What About the Rank and File?

Labor leaders are still ignoring Labor's biggest asset: volunteer members

opinion by Brian King

There was major change in the air on Navy Pier as the union delegates gathered for the 2005 AFL-CIO convention.

The big reason for all the controversy surrounding the meeting in Chicago was the crisis that stems from the steady decline in membership that American unions have experienced since the end of World War II. The numbers are attention grabbers.

Right after the war, roughly one third of American workers were members of unions. There was a common perception in those days, held by workers, managers, Democrats, and Republicans alike, that unionization was the wave of the future. One day, it was thought, just about every American worker would belong to a union. How could anyone have looked at US labor at that time and thought anything else?

But it hasn't turned out that way. Instead of steadily growing during the second half of the 20th century, unions in the US shrank relentlessly. This year, 2005, unionization in the US stands at about 8% of the private workforce. If government workers are included, still only about 13% of workers in the US are organized today.

Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the country (and in the world, with more than a million workers) practically sneers at unions. It dares labor to try and organize its "associates" (a Wal-Mart euphemism for low-paid and insecure employees).

No one knows what the final tipping point will be, when labor will fold its tent. But it can't be far off. Maybe, if union concentration gets down to 5% of the workforce, unions will come to be seen as a quaint anachronism, something workers will shy away from because they don't want to be associated with an irrelevant joke.

Does it have to be this way? Can unions grow again and provide good lives for their members and help move America in a progressive direction once more? If you care about things like weekends off, vacations, a right to quality health care, social and pension security for the retired and disabled, racial justice, and just about everything else that is and could be good about America, these are vital questions for you that command answers soon. I, for one, don't ever want to see a United States of America without strong unions.

Ten years ago, I attended the founding convention of the Labor Party in Cleveland, Ohio. I was inspired by the potential power on the side of good this historic meeting promised. Unions representing a million organized US workers met that summer and agreed to a platform that, if successful, would result in a far more decent and secure America than the one we live in today.

Besides looking forward to working for the Labor Party program, I came back to Seattle really wanting to become a member of a union. I figured that simply getting a job in a union hospital wouldn't be adding as much to the labor movement as organizing a new group of workers into a union. So I decided to begin "talking union" to my co-workers at the Seattle hospital where I had worked as a respiratory therapist for the previous eight years.

In the fall of '96, I sat at a table in a cafe with Glen, the organizing director for a major SEIU local in Washington State. He was a big, pleasantly disheveled sort of guy with a loose mop of black hair perched on top of an open, honest face, with clear attentive eyes, and a ready smile. He sat hunched over a bagel and coffee across from my friend Ray and me. We had called and told him we wanted to talk about organizing unions at the hospitals where we had jobs.

"You guys want to organize the bargaining units where you work, huh?" Glen took a bite of his bagel and looked from one to the other of us. He seemed to be trying to gauge our reactions.

"Yes," I answered, "people at my hospital need a union as much as anyone else and that means they need a union a lot." Glen looked at me intently as he wiped crumbs and cream cheese from his mouth. He waited for me to finish. "Besides," I continued, "it would be a great way to give the Labor Party a boost around here, don't you think?"

Glen smiled, put his bagel down, and gestured toward us. "I'd love to help you guys organize, and here's a thought I want you to take away from our meeting." He paused for a second to heighten the effect of what he was about to say. "Organizing a large group of workers at a hospital is a daunting task. It's going to take a long time and you're going to need a lot of help from your co-workers. Get yourselves ready for something at least as hard as anything you've ever tried."

A couple years later, I was in full-swing as a volunteer member- organizer at my hospital in Seattle.

I was headed back to the Respiratory Department one afternoon when a friend of mine, a unit secretary named Sheila, stopped me in the hall. "Hey, Brian. How're things going with the union?"

"Doing OK, Sheila." I gave her a friendly nod. "You get all your guys signed up yet?"

"Not just yet," she chuckled. "By the way, I've been wanting to mention something to you."

"What's that?"

She gave me one of those "listen now" looks. "Since you've been working on this union thing, you seem like a much more upbeat person."

I raised my eyebrows and waited for her to finish. "Really, a lot of us have noticed." She glanced at her watch, "You're definitely feeling pretty good about life these days."

Sheila was right about the effect being a member-organizer had on me. It gave me a whole new way to relate to my sisters and brothers at work. It was something totally different from the dog-eat-dog relations everybody is constantly forced to have with each other. It gave me a voice for the kind of decency and fairness people always crave, but seldom find. It was fun!

There were disappointments, too. There were times I was ready to give up, for sure. We had two unions basically walk out on us. Later, I was to find out that the Organizing-Institute-trained hotshot from one of them reported to her boss that my group didn't stand a chance of coming together enough to win a union election.

When I was about four years into the union effort at my hospital and going through a period of skepticism, a bio-med technician named David stopped me in the hallway. We were just outside the Respiratory department door.

"Hey, Brian, come over here a minute." He gave me a nod, calling me over to where he stood.

What does this guy want? I wondered. David is a little scary looking when he's serious about something. He's six feet tall and has a shaved head with prominent, expressive eyebrows. He pumps iron a lot, and his muscled arms are covered with symbolic looking tattoos. I politely complied with his suggestion.

"There's going to be a union meeting, a week from Saturday." He worked his eyebrows a little. "Wanna come?"

"Sure, man." I was elated to see David's initiative. "Just say when and where."

David had first called somebody at the Washington State Labor Department, who recommended that he contact the UFCW. The guy at the Labor Department said that union looked to him to be serious about organizing.

And so we hooked up with our third union.

To be continued: the conclusion of this article will appear in next issue.