Unions seek rallying point in Atlanta

Georgia membership, 2001: 7 percent

Georgia membership, 2014: 4.3 percent

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

The nation’s most powerful labor leaders opened their annual winter meetings in Atlanta on Monday, pitching an aggressive national agenda to raise wages, address income and racial inequality and boost union membership from the capital of the largely non-union South.

It’s the first time the AFL-CIO executive council has had its winter confab in Atlanta — reflecting a new emphasis on pay and union membership in the region.

It’s an uphill battle. Union membership nationally has declined for decades, and only about 4 percent of Georgia workers are in a union. Organized labor is even on its heels in heavily-unionized states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, where policies to reduce the power of collective bargaining have been pushed.

But union chiefs appeared upbeat, emboldened by the growing debate over income inequality that has captured attention from both major political parties, though from opposite perspectives. Union leaders contend collective bargaining is the best fix.

Corporate profits are near historic highs and worker productivity is up by a quarter since 2000, yet wages are stagnant, said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO.

“That defies all rules of economics. Now it’s our turn to get a raise,” Trumka said.

Economic recruiters in Georgia and other largely non-union states say cheap labor and business-friendly policies have led to an economic resurgence. But analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has shown the state has actually lost ground to the rest of the nation in many key metrics.

Trumka said that 2015 “could be the year for collective action.”

“We are going to be negotiating more contracts this year than any other in the history of the labor movement,” Trumka said, referring to the 5 million union members, from actors to flight attendants, who will be involved in contract votes.

The group is meeting through Wednesday at the Westin Peachtree Plaza downtown — one of the few big hotels in the city whose workers are unionized.

Organizers are rallying around a national “Raising Wages” campaign. A town hall-style meeting on trade issues is planned Tuesday night with former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and Wednesday’s meeting will be devoted to issues of racial injustice, which Trumka said are used to divide the working class.

The AFL-CIO hopes to make wages a key issue in the first four primary states in the 2016 presidential contest. Cities and some states across the nation are pushing minimum wage hikes. Right-to-work and other policies to curb union participation cause rising inequality, he said.

Trumka said AFL-CIO 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, despite the Republicans’ lopsided advantage in congressional races.

Trumka said Wal-Mart’s move last week to boost its workers pay reflects pressure on companies from unions and working class people to address quality of life issues.

Kyle Jackson, the Georgia head of the National Federation of Independent Business, a powerful small business organization, called it “confounding to have well-compensated big labor bosses talking about the plight of the American worker.”

He termed it “creative marketing” to suggest labor played a role, and said market pressures and an improving economy had more to do with it.

Despite the bravado at Monday’s opening session, unions have stumbled trying to boost Sunbelt membership.

The United Auto Workers have so far largely failed to unionize 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 UAW 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.

Still, Ron Ault, who leads the metal trades department at AFL-CIO, called it a “fallacy” that Southern workers are hostile to unions. Businesses and many Republicans have tried to “drive a stake in our hearts,” Ault said, but unions are taking the long view.

“Right now the only place we can go is up,” he said.

Pay isn’t the only issue workers face.

Last week, a group of workers who erect concert stages assembled in frigid air outside a Maroon 5 concert at Philips Arena, protested the working conditions of their employer, Crew One, and concert promoting giant Live Nation. Crew One workers say the company misclassifies stagehands as independent contractors, not employees.

Crew One workers in Atlanta voted last year 2-to-1 to join the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union. The National Labor Relations Board upheld the vote. But Crew One has not recognized the vote and used legal tactics to stall, the union said. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Live Nation pays union scale wages to stagehands in other cities such as Birmingham, but not at Philips Arena through Crew One, union officials say. Crew One workers, who rig stages, string complex light and sound systems and lug heavy crates, also say safety procedures and worker benefits don’t stack up with union peers.

“The battle we are having with Crew One and Live Nation in Atlanta is an example of what workers are facing all across this country,” said Matt Loeb, president of IATSE.