Unions make a stand in ... Atlanta?

Georgia membership, 2001: 7 percent

Georgia membership, 2014: 4.3 percent

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Top labor leaders launched a national campaign last week to try to reverse a decades-long slide in union membership, pitching unions as an antidote to inequality and condemning a foreign trade deal they say could hurt American workers.

The AFL-CIO executive council held its winter meetings in Atlanta for the first time ever — a signal the South remains a key focus despite failures in making major gains in the region. Among their challenges will be recruiting a conservative-leaning white working class and reaching out to young workers with little knowledge, or in some cases negative perceptions, of unions.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said during a town hall meeting that the diminished power of labor has hurt organized and non-union workers alike.

“The decline of the middle class is directly related to the shrinkage of labor unions in this country,” Reich told the gathering of hundreds of union members.

Reich and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka also railed against a plan to put the Trans-Pacific Partnership on a special legislative fast track that would limit or prohibit debate. Similar trade deals in recent decades have been passed the same way, with the administration negotiating and presenting deals to Congress with only an up or down vote. The pact is under negotiation and involves the U.S. and about a dozen nations on both sides of the Pacific.

Business groups, many establishment Republicans and President Barack Obama say the partnership would open foreign markets to American exports and protect American intellectual property and jobs.

But Reich and union leaders said it would weaken worker protections and environmental regulations, grow the U.S. trade gap, promote further outsourcing and depress wages. Tea party groups have joined with liberals to try to stymie fast track on grounds it gives too much power to the Obama administration.

“The whole idea that you would push through economic policy without any input from any member of the public is a deep assault on our democracy,” Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said in an interview at the conference.

Halting labor’s slide

To say unions face long odds in returning to their heyday is an understatement.

Membership nationally is down to about 11 percent from 20.3 percent in 1983. In Georgia and other fast-growing Southern states, participation is in the single digits.

Unions also have found difficulty in their traditional northern states, with moves by legislatures to curtail bargaining rights and the ability of unions to collect dues. Corporate interests, with far deeper pockets, have backed many of the changes.

Economic recruiters in Georgia and other largely non-union states say relatively cheap labor and business-friendly policies have led to an economic resurgence. These policies, they contend, are why Southern states have become an emerging hub of America’s manufacturing sectors — such as automotive and aviation plants.

But an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has shown Georgia has actually lost ground to the rest of the nation in many key metrics, including personal income, since 2000.

The Atlanta conference arrived against the backdrop of one of organized labor’s biggest years ever, with 5 million union members taking part in contract negotiations nationwide, from actors to flight attendants to postal workers.

It also comes as the issue of income inequality has captured the attention of both Democrats and Republicans — if from opposite perspectives. Union leaders pitched collective action as a way to boost stagnant wages and to combat the growing political strength of corporations.

Chris Clark, the president of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, said his group isn’t anti-union, but it is for right-to-work laws that do not force compulsory union membership. Many chamber members have union workforces and collaborative relationships with their labor organizations.

But Clark said he thinks the AFL-CIO message won’t gain traction with workers in the South, while northern states begin copying southern practices after losing jobs.

“If you want to talk income inequality,” Clark said, “you need to be talking about training and job creation.”

Southern battle

The Atlanta rally reflects union leaders’ desire to make inroads in the South, but it also represents the latest tactical reset after failures to gain ground.

Labor organizers need to convince a skeptical younger generation that may have little first-hand knowledge about the value of collective action, said Ron Ault, president of the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO.

Collective bargaining, he said, is not just about “jobs insurance,” but promoting safety, negotiating wage increases and giving workers a stronger voice.

Unions have made footholds in Georgia’s ports, skilled trades such as electricians and plumbers and in heavy construction. But unions have so far largely failed to organize the wave of new auto factories in the South, including the Kia plant in west Georgia.

Only at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga has the United Auto Workers had any progress toward organizing the workforce, and that was muddled. A union vote failed last year, but VW has invited UAW as a representative on workplace issues anyway. A separate group also has been recognized, but neither is an exclusive bargaining agent.

“This is not a sprint, this is a marathon, and you have to take the long view,” Ault said.

There’s also renewed movement to organize the thousands of flight attendants at Delta Air Lines, the least-unionized big U.S. airline despite waves of union activity over the past two decades.

Making some inroads

Walmart and other retailers’ pledges to raise wages are signs, union leaders say, of public frustration over low pay. And labor groups have made some gains in pressing for minimum wage hikes.

Business leaders say attracting and retaining talent and other free market factors were the main reasons for Walmart and others to raise wages.

Trumka, the AFL-CIO president, said the organization’s post-election research found that during the 2014 midterms, “91 percent of voters had flat or falling wages.” Voters really didn’t hear messages that spoke to these concerns from either major party, he said.

Trumka said cities such as Atlanta, Dallas and Orlando can be beachheads for union expansion in the South.

One area of success is the South’s emerging film industry, thanks in no small part to the heavily unionized Hollywood labor force.

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) was among the unions that lobbied Georgia lawmakers to enact lucrative incentives for film. Productions filmed in Georgia are heavily unionized, as in Hollywood.

IATSE’s local membership has grown from a couple hundred to about 4,000 in a few years thanks in large part to film, said IATSE President Matt Loeb.

Training film workers

Unions play a role in training film industry workers, and Georgia has had a shortage as productions surged. IATSE leaders in Georgia were part of a recent state initiative to find ways to grow local crews.

IATSE also won an organizing vote among concert stage workers with Crew One, an Atlanta company, though their status remains in dispute. The National Labor Relations Board upheld the vote, but the union says Crew One has failed to recognize the vote and used legal tactics to stall. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

At Philips Arena, concert promoter Live Nation hires Crew One to rig stages, hang and string complicated lights and sound systems.

Crew One continues to treat workers like independent contractors not employees, despite an NLRB ruling against the practice. Live Nation pays higher union wages to stagehands in other cities such as Birmingham, but not at Philips through Crew One, the union said.

Safety procedures and worker benefits also don’t stack up with union gigs in other cities, said Brian Hill, a Rome man who started with Crew One as a stagehand in 2011.

Hill, 27, said he was not the type of person who would have thought to join a union.

“This can be a fruitful career, if it’s done right,” he said.