Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201280463
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
MEMBERSHIP IN AFL-CIO IS SHIFTING
Reflecting the trend in the nation's economy away from manufacturing, new membership numbers from the AFL-CIO show growing strength among government and service employee unions.Once dominated by the manufacturing and construction unions, the new membership numbers underscore the fundamental shift toward service and government employee unions that began more than a decade ago.
Unions representing service employees and local government workers scored membership gains of 15.7 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively, over the past two years, some of the biggest gains in the labor federation.
The new numbers, prepared for the AFL-CIO's biennial convention in Detroit last November, represent the membership figures the federation uses to calculate per-capita dues of member unions.
Since the last convention two years ago, overall AFL-CIO membership has increased by 377,000 to 13.9 million.
The 1991 membership is just 140,000 below the record high of 14.07 million in 1975, which marked the beginning of the decline in total manufacturing employment in the United States.
The 1975 membership numbers for both the AFL-CIO and many of its 89 member unions appear to be a watershed for the American labor movement. Since then, major unions such as the United Steelworkers and the United Auto Workers have been steadily shrinking.
The steelworkers' union, which had more than 1 million members in 1975, reported 459,000 members this year, a drop of 21,000 from two years ago with no indication the decline has bottomed out.
The trend was much the same for the UAW, which has 840,000 members today, a drop from 1.4 million members in 1975. Part of the drop in UAW membership reflects the disaffiliation of more than 100,000 of its Canadian members.
The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, which has mounted one of the more aggressive organizing efforts in recent years, also has continued to lose members. Although it has been successful in a number of its organizing campaigns, it has not been able to attract enough new members to offset the losses. Membership in the union, which primarily represents workers in the men's clothing industry, was 154,000 in 1991, down from a high of 228,000 in 1985. In the last two years, the union has lost 26,000 members.
Membership in construction unions, once the Republican Party of the labor movement and still a major conservative force in internal union politics, also has fared poorly. Since 1975, nearly all the building trades have experienced major membership declines. The biggest drop was registered by the International Brotherhood of Carpenters, which went to 492,000 this year from 700,000 members in 1975.
The biggest membership gains since the last AFL-CIO convention in 1989 were registered by the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of States, County and Municipal Employees. SEIU membership grew by 119,000 to 881,000, reflecting the growth in the service sector of the economy.
The American Federation of Teachers was another union to show a membership gain over the past two years. AFT picked up 29,000 members, bringing its total to 513,000. The rival National Education Association, with nearly 2 million members, is by far the biggest union in the nation, but it is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO.