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Labor Journalism While the coverage of workers’ issues in mainstream media has been declining in recent years, the opportunities for journalists working in labor communications continues to increase. Specialists maintain that the mainstream media does not reflect the workers’ perspective so they find themselves with

a job to do

Spring 2006

Communication: Journalism Education Today •

ttt Reporting about labor is a labor itself, from extensive preparation to comprehensive presentation. First comes the training: taking courses and learning to write skillfully about many technical jobs. Second comes the publishing: in major media outlets and in targeted publications, from print to electronic versions.

t By Haley Huie

Locked out employees of the form a picket line outside a hotel’s main entrance in downtown San Francisco. Two days after workers at four hotels went on strike, management at 10 other major city hotels locked out their workers. A negotiating group representing the hotels started the lockout in October of 2004. More than 1,400 union workers from four other hotels walked off the job over stalled contract negotiations. All workers returned to their jobs later that fall. Photo by Michael Maloney / San Francisco Chronicle

Teenagers investigating a career with this specialization find themselves considering an ironic quandary: lack of emphasis on labor issues in contemporary media outlets but an obvious need for dedicated professionals.

Advisers training teenagers find themselves evaluating how optimistic they should be when helping journalists open the world of labor to the world that benefits from the skills and efforts of labor.

Coverage of labor issues provides job opportunities Labor specialization Union wage negotiations and strikes often make the front page of major daily newspapers. They often lead the nightly newscast with striking visuals of airline mechanics on picket lines or masses of workers walking to work. Still, if organized labor activists are to be believed, online media, newsletters and publications produced by the labor organizations themselves have become the primary source of news about workers’ issues. The need leaves the door wide open for journalists who are skilled and trained to report about labor issues.

David Swanson, an Internet activist who serves on a local executive council of the Newspaper Guild, CWA and AFL-CIO, has worked on stories that reflect his observations of the industry. He said that journalists in this industry often report on critical issues primarily in media outlets produced by labor unions.

PROFESSIONAL CONFLICTS However, few stories about workplace issues as well as a full range of social, political and economic topics regularly find coverage, or accurate coverage, in influential national media outlets.

Swanson explained that the number of journalists covering union issues was declining to a level that indicates this kind of coverage is virtually gone.

“The number of full-time labor journalists in mainstream media can be counted on one hand,” he said.

Important issues that were not covered in large daily newspapers find a voice in labor media, Swanson said.

He said the pieces found in the mainstream often leave the reader clueless because of the difficulty of sourcing to make the article appear “balanced.”

Swanson said he has researched the media’s coverage of workers’ issues and found it to be lacking or nonexistent. He views the disappearing stories as a matter of inaccurate reporting, mainly because of the exclusion of the workers’ viewpoint. The amount of coverage in mainstream media, according to Swanson, is declining because there is a difference of perspectives.

• Communication: Journalism Education Today

“The perspective of the business section, and of business owners, doesn’t reflect the workers’ perspective.

[The content] doesn’t deal with health care, standards of living or whether people are earning a decent living,” Swanson said.

In the current situation, Swanson portrays the specialized labor media outlets as the most effective way to communicate issues for the public. The pay, though, is often not as good as it is at major media operations.

In addition to advancing awareness of issues, writers experience more freedom to present workers’ outlooks.

“Other outlets pay less, but you can write about what you want to,” he said.

PROFESSIONAL REWARDS Lynne Baker, director of communication for PACE and the United Steelworkers Association, confirmed that the field certainly has room to grow. She agreed that coverage in mainstream media has declined in recent years, but she also noted the sharp increase in individual labor communications media. She described her position as rewarding because of the mission that the organizations undertake.

“The biggest reward is voicing the concerns of the workers,” Baker said.

She has spent most of her career in the labor field.

After transitioning from both mainstream newspapers and labor newspapers to radio stations, Baker now works as a public relations practitioner for labor organizations.

Baker said knowledge of the field is especially important for journalists hoping to enter the profession. Labor history, she elaborated, provides a springboard for journalists transitioning from other areas of expertise or for beginning a career in specialized reporting.

Reuters news agency correspondent Erwin Seba covers stories pertaining to the oil refining industry and subsequently covers labor issues when they arise. Seba said that the majority of his coverage includes information about technical difficulties and about damage to Spring 2006

ttt Larry Edmond, in Uncle Sam hat, who calls himself a cheerleader, leads on the “troops” as they march up Market Street. The Service Employees International Union Local 1877, representing 3,000 janitors working in San Francisco were marching from Justin Hermann Plaza to City Hall in August of 2003, seeking intervention by Mayor Willie Brown. Photo

by Kathy Raddatx/ San Francisco Chronicle

equipment. He also explained that he enjoys reporting on labor disputes because those stories allow him to work with human issues.

“Generally speaking, it takes you out of the technical realm and into working with people,” Seba said. “It’s rewarding to write about people’s lives as opposed to machinery breaking.”

When he began writing labor stories, he found himself dealing with the challenge of overcoming workers’ suspicions . He said it was difficult to develop relationships because most of his stories have to enlighten readers about sensitive implications, often about working conditions or about workers’ needs and benefits.

He urges young writers to understand that it will take longer to build the concrete relationships that are necessary to understand the politics of the industry.

“It is important for people to know that you have no agenda,” Seba said. “You have to let them know that you’ll treat them fairly.”

Seba also explained that union workers are often discounted as being motivated only by self-interest. He pointed out that there is an inherent implication that company negotiations are also motivated by the specific concerns of their organization, with little regard for the perspective of the workers.

“Based on history, labor unions have been tainted with the image of corruption. That is unfair,” Seba said PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT To attain this kind of ability, though, requires years of transition — years of education, of on-the-job training, of additional reading and viewing and of ongoing Spring 2006

learning, from books to films to Internet research. The process happens as education evolves into a disciplined passion that provides an ongoing public service.

Formal education in journalism is important for writers interested in labor issues, but Seba points to labor history as an essential component.

He underscores the importance of education that informs journalists and builds intellectual foundations for lifetime research by journalists who must be familiar with directions in the past to write effectively about conditions today.

Economics are another important area of understanding. Writers must fully grasp the position of workers and of corporations. Understanding pay scales and the cost of living is an important consideration when explaining a strike or a labor movement. In their teens or 20s, young writers may wonder why skilled workers demand such high pay. However, they must understand the economic needs of middle-age workers and of older workers anticipating retirement.

“Understand how much it takes to feed a family — to send a kid to college,” Seba said.

He said being familiar with the organization of labor unions is helpful, and writers should utilize personal skills and ethical relationships to acquire information they need.

“Learn to listen and talk,” he said.

Professors are also concerned about the amount of coverage of labor issues in daily newspapers and mainstream magazines throughout the nation.

Chris Roush, assistant professor and director of continued on page 8 Communication: Journalism Education Today •

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the Carolina Business Initiative at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, works with students in the School of Journalism. Roush, a business reporter for 15 years before he began teaching five years ago, said he does not believe that students graduating with a degree in journalism are equipped to join the field of labor journalism after their undergraduate work.

Roush explained that he believes universities could do a better job of focusing on labor stories in teaching about business reporting. As support of his belief, he cites an amazing gap in training for this kind of reporting.

“There is no journalism school in the country that offers a class in labor reporting at the undergraduate level,” Roush said. “This is a reflection of the lack of attention paid to business reporting in journalism schools.”

Describing the overall quality of labor reporting in the mainstream media as poor, Roush said the coverage neglects many members of the workforce. Roush pointed to the number of union workers in the 1950s as being a third of the workers. Currently he estimated that 12-15 percent of workers are members of labor unions.

“This is still a sizeable chunk of readership that we’re ignoring,” Roush said. “The coverage is poor because a lot of newspapers and magazines look at labor issues not from the perspective of unions but from how labor strikes affect consumers.”

Professional CHALLENGES Convincing the media that stories highlighting labor tensions and strikes are important enough to warrant coverage

NSTAR Electric & Gas employees on strike gear up for the wind and rain as they rally for support in front of Nstar in Hyannis, Mass., in May of 2005.

Photo by Paul Blackmore / Cape Cod Times

will be a key challenge for journalists entering the field, Roush said. He also said the positive side of the career will be the exclusive pieces that these writers will be assigned. They can develop a monopoly because of the diminishing number of journalists with expertise in labor issues.

Michelle Amber, a labor journalist for the Bureau of National Affairs — Daily Labor Report, has spent 32 years in the industry of labor communication and 25 years writing about labor issues.

The biggest reward in her profession, according to Amber, is “learning about things that unions are doing to help workers.”

She documented what she believes is a noteworthy example. She pointed to a timely initiative: helping workers who have been displaced and affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Amber said Katrina efforts have been pushed to the forefront of labor media recently.

As she discusses the importance of such efforts, she emphasizes the same theme stressed by Swanson: lack of reporting and a failure to present a total perspective of workers’ viewpoints, from successes to problems and from needs to goals.

• Communication: Journalism Education Today

“The public doesn’t know that much about unions,” Amber said, noting a concern that she said is shared by many journalists in the profession.

There are not many labor reporters. As a result, general reporters are assigned to cover the union issues. She finds this approach impractical because it forces the writers to learn about the subject as they go.

Although the trend of limited exposure for labor issues in major newspapers exists, Amber believes that the industry has grown in the last year because of discourse within the labor movement. Two competing labor federations have attracted the attention of many labor publications and spilled into the public eye.

The AFL-CIO and Change To Win Federation have garnered publicity because of their battles regarding differences in their views of the American labor movement. The Change To Win Federation’s Web site, representing seven labor unions, calls for a number of reforms to the AFL-CIO, the largest labor organization in the United States.

PERSONAL PREPARATION Amber’s formal education consists of a degree in English literature and of a master’s

degree in labor law, which she earned after she had entered the field of labor journalism.

“A background in labor education is very helpful,” Amber said. “Courses in labor relations are also a big help.”

Amber cited Cornell University’s school of Industrial and Labor Relations as a great resource for students who are interested in pursuing a career in the field. Several other reputable universities, such as the University of Washington, Michigan State University and the University of California – Berkeley, offer established programs in labor relations.

The Labor Press Project, an initiative sponsored by the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington, offers a history of labor communication on its Web site, which features a variety of labor newspapers. Some of the publications appeared as early as 1898.

In the job prospect market, the challenge for teachers is clear. How should journalism teachers make students aware of opportunities in this field?

What ethical responsibilities do teachers have, both to the awareness of the issues and to the complexity of entering a field that is losing momentum in the journalism world? How do you deal with seemingly conflicting needs? How can teachers and young journalists change the future of reporting about labor and about business?

The challenge is ongoing.

The results can be life-transforming, both for workers and for journalists. The need is current, but it begins with attentive preparation, something that may have seeds of emergence in high school and that may develop strong foundations during college years. n

Spring 2006

ttt Mass media generate interest, avoid politics of labor issues

Spring 2006

A welder in Ohio uses a cutting torch to cut steel.

Editors often call upon photographers to document all aspects of the workplace environment to give stockholders, potential customers and others insight into their profession.

Photo by Jake Ragan / EVS

challenge by saying, “It was an open attack on the federation and left out for the public and others to see the wrenching problems faced by the union.”

Newspaper coverage on events can often take different angles, but Franklin said he thinks most newspaper reporting was similar.

“The only nuances that I could see were based on the experiences of the reporters and their abilities to reflect the differences in the mood and meanings of the situation,” Franklin said.

“The greatest challenge is making their story interesting to the greater public and not just the very, very small circle of people who truly care about what happens to them,” Franklin said. “Even union members are disinterested in unions’ politics.

When you match their situations with stories about consequences of their actions, then you can reach more readers.”

In several stories before the convention, Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Alison Grant looked at the 50-year-history of the AFL-CIO and the expected impact of a split of local unions of the federation. Grant, who attended and covered the conven-

tion in Chicago, wrote follow-up stories as other unions defected.

“It was a colorful story with interesting, articulate people who thought they disagreed on some things and agreed that the labor movement had to be revived or it would fade to irrelevancy,” Grant said.

She believes the split is a huge story because it represented the first public splinter in the 50-year-old federation and it portended potentially less help from the labor movement for Democratic politicians and causes that have long relied on organized labor putting its differences aside at some point.

“Covering labor issues is a challenge because virtually every story is political — involving the tension between worker livelihoods and business interests,” Grant said.

Like Franklin, Grant said it is also a challenge to enliven situations and stories often expressed in partisan generalities on all sides, but she continues to note the greatest challenge. “[T]he biggest challenge is convincing newspapers to run labor stories,” she said. “They have shrunk in status along with labor itself.” n

Communication: Journalism Education Today •

t By Cynthia Yu Marvin

The organization that has represented the U.S. labor union for 50 years, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, known better as AFLCIO, suffered a loss of supporters.

Media outlets covered the event in an attempt to stress the significance of the unions who boycotted the labor union convention on July 25.

There are few labor journalists in mainstream media these days, and the few left face challenges to let the people’s voice heard.

“The corporate media does not report on labor issues or on any issues from the point of view of working people,” said David Swanson, member and an executive council of the Newspaper Guild, CWA, and AFL-CIO. For documentation of his claim, Swanson suggests, people should visit the ILCA Web site to see the collection of articles on stories that were blacked out by the corporate media but were covered in the labor media.

The boycott was big news to many people interested in unions and labor journalists, but the challenge for labor journalists is presenting the news in a way that hits home in everyday lives to make the information interesting to the average citizen.

“My greatest challenge [with this event] was getting the union leaders on the dissident side to explain candidly in detail what they were doing just before the split,” said Steve Franklin, Chicago Tribune writer.

“They were not quite cooperative.”

Never in history had so many unions quit the federation, Franklin said. It was news simply because of the break-up.

According to Franklin, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern described this

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The PACESetter is an award-winning journal of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union. Such magazines give people an opportunity to experience writing, reporting, layout/design and photography — skills necessary for any magazine.

t By Lynne Baker

Reporting on the impact corporations have My interest in labor journalism grew from two sources: an employee relations course I took as an elective while I was a marketing major in the school of business at the University of Colorado and hearing the stories of a veteran labor journalist who was active in the labor movement during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

I loved hearing the stories told by a veteran labor journalist. That, combined with my interest in the world of work, led me into labor journalism.

When I was the communications director at the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union, I wrote an article entitled “Corporate promotion: from the cradle to the grave” for my May-June 1998 edition of the OCAWReporter. This article came back to me when I was thinking of topics that would illustrate the power of corporations over our lives. Another strong influence was the book Fast Food Nation, which talked about how corporations were getting their messages into the schools.

For a class project, I analyzed the Regional Transportation District strike in the Denver area during the early 1980s. After reading hundreds of newspaper, radio and TV clips about the strike, I noticed how the coverage was biased toward management’s point-ofview.

The workers’ side of the story was not given as much play. For example, the media kept mentioning how much of a wage increase the workers wanted, but when management gave itself a raise after the strike that was at a higher percentage than that desired by the workers, it hardly generated any press.

Part of what we do as labor journalists is report on the impact corporations have on our daily lives.

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Individuals interested in pursuing labor journalism as a career should consider these observations: 1. Just as there are publications devoted to covering business and newsletters for companies, labor has its own newsletters, magazines and newspapers as well.

Labor publications are necessary to get the workers’ point of view out on issues in the workplace and the world at large. The worker point-of-view on economic and political issues is often ignored in the media.

2. Labor communicators report on such items as organizing campaigns; legislative issues such as the fight to preserve overtime; political issues such as the attempt to privatize government services and programs such as Social Security; economic issues; trade issues; labor law violations; health care reform; campaigns to get a fair contract; arbitration awards; politics; health and safety issues; coalition building with community and environmental groups and the religious community; labor-management partnerships; grievances; labor history; charitable work and donations to help the community; corporate power in the workplace, at the ballot box, in society and in the media. The list goes on.

