Labor Struggle: Realizing Their Power Has Eroded, Unions Try Hard to Change --- They Attempt to Determine Workers' Wishes, Adopt New Organizing Tactics --- 'We're Taking Blinders Off'

The United Food and Commercial Workers local representing 1,500 clerks and factory workers drew up a budget of $150,000. It bought a big ad in the Los Angeles Times to announce a series of radio commercials protesting the company's demand that the union agree to some concessions before talks co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Wall Street journal. Eastern edition
Main Author By Leonard M. Apcar and Cathy Trost
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, N.Y Dow Jones & Company Inc 21.02.1985
EditionEastern edition
Subjects
Clerical personnel
Employees
Employment
Office automation
Political advertising
Shareholder meetings
Union leadership
Union membership
Video recorders
Workers
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Summary:The United Food and Commercial Workers local representing 1,500 clerks and factory workers drew up a budget of $150,000. It bought a big ad in the Los Angeles Times to announce a series of radio commercials protesting the company's demand that the union agree to some concessions before talks could resume. As the AFL-CIO's executive council meets this week in Bal Harbour, Fla., labor's leadership is doing some serious soulsearching. Stung by their own diminishing clout and the overwhelming defeat last fall of their favored presidential candidate, Walter Mondale, the labor chieftains will get a special report today on the changing nature of work and their own future role. The basic message: Unions must seek major innovations in the way they recruit, educate and lead. One path to change is finding out what workers really want. "We just can't go in and organize workers on the old issues in the old ways," says John J. Sweeney, the president of the Service Employees International Union. Some of the new issues unions are stressing include pay equity, day care and advancement for women; office automation and health-and-safety concerns in small companies and non-manufacturing industries; and job security for workers in the layoff-ridden smokestack industries. "Unions have to provide a set of services that the workers of 1985 want," Mr. Medoff says.
ISSN:0099-9660