Labor Movement

Oakland, California. -- Few American workers expect to run their places of employment, even in these days of deceptive calls for labor-management cooperation. But workers do expect and want to run their unions. Since the earliest days of progressive unionism, workers have advocated direct election of officers, at all levels. Rank-and-file democracy makes unions strong.That's what makes the coming election for leadership of the AFL-CIO a wisp of hope in what are grim times for America's labor movement.

May Day (May 1) seems a bit old-fashioned these days, as union membership is squeezed, but it recounts the bitter fight for organized labor in American and around the world. Much of that fight traces back to Baltimore in 1866, when trade union representatives created the National Labor Union, which advocated for an eight-hour workday. That issue became the centerpiece of May Day demonstrations in the United States and around the world, politicizing a day that had previously marked the coming of spring.

A court-appointed union monitor yesterday barred Ron Carey from running for re-election as Teamsters' president after finding that the man who came into office as a reformer had backed a plan in which more than $700,000 in union funds was used to help his own campaign.Kenneth Conboy, a former federal judge taking part in the government cleanup of the Teamsters, disqualified Carey after concluding that he engaged in improper self-dealing by diverting members' dues to his campaign coffers in last year's nullified election.

PHILADELPHIA -- Led by a former social worker from Bucks County, Pa., a group of unions estranged from the AFL-CIO pledged yesterday to rebuild the American dream for workers by growing the labor movement. "We are excited and hopeful that we can change workers' lives in this country," said Anna Burger, who was voted chairwoman of the Change to Win Coalition at its founding convention in St. Louis yesterday. The group of seven unions includes four that quit the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation.

PHILADELPHIA - As the AFL-CIO heads into its election season this summer, five dissident unions are ratcheting up the pressure on AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney, who is running for re-election as president of the nation's largest labor organization. On Monday, the unions sent their proposal - which would increase funding to build union membership -- to 27,000 union locals throughout the nation. "He's done too little, too late," said Andrew Stern, president of the 1.8 million member Service Employees International Union, one of the five dissident unions.

WASHINGTON -- For much of the past two decades, the American labor movement has failed its members. All across the country, unions have been busted, forcing many blue-collar workers to accept lower wages and more adverse working conditions, or driving them out of their jobs all together. In meatpacking plants, textile mills, hotels and restaurants, use of foreign labor -- often illegal -- has been an important tool for management to dictate wages and working conditions. Even in an exceptionally strong economy, wage gains for blue-collar workers have been marginal, at best, and many formerly unionized workers have actually lost ground.

THE COUP D'ETAT in the AFL-CIO, as confirmed yesterday with the election of insurgent John Sweeney as president, reflects an economic revolution that is engulfing the labor movement. Manufacturing was king in the 1950s when George Meany combined the trade and industrial unions into one mighty entity. But today job growth is in the service sector; more and more workers are accepting lower or stagnant wages and temporary, no-benefits employment.For the AFL-CIO this has meant declining membership, diminished political clout and 16 years of flagging leadership under Lane Kirkland, who was forced out as president last June in the first stage of the Sweeney revolt.

Washington-- As Labor Day approaches, the ritual examinations of the state of the unions will proceed. Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, will be in the news, in the columns and on the talk shows.Hard-boiled journalists will ask Mr. Kirkland about the decline of the labor movement -- isn't the unionized proportion of the work force down? Hasn't labor lost political clout -- isn't the Mexican trade treaty moving forward over labor's objection? Isn't the AFL-CIO out of touch with its membership -- why does it oppose Clarence Thomas and support a civil-rights bill that may likely yield quotas?

After a 30-year estrangement, in which union leaders shunned academics as too far to the left and the liberal intelligentsia scorned big labor as part of the establishment, many academics are forging a new alliance with the revived labor movement.Academics are counseling students to become union organizers and are donating time to teach courses to union officials.Cornell University professors held a conference with the AFL-CIO on how to do more organizing, while many sociology professors are revamping their courses to focus more on labor's role in society.

SHE HAS NEVER been inside the institutional laundry in South Boston, but the workers have drawn Robin Clark a mental picture.She can see the dirty washroom, the overhead pipe where the women warm their meals, the heavy overcoats they wear inside all winter when the heat never seems to be on.She conjures up those images when the days are too long or the work she chose too discouraging.If the labor movement has a future, it is in the hands of people like 23-year-old Robin Clark.Two years ago, when her Yale classmates left for law and medical school, Robin enrolled in the Organizing Institute, established in 1989 by the AFL-CIO to train union organizers.