(The following article by Julie M. McKinnon was posted on the Toledo Blade website on September 6.)
TOLEDO, Ohio — Even as 10,000 union members descend on downtown Toledo today for the annual Labor Day parade, many realize their ranks are shrinking.
The Toledo area lost about 6,500 union posts in a half dozen years, including about 500 in Teamsters Local 20.
The union has lost about 1,000 members since 1998, when the Toledo area was the fifth most unionized city in the nation, but organizing successes and employer expansions offset about 500 of those losses, said Bill Lichtenwald, president of Local 20. His local has 7,500 to 8,000 members, depending on the season.
Some of the same forces that have slashed union jobs in the Toledo area — a sluggish economy and moves to ship jobs overseas — are overshadowing all employees and job opportunities, Mr. Lichtenwald said. Accounting, telemarketing, and other typically non-union jobs are being outsourced to foreign countries, too, he noted.
“It isn’t just so much union as it is everybody who’s working for a living,” he said.
Retired Local 20 Trustee Cheryl Johnson will serve as the grand marshal of today’s parade, which starts at 9 a.m. at the intersection of Monroe and Summit streets. Mrs. Johnson is the assistant to General President Jim Hoffa of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The parade will include several high school bands and other units, including the Zenobia Shrine Mystics and Mecca Temple mini cars. Plus, Division 4 of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen is celebrating its 140th anniversary this year.
The Toledo area last year had 58,500 union members, or nearly 21 percent of working people, making it the 12th most unionized city in the nation, statistics show. In 1998, the Toledo area had 65,000 union members, equal to a quarter of workers, according to the Bureau of National Affairs Inc. in Washington.
Among states, Michigan has the third highest percentage of union members, 21.6 percent, or 929,800 workers. Ohio has the 14th highest percentage at 15.2 percent, or 758,600 workers, according to the Bureau of National Affairs. (New York is the state with the highest percentage of union workers, while the Albany, N.Y., area is the city with the highest percentage.)
Declining union membership is not the only issue facing labor locally and nationally.
This summer’s splinter of the AFL-CIO, when the Teamsters and other unions intent on organizing withdrew from the federation, is the biggest issue on people’s minds, said John Paul MacDuffie, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
At question is whether the two groups will wind up complementing each other or being adversaries when it comes to recruiting and other issues, Mr. MacDuffie said.
The strike at Northwest Airlines Corp. serves as an example of how labor can be hurt by such divisions, Mr. MacDuffie said. Because it worked independently and took members from other unions, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association has not been supported in its strike by other bargaining units at Northwest, he said.
“It’s certainly significant how it weakens labor,” Mr. MacDuffie said.
Still, using replacement workers as Northwest has done for striking mechanics and other employees likely isn’t a broad threat to labor, he said. Not only is the relationship among some unions at Northwest strained, but the airline prepared for the strike for 11⁄2 years, he said.