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Leader of AFL-CIO Decries Loss of Well-Paid Jobs in U.S.

Posted on: Thursday, 19 January 2006, 18:00 CST

By Philip Dine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Jan. 19--WASHINGTON -- John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, on Wednesday decried the exodus of millions of good-paying American jobs.

Those jobs, he said, in the "last half-century helped us create the largest middle class, the most dynamic economy and the strongest democracy in the history of the world."

The steady loss of jobs that pay enough to support a family is the overriding issue affecting the U.S. today, Sweeney said, but it is a crisis "ignored by leaders of one political party and avoided by leaders of the other."

Labor's top leader blamed a "corporate-driven strategy to compete in the global marketplace" by pitting American workers against those in the Third World and shipping jobs to emerging economies in India and China, where workers can be paid low wages in a "merciless race to the bottom."

U.S. tax and trade policies encourage such practices, Sweeney said, and help explain why the labor movement has lost membership. Though the AFL-CIO has organized 500,000 workers a year in the last five years, 3 million good-paying manufacturing jobs have left the United States in that period, he said.

Speaking to the National Press Club, Sweeney laid out the priorities and plans for the U.S. labor movement in the areas of universal health care, fair trade and union-friendly labor laws, as well as political change as the nation moves toward congressional elections.

Sweeney predicted that labor would help Democrats take back both the House and Senate in November, though he said unions would support a few "moderate Republicans."

But given labor's declining clout, as well as the split within labor when the rival Change to Win federation was formed in St. Louis last fall, with a handful of unions leaving the AFL-CIO and taking about one-third of its membership, Sweeney's remarks raise a central question:

Does labor have the ability to affect the economic or political situation, and is the union movement still relevant?

On one hand, labor represents only 12.5 percent of the work force, has been on the losing side in national elections, has failed to alter public policies it says promote the exporting of jobs, and can't change labor laws that inhibit organizing.

At the same time, unions helped Democrats win in several recent gubernatorial elections, forced President George W. Bush to change his plans to suspend prevailing wages for workers rebuilding the Gulf Coast, and have managed to work together despite labor's split.

"I think there's still a lot of gas in the tank," said Bob Bruno, who teaches labor and politics at the University of Illinois. The challenge for labor, he said, will be to become more of a movement with unions battling together on issues.

Labor retains some strongholds, such as St. Louis, where the unionization rate is 22 percent, or almost double the national level. And solidarity has remained strong in labor's local ranks despite the national schism.

"The split you're talking about, we haven't seen that in St. Louis because all the Change to Win unions have stayed in," said Bob Soutier, president of the 120,000-member St. Louis Labor Council, an AFL-CIO organization. He predicted that insecure benefits and pension plans would cause workers in the years ahead to organize to protect their rights.

One way unions can overcome the flight of manufacturing jobs is their growing focus on organizing service-sector jobs that can't be sent abroad, including janitors, chain-store retail employees, and workers in the hotel and restaurant industries, said David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Jerry Hunter, a partner at the St. Louis law firm of Bryan Cave, former general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board and Missouri's labor secretary under then-Gov. John Ashcroft, disputed Sweeney's remarks about trade and tax policies encouraging job exports. Rather, Hunter said, such policies have "provided for a level playing field for U.S. products."

Randy Johnson, vice president for labor and employee benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accused labor of blaming others for its problems.

"Yes, some jobs have been outsourced, but in the overall scope of things it's very few," Johnson said. "They're picking at a slender reed to justify why they continue to lose members, rather than asking whether their message appeals to workers."

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Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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