3. Reporting the official policy of the union leadership is important, but the media also needs to give space to dissenting viewpoints from the membership. It is essential to convince labor leaders and workers that they need to talk to and trust the mainstream media to get their message out.

4. Labor reporters should not get involved in union politics. They can get ugly and more vicious than regular political campaigns. n Spring 2006

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Samples

Cartoon/Illustration, Local Unions, First Award: Bill Fitzsimmons, “Test Your Management Skills,” Local 95 Union News, UAW Local 95 Janesville, Wis.

No Justice and No Peace: The U.S. Occupation’s War on Iraqi Workers BAGHDAD, IRAQ (10/20/03) — The disaster that is the occupation of Iraq is much more than the suicide bombings and guerilla ambushes of U.S. troops that play nightly across U.S. television screens. The violence of grinding poverty, exacerbated by economic sanctions after the first Gulf War, has been deepened by the latest invasion.

Every day the economic policies of the occupying authorities create more hunger among Iraq’s working people. The policies transform workers into a pool of low-wage, semi-employed labor, desperate for jobs at almost any price.

While the effects of U.S. policy on daily life go largely unseen in the U.S. media, anyone walking the streets of Baghdad cannot miss them.

Children sleep on the sidewalks. Buildings that once housed many of the city’s 4 million residents, or the infrastructure that makes life in a modern city possible, such as the telephone exchange, remain burned-out ruins months after the occupation started. Rubble fills the broad boulevards, which were once the pride of a wealthy country, and the air has become gritty and brown as thousands of vehicles kick the resulting dust into the air.

In the meantime, U.S. contractors get rich from the billions of taxpayer dollars supposedly appropriated for reconstruction. Iraq’s national wealth — factories, refineries, mines, docks, and other industrial facilities — are being Spring 2006

Cartoon/Illustration, Local Unions, First Award: Dirk VanStalen, “Fartland,” The Provincial, BCGEU Burnaby BC, Canada

readied for sale to foreign companies by the occupation’s bureaucracy, to whom democracy and the unrestrained free market are the same.

But Iraqi workers, while facing bleak conditions, are not accepting their fate, at least as defined by corporate planners. They are organizing and making their own plans. Iraqi workers need a raise — desperately. For six months, they have been paid at an emergency level dictated by the U.S. occupation authority, known as the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Most workers get $60/month, a small percentage, $120; and a tiny minority (mostly administrators and managers), $180. This is the same wage scale that prevailed during the last few years of the Saddam Hussein regime.

One worker at the General State Leather Industry Factory, the largest shoe factory in the Middle East, says she supports six people in her family with the emergency payment. With unemployment still at catastrophic levels, every working Iraqi is supporting many other people at home. As she explains her situation, four other seamstresses, each wearing a hejab and worn tan tunic over their clothes, surround her.

They stand protectively around her while she speaks for all of them.

“The prices of food and clothing are going up rapidly, and the salary is very low. We work hard, and I’ve been here 10 years. I have to have a raise,” she pleads.

Another worker at the Al Daura oil refinery just outside Baghdad, complaining anonymously for fear that he would lose his job, told me he had spent 10 years fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, only to return home to his six children with nothing.

“I still have no house or place to live,” he said bitterly, “and the current emergency wage is totally incapable of supporting us.”…

Max Steinbock Award: David Bacon, “No Justice and No Peace: The U.S. Occupation’s War on Iraqi Workers,” The Dispatcher (October 2003), International Longshore and Warehouse Union San Francisco, Calif.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “No Justice, No Peace: The U.S. Occupation’s War on Iraqi Workers,” by David Bacon, is a sobering and simultaneously inspirational story detailing the adversity faced by Iraqi workers and organizers in the face of the American occupation. The story transcends international borders, underscoring the importance of and the need for labor protections for working families, both abroad and here at home. Bacon clearly demonstrates the frightening, systematic ways the U.S. government has obstructed organizing and even employment in Iraq — in favor of wealthy multinational corporations.

This impressive article features extensive research and chronicling of labor history in Iraq and in-depth, firsthand interviews with Iraqi workers, as well as stunning comments from representatives of contractors and of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The disheartening information about privatization attempts, wage scales, unemployment and the ongoing ramifications of the Saddam regime decrees is somewhat balanced by the resilience and strength of workers who continue to organize and fight for workers’ rights and by the support they receive from organizations such as USLAW and the ILO. Accompanied by photos of Iraqis in the workplace trying to earn a living and children sleeping on the streets, this outstanding journalistic effort compels readers to question the effects of the war and occupation on Iraq’s working class. While the issues of employment and union organizing are yet others that have been largely ignored by the mainstream press coverage of Iraq, reporters such as David Bacon must continue to issue reports like this, which detail an issue of concern not only to America’s working families but to workers everywhere.

For complete text of this article and to view other samples, visit http://www.ilcaonline.org. Reprinted with permission.

Communication: Journalism Education Today • 11

E x cerpt from S unday , J uly 3 1 , 2 0 0 5

Dissident unions put the focus on organizing

t By George Fraine, San Francisco Chronicle

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a voluntary federation of 52 national and international labor unions.

Today’s unions represent 9 million working women and men of every race and ethnicity and from every walk of life.

The AFL-CIO was created in 1955 by the merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 1995, the biennial convention elected President John J. Sweeney, Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson.

They have been reelected three times since then, most recently in 2005 for four-year terms.

CHICAGO — Four years ago, Andrew Stern, an Ivy Leaguetrained labor leader who rose to become the powerful president of the Service Employees International Union, nominated John Sweeney for re-election as president of the AFL-CIO at its convention in Las Vegas.

In his speech, Stern was most complimentary of the “remarkable leadership of this remarkable man.”

He went on to say that years ago, when Sweeney was president of a janitors union local in New York, the members called him “Pope” behind his back because his standards were high and his ego low.

“Well, I’ve always called him Mr. President, and I don’t want to stop now,” Stern said in his nominating speech.

How times have changed.

SEIU, the Brotherhood of Team­ sters and the United Food and Commercial Workers rocked the house of labor last week by breaking from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations to join with four other unions in a coalition they’re calling Change To Win. They’re embarking on the all-important job of organizing, which they say was not sufficiently emphasized by the federation of labor unions.

“Our world has changed,” Stern said in an office building a few miles from where federation members gathered last week for the 2005 convention. “Our economy has changed. Employers have changed, but the AFL-CIO is not willing to make fundamental change as well,” he said.

Change To Win will need to determine “what we will do dif-

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“The current AFLCIO leadership may be content. American workers are not. The federation had had many opportunities … to embrace fundamental reforms that would strengthen labor’s ability to make real headway for American workers and did not take advantage of them.”

Edgar Romney ferently in the future,” said Anna Burger, an SEIU executive who is chairing the new coalition. One thing is clear to the members, she said: They will attempt to organize workers in service, food, transportation and construction, the core industries in which the seven member unions do their work.

In addition to SEIU, which represents many health care workers, the Teamsters and UFCW, coalition members are Unite Here, a merged union of garment workers and restaurant and hotel employees; the Laborers union; the Carpenters union; and the United Farm Workers. Together they represent about 5 million members. Before the split, the AFL-CIO had 13.5 million members.

“It had to be done,” Burger said of the split that commanded the attention of the nearly 1,000 delegates at the AFL-CIO convention, nearly all

of whom wore “Sweeney Solidarity Team” T-shirts Wednesday, when he was re- elected by acclamation.

“Working people need representation, and we were getting smaller and smaller,” she said, a reference to steadily declining union membership. Union members make up about 12 percent of the U.S. workforce today, compared with 35 percent in 1935. Less than 8 percent of workers in the private sector belong to unions, compared with 16 percent 20 years ago.

On Monday, Stern and James Hoffa, the head of the Teamsters, pledged that they not to raid AFLCIO unions as they try to grow.

“That lasted about a day, a half a day,” said Gerald McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who accuses SEIU of attempting to raid members of United Domestic Workers, an affiliate of home care providers in his union in Riverside County.

“I think if the first few days (after SEIU’s disaffiliation) are any indication, they are going to go after anybody,” McEntee said of the Change To Win coalition.

Illustrating the aggressive tone expected from the new coalition, the fight over home care providers is shaping up to be a bareknuckles struggle between SEIU and AFSCME. Several years ago, the two unions agreed to a 50-50 split of California counties where each union would try to organize home care providers. AFSCME signed up about 9,000 workers in Riverside County. McEntee said the raiding continued last week, when Stern wrote Sweeney to say SEIU is no longer covered by the AFL-CIO’s Spring 2006

Reflection

Police apply nylon handcuffs to an unidentified female protester at the Labor day rally in front of a San Francisco hotel Sept. 5, 2005. Members of the unions striking some downtown hotels and their supporters marched and camped out Monday to call for a union settlement of their long standing dispute. Photo by Brant Ward / San Francisco Chronicle

no-raid rule because it is no longer a member and it will continue to go after Riverside County home care workers.

The SEIU version of events is that the workers came to SEIU for help during contract negotiations, Burger said.

AFSCME’s McEntee said that is not true and that SEIU has signed several AFSCME workers in the county. He called the coalition’s emphasis on organizing hypocritical because only SEIU and Unite Here have gained members in the past four years while the rolls of the five other unions have declined.

“The concern we have is with their leadership because their members never voted (for disaffiliation),” McEntee said. “This decision was top-down. But I hope the coalition is not doomed because a couple million members need representation, particularly in these troubled times,” he said.

Sweeney, 71, took office 10 years ago on a platform called “Organize the Unorganized,” and asked that unions devote 30 percent of their budgets to organizing. He said last week that a few were close to that at the outset of his administration, SEIU among them, and a significant number have devoted about 20 percent through the years. In April, the AFL-CIO announced a re- emphasis on organizing, reiterated the 30 percent target and told members that their efforts “have not been adequate to produce the major investments in strategic organizing that are necessary to make our movement grow and build power for workers.”

Stern, who was Sweeney’s protege at SEIU, Spring 2006

and his allies seized on that in forming the coalition.

“There is a wide gap between current AFLCIO leadership proposals and true reform,” said Burger and the coalition’s treasurer, Edgar Romney, in a statement prior to the convention. “There has been virtually no progress on the major issues under debate, and any action taken (in recent months) has been mainly window dressing. The current AFL-CIO leadership may be content. American workers are not.

The federation had had many opportunities in recent weeks to embrace fundamental reforms that would strengthen labor’s ability to make real headway for American workers and did not take advantage of them.”

Sweeney said the disaffiliation is a “tragedy for members” of SEIU and the Teamsters — and perhaps for those represented by Unite Here, which is widely expected to leave the federation as well, although its leaders and those of the three other unions in the coalition but still in the AFO-CIO say they continue to consider their options.

“Some of our good brothers were trying to make a power grab (to take control of the AFLCIO leading up to the convention), and I think that it failed and they didn’t have the support of a majority so they picked up their marbles and they left,” Sweeney told reporters Wednesday.

“In the long run, it will hurt workers. We are more effective when we are united,” Sweeney said.

On Thursday, as the convention closed, the AFL-CIO shut one last door on the dissi-

I’m a business writer at the San Francisco Chroncle and cover labor but not exclusively. I also cover advertising and breaking business news, but I’m the closest thing to a labor reporter here.

This is a Sunday story I wrote following the tumultuous AFL-CIO convention this past summer when the three major unions broke away from the labor federation.

What I did in this story is try to give some context, beginning with a quote — which I asked the staff of the AFL-CIO to dig up — in which Andy Stern, the leader of the dissenting unions, had praised John Sweeney, who he was betraying, some four years earlier. Sweeney told me about the Stern comment, and chuckled.

The story goes on to set up the differences between the two union coalitions, the AFL-CIO and Change To Win, and then establishes that Change To Win will have its difficulties as it establishes itself and that the AFL-CIO will have budget problems.

