THE BATTLE TO REVIVE U.S. UNIONS

By John Greenwald

AS JOHN SWEENEY SAT IN HIS makeshift election headquarters at the Sheraton Hotel in New York City last week, he found himself in a rare position. The avowed rebel of American labor was counting his millions of admirers. Sweeney, 61, the insurgent candidate for president of the AFL-CIO, ticked off some of the army of unions whose support he is counting on: steelworkers, autoworkers, government workers, teamsters, machinists and, most recently, farm workers. His route to this point breaks all convention. Since the confederation known as the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations came together 40 years ago, its presidency has been a fiefdom that had never been challenged. Now, for the first time, an election contest is raging for the job. The outcome, to be decided this Thursday, could help determine whether labor can approach its once formidable clout.

In a touch of irony, Sweeney began the year backing Thomas Donahue, 67, the current president of the AFL-CIO and the man he is running against. Sweeney had wanted Lane Kirkland, president of the labor group for 16 years, to step down in favor of Donahue, his No. 2. But when Kirkland refused, Sweeney decided to challenge the leader himself. Kirkland responded by resigning last June--whereupon Donahue became the president.

Donahue says he would lead the 78 unions in the organization by consensus, charging that Sweeney will represent only the interests of the union dissidents. Sweeney retorts that the Kirkland legacy is one of an increasingly toothless movement. The challenger offers his own enviable record: since Sweeney became president of the service-workers union in 1980, it has nearly doubled in size, to 1.02 million workers, representing the fastest growth in the AFL-CIO. Late last week Sweeney held a slight edge and was confident of victory.

But reviving the labor movement in America will take a heroic effort, no matter who wins. Beset by corporate downsizing and increasingly harsh union-busting tactics, labor has seen its share of the U.S. work force shrink from about 35% in the mid-1960s to just 15% today. The diminished unions have been powerless to lift the wages of the average worker, which have shown virtually no growth for the past two decades after adjusting for inflation, even as productivity and corporate profits have soared.

But a revival could be in the making. The very hardships and perceived injustices of the American workplace have begun to stir a new militancy among workers. And that has helped produce signs of a comeback. "In 2 1/2 years I haven't seen as much raw anger as I see in the workplace today," U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich told a Time conference on the economy two weeks ago. "One thing I've heard repeatedly around the country from unorganized workers is the following: 'I never thought about joining a union, but for the first time I'm now thinking about it, because I need somebody to protect me.'"

That resurgence is fueled by new victories, fresh tactics and a vibrant combativeness. Two weeks ago, federal arbitrators awarded pay hikes averaging 17% over six years to 20,000 flight attendants who struck American Airlines in 1993 and defied the company by remaining out while it hired replacement workers. "What happened was really a beacon for labor," says Denise Hedges, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants. "It was the strike, or rather the very serious way we pursued it, that forced management back to the table."

Employees at aircraft giant Boeing are hoping for their own breakthrough. More than 32,000 members of the machinists union walked off jobs in Kansas, Oregon and Washington State on Oct. 6 after talks on a new contract broke down. Among the flash points was Boeing's growing practice of shifting skilled assembly-line work from U.S. plants to China in order to boost sales to that country. Says George Kourpias, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers: "I'm running the Boeing strike, and there's an excitement in the rank and file I haven't seen in years."

Nationwide, union membership is already up a total of 3%, to 16.6 million workers, in 1993 and 1994--snapping a 14-year decline. Virtually all growth is among white-collar, service and public-sector employees. Nevertheless, labor's gains still lagged behind the increase in the number of wage and salary workers, which grew some 4% from 1992 to 1994; that caused the share of unionized jobs to continue to fall. "As employment goes up, unions will grow," Donahue says. "The trouble is that as fast as we gain new members, we lose others to corporate downsizing."

Today's militant new job actions often come at workplaces that have rarely seen unions before. In one pitched battle last March, 100 registered nurses--some of them grandmothers who never expected to find themselves on picket lines--won a 16% wage increase over 1 3/4 years after a six-month strike against the Catholic-run Mercy Hospital in Port Jervis, New York. Undaunted by the hiring of replacement workers, the nurses, who were members of the National Health and Human Service Employee union, picketed in weather that sometimes sank to -29 degrees C. "I would like to think our strike was a step forward for the labor movement," says Sue Murphy, a leader of the walkout.

ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHICAGO, Helen Miller struck another unlikely blow for organized labor last summer. Miller, a member of the service-employees union who spends seven hours a day tending to a tube-fed stroke victim, fought for and won a change in Illinois law that raised the hourly wages for state-paid, home-health-care aides from $3.35 to $5. As the head of volunteer action for the union local, Miller was the first nurse's aide to testify on behalf of the bill. Now she spends her free time organizing home-health-care workers to demand medical benefits for themselves. Such work takes "lots of phone calling and door knocking," Miller says. "All we can do is just keep on talking and ministering."

Few tactics have been more confrontational--or successful--than those employed by a campaign called Justice for Janitors, sponsored by Sweeney's service-employees union, which has organized some 30,000 building cleaners over the past five years and brought the number of janitors in the union to 180,000. Members last spring staged a sit-in at the chic intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, that led to 49 arrests. But the demonstration paid off for 8,000 janitors employed by companies throughout the Los Angeles area, who won health benefits and paid vacation in addition to a top wage of $6.80 an hour.

Employers, of course, have their own arsenal of weapons for turning back organizing attempts. Companies can often keep unions at bay simply by firing employees who seem sympathetic to an organizer's pitch. Forklift driver Jerome Childs filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board last month after Preferred Consolidated, a Chicago-area warehouse operator, laid him off. The firm says the dismissal was for gashing the wrapping on a palette of Styrofoam boxes that Childs had been told to unload quickly. Childs says it was for favoring representation by Unite, a recently formed combination of clothing-workers' unions, which had been urging a vote at the 30-worker facility.

The labor movement is also a political orphan. Says George Becker, president of the United Steel Workers: "We haven't been able to get the kind of legislation we need to protect working people. We are the Democratic Party, and yet, going back as far as the '70s, we've been unable to get legislation that protects working people's standard of living. We're in a race to the bottom, and that has got to change."

The task for the next AFL-CIO president will be to help overcome such barriers and infuse new life in the once proud movement. "Whoever wins is going to devote substantially more resources to organizing," says Reich. In the final analysis, he adds, "working people may simply turn to unions as their only alternative. But for that to happen, unions are going to have to be a lot more vigorous and imaginative." Labor's toughest job still lies ahead.

--Reported by James L. Graff/Chicago, Margot Hornblower/Los Angeles, John Moody/New York and Adam Zagorin/Washington

With reporting by JAMES L. GRAFF/CHICAGO, MARGOT HORNBLOWER/LOS ANGELES, JOHN MOODY/NEW YORK AND ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON