson, Arizona. This is a company that was going bankrupt in 1988. Anew relationship between the union and the company, 15-year accord toput some employment security and get that company going, 86 percentincrease in productivity, in large measure because the union workforce has helped do that.

The CEO of that company, in fact, ran a full, you know,quarter-page ad in 'The Wall Street Journal' and 'The New York Times'praising the union for their help in rebuilding that company. That'sa small, little example of what could be done. I think Leo isabsolutely right, the future looks bleak -- unless we see those kindsof changes on a larger scale.

MR. WATTENBERG: You know, why does Al Shanker say that he has satfor 5, 10 or 15 years with the very people at the executive counciltable who are now in charge, and he wonders, you know, where are allthose new ideas? I mean he was there.

MR. BLUESTONE: On the board that Al sits on and that he voted for,last year the AFL-CIO board passed a magnificent statement, 'The NewAmerican Work Force,' in which they laid out a blueprint for thekinds of changes that we've been talking about here. The problem isthat we've just not seen it -- MR. TROY: Look, they laid out ablueprint back in 1984 or 1985. They had the Lou Harris Associates doa study for AFL-CIO, and they had a program and they were predictinghow this is going to turn things around.

You know, again, I hate to repeat that French expression, but themore things change, the more they're still staying the same. Nothinghas changed.

MR. WATTENBERG: You have been concentrating sort of on facts, andvery elegantly and it sounds to me very accurately. What is youropinion of those facts? The fact that private unionism is diminishingin the United States, is that good, bad or indifferent?

MR. TROY: I would like to rephrase your question to this extent:Does it make the United States economy more competitive? And I'llanswer that question. If you want me to say it's good, I'll say it'sgood because it makes the American economy more competitive. Andthat's a fact.

MR. BLUESTONE: I totally disagree, Leo. The fact --

MR. TROY: Well, naturally. I mean, you know, we heard previouslythat unions tried to establish a uniform wage across the economy,which they never succeeded in doing. I mean, some unions weresuccessful to a limited extent, like the Steelworkers. But whatreally counts in addition to the wage level is just the productivityof those workers, union labor costs.

MR. BLUESTONE: And productivity of union labor in general ishigher than non-union labor.

MR. TROY: That is a --

MR. BLUESTONE: The work that's been done on this shows it over andover again.

MR. TROY: I know, but I have a lot of reservations about theauthors of those studies. They're the same authors who for 10 yearssaid that the Canadian union movement was booming, the American unionmovement was collapsing.

MR. WATTENBERG: I mean, you think they are in labor's pocket,those scholars?

MR. TROY: Oh, there's no doubt about it. I don't think there's anyquestion about it.

MR. BLUESTONE: They're not necessarily in labor's pocket, but eventhey concede that unions are bad for the profits of a firm, and ifunions are bad for the profits of a firm, capital moves out of theunion sector and builds up the non-union sector, goes to the Southand elsewhere, so that even they concede that point, and there aremeasurement questions about productivity.

MR. WATTENBERG: Al, your favorite institution is being attacked.MR. SHANKER: Let me say, there are two -- at least two new ideas asto how the union movement can ultimately grow. One is to temporarilyforget about selling the union and in the body politic develop rightsfor workers as workers, not in terms of unions. The right of allworkers to, let's say, organize their own little thing in theirworkplace, to have meetings; the right for them to elect, just fortheir own group, a representative who would speak to the employer,and that employer is required periodically to talk to that person.Not a union. These are just a bunch of people there.

Now, so that's not unionism coming in. This is, hey, these are abunch of people. If they want to meet there to discuss theirproblems, why shouldn't they? If they want to talk to the boss, itbecomes a very different issue.

Now, ultimately that does, in some places, lead to unionism. Sothat's one new idea which would be a road for building.

There's a second one. Almost every poll shows that about 35percent of working people say that they would like something like aunion. That would be a lot of people.

MR. WATTENBERG: What percentage?

MR. SHANKER: About 35 percent. Now, the trouble is it's hard -- inorder -- the way the union movement has been organizing up to now,you go into a shop and if you don't get 50 percent plus 1 inelection, you don't have anything, because nobody is organizing the35 percent who don't conveniently -- you know, aren't in places wherethey're in appropriate bargaining units and in an election you get 51percent.

So if the union movement were to go out there and start organizingon a different basis, in other words, organize the way the AmericanAssociation for Retired Persons does, say, 'You're a worker. Allright, you don't have 51 percent, but you're a worker, you want tojoin the AFL-CIO or you want to join the American Federation ofTeachers' -- we've started doing this -- 'join as an individual.' Wewill have discount benefits --

MR. WATTENBERG: The American Federation of Teachers.