Right off the bat, the head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, says Change To Win can’t be trusted. Also, the AFL-CIO is $18 million in the hole, a shortage caused by missing major union dues.

Labor stories should be balanced, even if they are describing conflict within the House of Labor, because many readers are going to consider them through their own biases. There is a belief, for example, that all reporters are represented by labor unions — not true.

I am a member of the Newspaper Guild so in stories that describe labor-management conflict I have to be even-handed, lest I be accused of favoring labor.

George Raine. staff writer San Francisco Chronicle graine@sfchronicle.com

continued on page 14 8 Communication: Journalism Education Today • 13

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dents. SEIU and the Teamsters, which paid about $18 million toward the AFL-CIO’s budget of $126 million, said they wanted to continue working with and funding state labor federations and central labor councils. In a memo Thursday, Sweeney said the AFL-CIO constitution is clear that non-members can have no affiliation and thus SEIU and the Teamsters, and now UFCW, will have no presence in those groups so their money will not be accepted. He said he will appoint a committee to ascertain the fiscal impact of that decision and adjust the budget accordingly.

“That’s very unfortunate,” Burger said. “We believe in partnership, particularly at the grassroots level. John Sweeney is trying to tear that apart.”

It’s very likely, though, that the AFL-CIO will soon have an infusion in its ranks. The California Nurses Association will take up the question of joining the federation at a September convention, said Rose Ann DeMoro, the executive director of the Oakland union.

“No issues affecting the majority of working Americans are being debated (in the split),” she said.

“It appears to be more about egos and an effort by specific unions to anoint themselves as the group who should control the AFL-CIO. In order to have a labor movement you have to have coordination of working people working together.”

Harley Shaiken, a UC Berkeley labor specialist, added that a split “was everybody’s second choice” as a resolution to the fight. He said that the seriously divided labor movement creates an image of a rafter on the Colorado River approaching the rapids.

“It’s either going to be a bumpy ride or a traumatic experience,” he said. “We’re just now at the beginning.” n

International Labor Communications Association http://www.ilcaonline.org

The International Labor Communications Association, founded in 1955, is the professional organization of labor communicators in North America. ILCA membership is open to national, regional, and local union publications and to media productions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and the CLC, as well as to associate members not affiliated with those bodies. The ILCA’s several hundred members produce publications with a total circulation in the tens of millions.

The ILCA is a professional support organization for labor communicators. We work to strengthen and expand labor print publications, Web sites, and radio, television and film productions by providing resources, expertise and networking opportunities for labor communicators. The ILCA works to encourage democratic labor media that engages workers in an ongoing conversation.

The ILCA is a self-supporting, autonomous, nonprofit organization governed by a 20member executive council. The ILCA maintains an office and staff in Washington, D.C., and holds meetings, workshops and conventions all over North America. ILCA represents labor media at conferences with national media reform groups and independent, “mainstream,” ethnic and community-based media. The organization also supports issues important to the labor media within the union community.

Communication Workers of America http://www.cwa-union.org

The Communication Workers of America uses a triange to symbolize the three major programs of the union: representation, organizing and community/political action. The CWA website notes that founding president, Joseph Beirne, calls the symbol the “triple threat.”

CWA, America’s largest communications and media union, represents more than 700,000 men and women in both private and public sectors, including more than half a million workers who are building the Information Highway.

CWA members are employed in telecommunications, broadcasting, cable TV, journalism, publishing, electronics and general manufacturing, as well as airline customer service, government service, health care, education and other fields.

The union includes some 1,200 chartered local unions across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Members live in approximately 10,000 communities, making CWA one of the most geographically diverse unions.

International Federation of Journalists http://www.ifi.org

The International Federation of Journalists is the largest world organization of journalists. The federation today represents approximately 500,000 members in more than 100 countries. The IFJ promotes international action to defend press freedom and social justice through strong, free and independent trade unions of journalists. The IFJ does not subscribe to any given political viewpoint, but promotes human rights, democracy and pluralism.

14 • Communication: Journalism Education Today

Spring 2006