'Union Cities' program launched in Seattle

SEATTLE, WA -- More than 700 people -- three-quarters of them rank-and-file workers -- jammed into the Seattle Center March 26 to sign up for "Union Cities," a new campaign by the national AFL-CIO to accelerate mobilization and organizing on a regional level.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was on hand to launch the first of 13 Union Cities tours across the country. The atmosphere in Seattle was electric with the sounds of union solidarity reminiscent of the the nation's labor movement decades ago when more than 36 percent of all workers belonged to a union.

"It's a kind of state of mind," said Ron Judd, executive secretary-treasurer of the King County Labor Council. "It's not something to sit on a desk and collect dust. And it won't be successful without the rank-and-file being fully engaged."

What exactly is a Union City? It is a place were workers earn a living wage and have time to spend with their families. It's where employers respect the contributions of workers and where elected leaders are held accountable to working families.

"It's where unions are organizing, mobilizing and reaching out to community allies -- and building the power to change their lives," Sweeney said.

With representatives from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana, even Kansas, union members declared their intentions of making every city in the the Pacific Northwest a "Union City."

Sweeney acknowledged the task won't be easy. And he isn't expecting to double membership in two or three years. His initial goal is to stop the decline of the labor movement in the last 20 years, and to reactivate the culture of organizing among the 35,000 local unions and regional councils.

The target will be a 3 percent annual growth rate in union locals by 2000, building community coalitions around issues such as economic development (tying development to fair treatment of workers), and worker rights.

The problem, as Sweeney put it, is that American workers need a raise -- in hope and respect, as well as in family income. The solution, he says: "Is a bigger, stronger labor movement." To do that, top union leaders have been whipping up a whirlwind of activity across the country. The national AFL-CIO has pledged to spend one-third of its $95 million annual budget on organizing. It is tripling the size of its Organizing Institute to recruit and train more young people for careers in organizing, and it is helping international and local unions pool resources and expertise to organize on a bigger scale, taking on entire industries or entire geographic areas.

Several organizing drives are already under way with farmworkers in California and Washington State and 15 construction unions working under one director and one budget in Las Vegas.

Moreover, the AFL-CIO has embarked on a massive new outreach program called Ask a Working Woman. It is designed to bring women into the mainstream of the labor movement and labor's message into every working woman's home.

The labor federation is also busy signing up union activists for "Street Heat" -- rapid response teams of volunteers who can be ready on short notice when a call goes out for workers involved in difficult organizing and first-contract campaigns, and to "get in the face" of union-busters and anti-union employers and elected officials at every level to show them first-hand why workers need unions and what happens to them when they try to organize because of weak labor laws in the United States.

"Our unions and central labor councils and state feds have to roll out the heavy artillery," said Sweeney, who wants labor leaders across the country to put at least one-third of their operating budgets into organizing.

"We have to change every level of our structure," he said, "If we do, labor unions will grow again."

The AFL-CIO Field Mobilization Department urged labor councils to dedicate their April meetings to Union Cities and devise an implementation plan.

At the end of every year, councils working toward Union City status will be evaluated by a special committee. Labor councils whose communities achieve Union City designation will be given extra consideration for federation resources (approximately $10 million in 1997) that will include media advertising buys, investments and special programs such as Union Summer and America Needs a Raise.

Richard Bensinger, director of organizing for the AFL-CIO, said unions are partly to blame for their own decline. Organizing slumped when employer opposition soared in the early 1980s. In the 1930s, unions devoted up to 50 percent of their resources to recruitment, he said. Today, the 3 percent most unions spend funds 3,000 elections a year vs. nearly 8,000 in 1970.

Bensinger believes workers today are more receptive to labor's renewed message, coming after two decades of stagnant wages and heightened inequality. In the 1980s, for example, the 10-year average earnings of the bottom fifth of male wage earners plunged by 34 percent. Now, more than half of families say two members must work to make ends meet. And constant downsizing has chewed away at pay and job stability.

Sweeney said that to lay the groundwork for labor law reform the AFL-CIO must tell stories of workers who get trampled on when they try to join a union. "We must make the right-to-organize the civil rights issue of the remaining years of this century," he said. Sweeney said that with more union members, working families could "absolutely dominate" the political process and political agenda at every level -- including labor law reform. "The truth is, the working men and women of Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Montana and Idaho need the strength only you in this room can deliver," Sweeney said. "If America needs a raise, the buck starts right here in Seattle."

Union City participants gave Seattle a taste of what might be more to come in a huge police-escorted march in the streets surrounding the Seattle Center.

Along the way groups of workers stopped at Safeway, Quality Food Center and Larry's Market to ask store managers to sign a pledge for strawberry workers' rights and to signal support for the struggle for decent wages and benefits in Washington's apple fields.

"Did you know that less than 5 cents out of every $1 that we pay for a pound of red delicious apples in the supermarket goes to apple packinghouse workers?" Sweeney asked. "Did you know that for only 5 cents more per pound of strawberries, workers' pay rates could be increased 50 percent?

"We're not talking about nickels and dimes," he said. "We're talking about nickels and nickels." Sweeney said the answer for strawberry growers, the apple industry and "the corporate greed that controls our communities and workers' lives is respect now, justice now, union now."