Providence native Edward McElroy, president of the American Federation of Teachers, urges public employees to join forces with, and remember the pivotal support of, private-sector unions.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, June 3, 2005

BY SCOTT MacKAY
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Back in the 1960s, when Edward McElroy was a young social studies teacher and union activist in Warwick, public school teachers did not have the right to bargain collectively for wages and benefits; most teachers did not have family health insurance.

Teacher and other public employee unions were weak, but it was an era when a thrumming manufacturing economy in Rhode Island provided thousands of well-paid, union jobs in the private sector.

Last night, McElroy reminded his public employee brethren how much organizing help they had from private-sector unions. And he urged public-employee union members to help rebuild the labor movement in the state and nation by working on private-sector organizing campaigns.

"We're all in this together," said McElroy, 64, a Providence native who is now president of the 1.3-million-member American Federation of Teachers, the fourth largest labor union in the country and a key cog in the AFL-CIO.

McElroy, who was the keynote speaker last night at the 25th anniversary awards dinner of the Institute for Labor Studies, held at The Westin Providence, recalled his time as a young union organizer in Warwick, where he taught social studies at Lockwood Junior High School.

When the nascent teacher union needed a telephone bank, members turned to a United Steelworkers of America local, which represented private-sector workers. "We depended on the support of those who were already organized in the private sector."

One of the reasons that public employees won decent health benefits, McElroy said, in the 1960s and 1970s is that most private-sector companies in those days, particularly those with unions, provided health-care benefits to their workers.

Now, McElroy said, "union members are some of the only people who have decent health-care benefits."

And he asked, rhetorically, "Do you think we'll keep them if everybody loses them?"

Last night's dinner of the Cranston-based Institute for Labor Studies drew its usual crowd of more than 500, made up of union leaders, the state's Democratic political elite and a scattering of business executives.

Sen. Jack Reed and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy addressed the attendees. Democratic legislative leaders were sprinkled throughout the tables, and the two contenders for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, Sheldon Whitehouse, the former attorney general, and Secretary of State Matthew Brown, pressed the flesh.

McElroy ignited a lusty round of boos at the mention of Governor Carcieri, whom he lampooned as a "governor who really cares deeply about labor."

Organized labor, McElroy acknowledged, is not doing well. "It is a time when union membership is dismally low."

Just 13 million Americans now belong to unions. Only 13 percent of the U.S. workforce is unionized. In the private sector, that number is just 8 percent.

By contrast, about 35 percent of the U.S. workforce was unionized in the 1950s and 1960s.

The exodus of manfacturing from the United States and changes in the economy have crippled the private-sector labor movement. Now, McElroy said, it is time to rebuild.

His union, the AFT, has been one of the few with a substantial increase in members in the past decade. McElroy said the AFT has persevered by reaching beyond its traditional base of classroom teachers to such professionals as health-care workers and college professors.

"We are looking at organizing heretofore unorganized workers," said McElroy in an interview before his speech last night. "There are lot of professional workers out there; the finance industry is largely unorganized, the insurance industry is largely unorganized."

In particular, McElroy said, unions must do more to reach young workers. "Unions do have to go out and organize young workers and connect with young workers in a way we haven't done before," said McElroy. "I wouldn't depend on any political party to organize anybody."