How long have industrial unions like auto, steel, and rubber been on the decline?
A lot longer than you might think. Decades, really. It started in the ’70s and has continued since then. They were at their peak in the ’50s when union membership in the private sector was around 35 percent. Today, it’s at eight percent.  

Why were the ’50s such a heyday?
America was ahead of the rest of the world back then. Germany and Japan were still dealing with the effects of World War II. The Soviet Union wasn’t really on the map in terms of competition either. In the car industry in particular, GM could basically do what it wanted, and they built their robust pension plans assuming the same competitive edge would last. These unions had membership above one million, and tremendous benefits – many gave you the day off on your birthday, you got supplemental unemployment benefits if you got laid off. Those kinds of things are certainly not around today.  

Is the onerous responsibility of pensions for retired workers the main issue? That’s the big one, and the hot-button topic today. General Motors has huge health insurance costs because it’s paying for so many retired workers. Even if foreign companies offered the same benefits and wages to its current workers, they don’t have the debts from past pensioners and healthcare obligations too. So they have an immediate advantage and that has been disastrous for companies like GM. I think a national health insurance program, including everyone, is needed because it would lower GM’s obligations and make them more competitive.  

Has it been a slow and methodical decline for industrial unions and the companies they work for?
I’d say it was linear for a while – if you look back through the ’80s and ’90s, GM continued to announce plant closures. But we might be at the tipping point now where it becomes non-linear. Another example is that I don’t think Bethlehem steel even produces any steel anymore. 

Then have we seen the death of industrial unions?
UAW and the AFL/CIO have around 400,000 members now, which is less than half the numbers they had in the ’50s. Still, 400,000 is still no small number. They’re just not the giants they used to be. 

Could these unions have done anything to prevent their own decline?
I think the energy crises in the ’70s should have served as a major warning bell. UAW, Teamsters, steel too – they all were affected. I think they were kind of complacent. They continued to wail about their loss of influence but it wasn’t until the mid-90s when Republicans led by Newt Gingrich took control of the House of Representatives that they really woke up. That served as a real shock to the unions since they’d been very active in politics on the Democrats’ side. To have the House go Republican was a huge turnaround. The next year, the AFL/CIO brought in a new president in John Sweeney, and the push was to do much more and put more money into recruiting new members. I also don’t think these largely unionized companies like GM were at the cutting edge of innovation. It’s not a coincidence that we think of the Toyota Prius first when talking about hybrids.  

Why have service unions prospered at the same time industrial unions have faltered?
The union movement in California is actually growing as a percentage of the workforce. That’s not because of industrial unions. The growth is all in service industries like restaurant and hotel workers. One primary reason service unions have seen such growth is because of the inclusion of women and immigrants. It’s ironic because unions have traditionally relied on white men and been pretty hostile to immigrants.  

Historically, why were unions hostile to immigrants?
It’s an old school way of thinking that immigrants will come in and take union members’ jobs. It’s a pretty suicidal train of thought in today’s economy, especially here in California, and it became a matter of realism in welcoming immigrants into the fold for unions. When Miguel Contreras, who had come up through the United Farm Workers, became the head of the Los Angeles County AFL/CIO in 1996, that was a very symbolic turn in terms of the influence immigrants were going to have in the labor movement in the years to come.  

Are service unions learning from the mistakes made by industrial unions?
In some ways. The concerted push to beef up recruiting even more was the main reason the SEIU [Service Employees International Union] broke off from the AFL/CIO last year. They see an even bigger need to continue to bring in new members. Service unions are also doing a good job of reaching out to the community and religious groups. They’re much more sensitive to linking up with other groups and movements, making the fight for all workers, not just union workers. The continued connection to immigrants with unions’ involvement in the “A Day Without an Immigrant” in April is also an example of how they’ve evolved.  

It sounds like you don’t think they’re doing everything they could or should, though.
Unions used to be looked at almost like a consumer benefit organization. You signed up, paid your dues, didn’t do much, and the union took care of you. That didn’t work out, as we’ve seen with lots of unions on the rocks. There needs to be more done by members to take ownership of the union if they want to succeed. I think the union movement did a good job in fighting Bush’s effort to privatize social security last year. I think they have done a good job publicizing Wal-Mart’s suspect labor policies. But they need to consistently link their self-interest with the interests of the general public on issues like reforming healthcare, living wage campaigns, and reversing recent tax cuts that have further separated the richest Americans from the rest of the public. 

The former coordinator of the labor studies program at CSUDH, Stricker will have his book, “Why America Lost the War on Poverty,” published next year by the University of North Carolina Press.