MR. SHANKER: Yes, and it has helped us in our regular organizingdrives because if you organize people as individuals because theywant discount insurance, they want travel, they want anidentification -- by the way, they also want conferences, they wanttraining, they want all sorts of things that professionalassociations provide. Now, when we get a certain concentration ofthese people, we write them and say, 'Hey, do you know that there are85 people in your community who are members of the AFT. Would youlike to have a meeting and get together?' We have actually organizedvery extensively in both Texas and Louisiana using that technique.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, Leo Troy looks as if he's going to jumpout of his seat here.

MR. TROY: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. Look, that 35percent figure was -- as an ancient history tool. It was mostrecently regenerated by the Dullop (sp) Commission. And what theyforget to tell the world is that means that 65 percent said theydon't want unions. That's exactly what the Lou Harris survey foundfor the AFL-CIO. They didn't get wide notoriety, but 65 -- actually,it was two-thirds, said they would not vote for a union in asecret-ballot election.

So the point is that, as far as this other form of representation,it reminded me, Al, of the 1920s and early '30s, of the employeerepresentation plans -- of course, not with the employer in charge ofthat plan. These ideas --

MR. SHANKER: That's a big difference. (Laughter.)

MR. TROY: Well, at this moment, they're not legal because the --the National Labor Relations Board has said that these plans areemployer influence.

MR. SHANKER: The only --

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, now listen, hold on a minute. We arerunning out of time, and I want to take the opportunity -- I'm goingto give Al Shanker the last question here. Al, you started out in thelabor movement, you were regarded as quite a radical when youorganized the New York City teachers. There's a Woody Allen moviethat talks about the future where when Al Shanker is president of theworld, he'll blow up an atomic bomb.

MR. SHANKER: Drop the bomb.

MR. WATTENBERG: Drop the atomic bomb, right.

MR. SHANKER: 'Sleeper.'

MR. WATTENBERG: Right, 'Sleeper,' right. You are now regarded asan eminent and tough moderate, if I may characterize -- eminent,tough and activist, but moderate in this fight that recentlyhappened, certainly. What happened in the intervening years and whywere you what you were then and why are you what you are now?

MR. SHANKER: Well, I think am what I was. (Laughter.) And, youknow, if this were a different program, I'd make the case as to whichof the -- you know, and if this were before the AFL-CIO election, I'dmake the case as to who really stood for change.

MR. WATTENBERG: Right, that the traditionalists really stood forchange, and you do.

MR. SHANKER: Yes, because first is that the proposals that I justmade, which would really transform the labor movement substantially,were by and large rejected by the people who are now the winners. Imean, these were ideas put forward by Donahue and by Kirkland andwhich I supported, and we lost on them. So there have been quite afew changes proposed, but not by the side that won.

Now, of course, they're up to bat, and we'll see what changes theypropose.

MR. WATTENBERG: Right. Let's just end this now quickly, goingaround the room, starting with you, Barry Bluestone. Let's look intothe future 5 or 10 years. Are we going to see a big change for thebetter or the worse?

MR. BLUESTONE: Well, I think if we continue to have trends inwages down, trends in insecurity up, there's a chance -- there's achance -- for the trade union movement to organize lots of workers.But they're going to have to change their stripes and give us a newkind of unionism before that's going to happen.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, Samuel Estreicher.

MR. ESTREICHER: Well, I agree with what Barry said. They have tochange. They have to organize more and they have to change theirproduct so that in fact we see more labor-management cooperation, wesee a provision of voice for workers that takes account of the needsof the firm.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, Leo Troy.

MR. TROY: I don't see much change coming out of this newleadership and the AFL-CIO in general, and I foresee a continuingdecline of the private sector and continued stability with a littlegrowth in the public sector.

MR. WATTENBERG: Al Shanker.

MR. SHANKER: I don't know whether it's going to come, but there isan opportunity there and the pressure is there. A lot of promiseswere made, and I think there will be an effort to fulfill thosepromises. So I think it will be an exciting time.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Thank you, Albert Shanker, Barry Bluestone,Leo Troy, and Samuel Estreicher.

And thank you. We enjoy hearing from you. Please send yourquestions and comments to: New River Media, 1150 17th Street, NW,Washington, DC, 20036. Or we can be reached via e-mail atthinktv@aol.com, or on the World Wide Web at www.thinktank.com.

For 'Think Tank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg.

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