AFL-CIO Seeks Greater Role With Affiliates

There was considerable hand-wringing by the nation’s top union leaders at the recent AFL-CIO executive council meeting in Bal Harbour, Fla., where they fretted about pickets marching with seeming futility around the Geo. A. Hormel Co. plant in Austin, Minn., the threat of flight attendants striking Trans World Airlines and a host of other critical problems facing America’s union members.

Until recently, about all the AFL-CIO union leaders would have done as a group about the collective bargaining problems of the federation’s autonomous affiliates was fret--now and then making suggestions for action. Not long ago, there would have been raised eyebrows and shocked expressions if a few AFL-CIO vice presidents proposed that the labor federation play a more central role in the affairs of its 94 affiliates.

But, almost overnight, times have changed. When some federation officers made just such a proposal at the Bal Harbour meeting, it was accepted with alacrity. AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and other federation vice presidents agreed with the idea of more centralized action. And, when that is combined with other recently started activities of the country’s only federation of unions, it is clear that the organization’s top officers and staff could dramatically increase their impact on the activities of the affiliates.

If the new plans work, they might help slow, if not stop, the steady erosion in union membership and economic strength in recent years. Certainly, the ideas are worth trying, even though it is not going to be easy to unite almost all unions behind one group of strikers. After all, the national and local leaders of just one union--the United Food and Commercial Workers--are fighting each other over strategy to be used at the Hormel plant in Austin.

But, despite the difficulties, history is being made in the American labor movement.

Ever since feisty Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor 100 years ago this month in Columbus, Ohio, the labor federation (now the AFL-CIO) has been a loosely knit organization. It was composed of militantly autonomous unions whose leaders jealously guarded their authority from any “outside” intrusions by the national labor federation or anyone else.

The federation role has been limited almost exclusively to legislative lobbying and supporting the election of politicians sympathetic to labor’s multiple causes. The unions pay a per-capita fee to the national AFL-CIO, mostly to finance its role as a political organization, and there is no obligation for a union to join the federation.

With rare exceptions, the national federation’s officers and staff have stayed out of the activities of the individual unions--and especially out of their collective bargaining problems. But that tradition is beginning to change radically.

Kirkland explains it this way: Normally, the federation gets involved in the economic wars of its affiliated unions only when “we are called on either to rescue them or at a time when virtually all that we can do is operate an ambulance service and do the best we can to take care of the wounded.” But from now on, he said, the AFL-CIO wants to play a significantly different role in the affairs of its affiliates.

“I firmly and strongly believe we must be part of the general staff (of affiliated unions) at the inception rather than serve as ambulance drivers at the bitter end (of a labor dispute); that we ought to be part of the decision-making as to whether or not this is the (labor-management) battle to take on; whether or not an accurate appraisal of the circumstances has been made.”

But, he said, the federation does not intend to try and be an active decision-maker in all of the thousands of union contracts negotiated each year. “Clearly, one has to be selective” when deciding whether to try and involve all U.S. unions in a labor dispute, he added.

The ambitious new role for the federation was broached by William H. Bywater, president of the Electrical Workers Union. Various ways of putting it into effect were proposed, marking a significant expansion of the ideas suggested in a wide-ranging AFL-CIO study issued last year on the state of the American labor movement.

That study, made under the leadership of Thomas Donahue, the AFL-CIO’s secretary-treasurer, for the first time recognized some of the failures of unions and did not blame all of them on labor’s enemies. It called for such things as union associate membership for workers who do not belong to unions: They will pay a small fee, will get such benefits as group insurance and will be available to serve as potential organizers in non-union companies.

The federation is also starting other services for union members, such as offering MasterCard with interest rates about 5% below regular MasterCard rates.

Some departments of the federation are already involved in actions that are now being planned by the federation itself. For instance, departments of the AFL-CIO’s Food and Allied Services and Industrial Union at times help affiliated unions coordinate membership organizing drives and campaigns against employers involved in labor disputes.

The federation’s extended role in the affairs of its affiliates, however, would include such things as:

- Creation of a national clearinghouse of information for all of its affiliates on everything from the economics of corporations to nationwide publicity campaigns to help unions tell their versions of disputes with management.

- Creation of a national Office of Comprehensive Organizing Strategies and Tactics (COST) to help affiliates run “corporate campaigns” to battle companies in their board rooms and on picket lines.

- Creation of a special board of umpires to prevent unions from fighting one another in organizing drives and union representation elections. Former United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser and former carpenters union President William Sidell have already been named as the umpires for what is officially called a “procedure for determining organizing responsibilities.”

- Uniting labor’s forces in advance of a possible strike by a single union so the company involved will realize that it is not dealing with just one group of workers in one union.

Gompers, the late AFL-CIO President George Meany and other labor leaders of the past might not have approved of the trend toward centralization of the federation. And, indeed, labor’s efforts to unite its forces may prove futile. But at last unions seem to be learning what should have long been evident to them: They need their combined strength to thrive in this increasingly anti-union era.

This Is Compassion?

Employers should be as compassionate and helpful as possible when they have to fire workers for reasons other than egregious misconduct. That does not seem to be just a decent way to act, but it is also good business, suggests Robert Swain, president of Swain & Swain, a New York out-placement firm.

However, the compassion theory does not seem to carry much weight with officials of many firms such as Swain’s that are hired to assist companies during periods of layoffs, which can cause anguish to millions of employees who suddenly find themselves out of jobs.

For instance, James E. Challenger, head of the Chicago-based out-placement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., does not recommend firing workers on Christmas Eve. But, in a advisory to businesses on the best ways to discharge workers, he does recommend, among other things:

- “Don’t award workers long-term severance pay. Even though it seems like a humane gesture, all it does is lower the person’s incentive to find re-employment.” While Challenger didn’t suggest it, eliminating all severance pay and even jobless benefits might also add incentive to job hunters, especially if they have children who cry a lot when there is not much food in the house.

- “Do not get into a long discussion or debate on the reasons for the discharge. A decision has been made, and the person on the other side of the desk is discharged.” Period. Apparently, one thing Challenger does not want to do is waste management’s valuable time sympathizing with a worker who just might feel a bit better if the boss would discuss the reasons for the discharge, especially if they sound rational and seem to be based on logic instead of, say, malice.

Challenger has other similar suggestions for terminating workers, such as quickly kicking them out of the office so they cannot use it as a base for job hunting. While they are not all cruel-sounding and might even appeal to some employers, it is hard to imagine that many workers would feel that Challenger’s suggestions to employers are compassionate or even useful.