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1980-1986 Hanging On - Labor in the Reagan Era

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A view of the 350 officers and delegates to the Founding Convention of the Canadian Federation of Labour in 1982. The delegates from the affiliated unions represented nearly a quarter of a million Canadian union members at the time.

The EWBA notice read in part, “As of December 31, 1981, the EWBA had accumulated additional surplus above that required to maintain the association in a strong financial position.” “The reciprocity agreement announcement started o.’, “Since our last report, we [the IBEW] have increased participation from more than half of the construction local unions to over two-thirds.’ Soon the reciprocity program—which called for traveling members to pay dues to their home local—would enjoy 100 percent participation.

Membership in the IBEW, hurt by the government’s generally negative stance on labor issues, remained relatively stable, dropping only slightly from the One-million-member mark. Organizing continued to be a top priority for President Pillard. And organizing in the ‘80s meant recruiting in a much more diverse work force. According to the book Work in America—The Decade Ahead, edited by Clark Kerr and Jerome Rosow (1980), there was a 47 percent increase in the number of women in the American work force between 1947 and 1976 and a 12 percent increase in the number of workers from minority groups from 1954 to 1976. “Women [in 1979],{ the book said, “constitute 41 percent of the labor source, and all forecasts predict a continuing upward trend in the 1980s.”

Two days after he flew his rocket-powered flying backpack into the Los Angeles Coliseum as part of the opening festivities of the 1984 Summer Olympics, Local 2104, Niagara Falls, New York, member William Suitor is back at his job as senior control room operator at New York Power Authority's Niagara Power Project.

In addition to organizing campaigns, generally robust construction and energy production industries helped the Brotherhood hold on in the Reagan Era. Local 24, Baltimore, members completed the wiring on the National Aquarium in Baltimore’s redeveloped Inner Harbor. Press Secretary Lawrence Miller wrote in the June 1981 Journal, “the aquarium will be the largest, most technically advanced aquarium in the United States, rising seven stories over the Baltimore harbor.”

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1980-1986 Hanging On - Labor in the Reagan Era