AFL-CIO sees young as challenge, opportunity

By Michael Mishak (contact)

Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Pittsburgh — With a changing of the guard at the AFL-CIO convention here last week, the nation’s largest labor organization outlined an ambitious agenda, pledging to unify the movement, remake the face of labor and increase union ranks.

New leaders say they will employ political strategies to win legislative battles such as health care reform, not just elections. The recession, they say, has underscored the need for unions and the protections they bring. And officials plan to adapt to meet the needs of those left most vulnerable — young workers.

With victories on these fronts, workers will recognize unions’ role in bettering the lives of all workers, not just dues-paying members, they say.

“Our message to America is that just as unions built the middle class once before, if you give us the chance, we can build it again,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in his nomination speech last week. “We need a labor movement that’s not afraid of new ideas — and understands that nostalgia for the past is no strategy for the future.”

Yet for all its ambition, the labor movement must grapple with the grim reality of the modern economic climate: It must do more with less.

After spending a collective $450 million last year to help elect President Barack Obama, the movement is in financial straits. The AFL-CIO, for instance, has undertaken a deep internal restructuring to reverse a projected deficit.

Moreover, labor experts say the recession has made workers more reluctant to join unions. Concerned for their jobs, workers are fearful of angering their employers.

Then there’s the image problem, experts say, created by high-profile union infighting and the crisis of Detroit automakers.

Labor’s first priority is a makeover — and union leaders embraced that challenge head-on last week. The AFL-CIO’s newly elected slate, led by Trumka, positioned the labor movement as the vehicle for rebuilding a devastated middle class, a counterweight to excessive corporate power.

“To date, the economic recovery has been the one you read about in the newspaper versus the one you feel in your pocket,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “How the recovery impacts the lives of average Americans will be a central challenge for labor, and it will need all its resources and vision for that process.”

That vision is shared by Change to Win, the group of unions that split from the AFL-CIO four years ago in hope of leading an organizing revolution.

In an interview, Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union and the primary architect of the rival federation, said the labor movement needs to “spend more time looking out the window, rather than inside the room.”

“American workers in a time of crisis need to see the union movement not as an insular, self-interested organization but as an organization that helps young people find work, buy homes and raise families,” Stern said. “Unions need to be the people fighting for those values, not just their own contracts.”

Last week, Trumka vowed to spread his vision to workers, as he put it, “trapped in the twilight world of the contingent economy,” meaning freelancers and contractors who toil on an on-call basis without health insurance or pensions.

Labor experts say the outreach is a sorely needed step in the right direction.

“Unions are facing huge opposition from employers, and they’re still using blue-collar techniques to organize 21st century workers,” said Charles Craver, a professor of labor law at George Washington University. “They act like they are organizing a manufacturing line. Unions need to think outside the box and ask, ‘What does the new-age worker want?’ ”

That task will fall to Liz Shuler, the newly elected secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. At 39, she is the youngest person in federation history to hold the post and has been designated ambassador to young workers.

Appealing to the country’s youth, however, has proved a stiff challenge for labor. Workers under 35 are the least likely to belong to unions. Only a quarter of AFL-CIO members fit that demographic. The average age of a federation member is 47.

“We’re trying to figure out how to speak their language,” she said of younger workers. “They don’t hate us. They just don’t know us.”

Toward that end, Shuler and others are holding listening tours, using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and organizing a youth summit to find the pulse of younger workers.

Part of the problem, she said, is language itself. According to AFL-CIO focus groups, many younger than 35 do not see themselves as “workers” and prefer “associations” to “unions.”

Shuler said the youngest generation in the workforce is the one most in need. One recent study commissioned by the federation found that 31 percent make enough to cover their bills and put some money aside — a 22 percent drop from a decade ago.

The survey also found that one in three Americans ages 18 to 35 lives at home with his parents.

Thirty-one percent of the young workers reported being uninsured. Half thought employees in similar jobs are better off with a union.

Labor sees health care and labor law reform as necessary to its revival, and leaders say they are retooling their political organizations to run issue campaigns and hold elected officials accountable.

“We know we can win elections, but how do we win legislative campaigns?” said Karen Ackerman, the AFL-CIO’s political director. “How do we get the same level of commitment? It’s about energizing members.”

On health care, labor leaders argue that taking one of the most contentious and expensive items off the bargaining table would make employers more willing to negotiate first contracts.

On labor law, unions argue that reform is needed because they say the system is stacked in favor of management, allowing employers to threaten and fire union supporters with near impunity. Nationally, union membership has fallen to 12.4 percent since the 1950s, when a third of all workers belonged to a union.

Whether labor is more likely to realize this vision under one umbrella is a point of debate.

Reunification seems unlikely, at least in the short term, despite the announcement here last week that Culinary Union parent Unite Here rejoined the AFL-CIO.

Unions in both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, along with the National Education Association, formed a committee this year to discuss the prospect but, according to Stern, the focus of the talks shifted over the summer, from reunification to public policy.

The committee has had a seat at the table on financial and regulatory reform and health care legislation. A meeting is set with White House National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers.

“For all the structural separation, there is an incredible amount of unity around issues and vision,” Stern said. “Given that people are now working together on issues facing all Americans, uniting in name doesn’t seem to be an end in itself.”