LOS ANGELES TIMES: INTERVIEW : Lane Kirkland Debunking Conventional Wisdom That Union Power Is Declining

SAN FRANCISCO â€”  AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland knows and is at ease among most influential men and women in America--and almost all other countries as well. But he is just as comfortable with the average worker. His power is enormous. The 71-year-old Kirkland scorns the widely accepted notion that unions today are almost without power because they represent such a small percentage of the work force. Unions, he asserts, are still often critical factors in electing members of Congress, state legislatures and even Presidents of the United States.

Nonetheless, unions are weaker than at any time since passage of the 1935 Wagner Act. They now represent only 16% of the work force, compared with 35% in the 1950s.

Still, Kirkland’s leadership is rarely challenged--in public--by any officers of the 86 separate unions, with 13.3 million members, that make up the labor federation. But privately, his critics charge he isn’t a militant enough leader and too seldom serves as a visible spokesman. Even they, however, say he can be effective inside the Washington Beltway and in international circles. These critics also agree he has brought more unity to the AFL-CIO affiliates than they ever had under former president George Meany.

Kirkland has been labor’s chief spokesman since 1979. An articulate intellectual, he may well be a key figure in the effort to defeat the North American Free Trade Agreement now being pushed so strongly by President Bill Clinton--though he is a key supporter of Clinton’s health-care proposal.

Born in Camden, S.C., Kirkland grew up in a cotton mill town nearby and was a chief mate on merchant ships in World War II, when he was a rank-and-file member in a maritime union. After the war, he graduated from Georgetown University and, since the age of 26, has served in various union capacities, from researcher to the AFL-CIO presidency.

He is married to Irena, who, after surviving a Nazi concentration camp, fled to Israel and then America. Kirkland has five children from an earlier marriage.

Question: How weak do you think unions are today, considering their membership is only 16% of the work force--compared with 35% in the 1950s?

Answer: First of all, the labor movement is not weak. I was around when we were being widely condemned, when anti-union laws, like the Taft-Hartley Act, were being adopted. We had few friends in Congress in those days. But no such law has passed in the past 20 years, because labor has a strong political organization. We have had friendly majorities in the House and Senate for decades--even when we had no friend in the White House. Now we have a friend there, too.

Q: But government statistics do indicate a union-membership decline, especially as a percentage of the total labor force. Don’t those figures worry you?

A: Well, I don’t remember people talking about our membership as a percentage of the work force back when we were growing rapidly. It’s only when the work force itself began to change drastically that this gauge became popular. The percentage of union members in the work force in areas where we have been organized has not changed, such as in steel, auto and the railroad industries.

Railroads are typical. We still have about the same percentage of organization in the railroad industry as we ever had.

It’s just that once there were about 3 million people working on the railroads. Now, there are only about half a million. But I would submit to you that the trade unions in that industry, and in others where employment has dropped, are just as vigorous and even stronger than ever. And in some areas, union membership is increasing.

Q: In which ones?

A: We’ve had a tremendous upsurge in the organization of public employees. Since World War II, that has been one of the few growth areas in the American work force. And the percentage of union organization in that sector has increased quite dramatically. The only other area of employment growth is the huge service sector--and that employs millions of harder-to-organize temporary and part-time workers and where a shop often has just two or three employees. There are more people working for fast-food joints than are working in the auto and steel industries combined. Yet, our laws hamper unions trying to organize those workers.

Q: The House has passed a bill banning the permanent replacement of strikers. Do you think President Clinton is doing as much as he can to win Senate approval of this measure, which is a priority of labor?

A: Yes, I do. I think he’s doing whatever is in the capacity of the White House to influence Senate votes. He’s doing all that we can expect of him, all we have asked of him.

Q: How about Clinton’s support of labor-law reform in general?

A: I will not be drawn into any nit-picking about what the President’s doing. He is doing very well. He should be judged by what he tries to do, what he puts forward. He put forward a job-stimulus program that’s important for our people. We supported it with all our capacity. It was killed by a right-wing Republican filibuster in the Senate. You cannot blame that on the President. We wholeheartedly endorse his programs, with one exception, of course, and that is the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is a disaster.

Q: Unions are among the harshest critics of NAFTA because you say it will cost millions of American jobs, but your criticism of the President himself on NAFTA has been muted. Why?

A: Because it’s not his fault. He’s wrong in embracing the agreement that was negotiated by George Bush. But I believe those are honestly held views on his part, and, overall, his programs are just fine.

Q: Labor played a major role in the last presidential election, but it was less visible than in previous races. Was that a deliberate tactic to avoid having Clinton’s opponents label him as a “captive of labor�?

A: I don’t agree with the premise of your question. We were just as visible as we ever were. Under the law, we can only address our own members. It may be that the people who bring our political activities to the eyes of the public at large don’t go to our workplaces to see what we are doing. The law prohibits us from addressing the public at large. And we did what the law allows with every bit as much energy as we ever did.

Q: With unemployment high, will unions begin fighting harder for a shorter work week to create more jobs?

A: It is difficult to talk about negotiating shorter work weeks, with the same pay, in the face of rising health-care costs. We have unions that have had to put every penny of what’s been negotiated into maintaining the level of health-care plans. So don’t talk abstract irrelevant objectives.

Q: What I’m trying to get at is whether you think enough jobs can be created to employ all those who want them?

A: Of course. First, think what unions have already done about jobs. Early on, we fought for--and won--the eight-hour work day. And just imagine what the job situation would be if unions had never negotiated pension plans, if we had never created a social-insurance system that enables people to withdraw from the labor market at an age that wouldn’t have been dreamed of 40 or 50 years ago. They would be in the labor market and the unemployment rate would be enormously high. And, yes, there is enough work that needs to be done in this country to employ everybody.

Q: What about high-wage, high-tech jobs that Clinton is talking about?

A: Most of our present high-wage/high-tech jobs were created by collective bargaining. There is no reason any job should be a low-wage job. This idea that some jobs are “naturally� low wage is nonsense. There was a time when auto and steel and coal mining were low-wage/low-tech jobs. People were brought over from Europe to do them because they were so badly paid and so arduous. Unions of the workers made those jobs pay well, and high tech made higher pay possible. Mining is no longer pick and shovel work. The modern steel plant is also another example of why the work force in steel has been slashed. You walk through the state-of-the-art steel plant today and there’s nobody working on the floor. A handful of people man the computers. The only people working on the floor are maintenance people, custodian people. That’s the way it is today.

Q: What does that have to do with the service industry--where there are few unions and jobs are usually low skilled and poorly paid?

A: There is absolutely no reason why working in a service trade should be low wage. Mining is now a high-tech/high-wage job but it was not at the beginning. They were pick and shovel jobs. The only reason mining and others like that aren’t still low wages is because unions organized and negotiated higher wages. Good jobs don’t come out of the goodness of the hearts of the owners. High-wage/high-tech jobs were a consequence of increased productivity, due to workers’ skills and technological achievements. Higher wages came from unionization, and that is possible in most service jobs.

Q: Should there be legislation to assure worker representation in the decision-making process of companies?

A: No, I have no interest in legislation toward that end. My legislative objectives are to establish collective bargaining firmly as the law of the land--as was intended when the Wagner Act was passed in 1935. Besides, I don’t happen to think that boards of directors of companies are effective in running companies. And I’m not so sure that good, honest trade unionists should be hanging out with people of that kind.

Q: What were some significant gains you think have been made under your administration as AFL-CIO president?

A: Bringing back to the house of labor--the AFL-CIO--unions like the auto workers, the Teamsters, the miners, the West Coast longshoremen and the railroad engineers. I have hopes of bringing in the National Education Assn., and I look forward to the day that we’ll have every honest and legitimate union within the federation of unions. We’re closer to that goal than we have ever been.

Q: Any other major achievements?

A: Certainly. Free trade unions have changed the world, in the former Soviet Union, South Africa, in Central Europe, almost everywhere. Those changes came largely because of unions in those countries--and, yes, with the strong support of our own unions.

Wherever unions fight oppressors, they do it with the help of unions in the United States. They come to us first. They don’t go to U.S. corporations or your newspaper publishers for help. Our other gains take time to explain, but let me just list such things as our Union Privilege Program, which provides advantages such as low-cost credit cards; our television-production operation; our union-education schools; the union-organizing institute; more job training to get people involved in job-corps programs, and getting more minorities and women on the AFL-CIO executive council and to elevate their stature in the union movement.