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Garry Frost remembers being a child and going shopping with his family. His father, a union pipe fitter, routinely would pick up T-shirts and look inside for the union label.

Buying American, union-made products was part of life in his family, said Frost, 51, of Glencoe.

But today, a consumer would be hard-pressed to find the union label on a piece of clothing sold in a typical American store.

Frost followed his father, who was vice president of his local, into the construction trades and the union. He is now a welder and pipefitter, president of his local and the Northeast Alabama Labor Council. He's been in the union for 32 years. He comes from a proud union family, he said. His grandfather was a coal miner. His cousins still are, and his uncle is a union electrician.

Frost and others like him represent a declining breed in America — blue-collar workers who come from a multigenerational union background.

Union membership rates have been declining for decades, and the public perception and acceptance of organized labor also has been on the decline.

The general public doesn't "know what unions are, what unions can do for you," said Colin Davis, a professor and labor historian at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

Many equate belonging to a union as "paying another tax," and see labor unions as "troublemakers," he said. "Most people say 'hey, they have a job, they should be happy about having a job.'"

Documents

Union membership has declined over time (.pdf)

In 2006, union membership dropped to 12 percent of the U.S. work force, according to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The decline has been steady — the Bureau of Labor Statistics says membership rates were 20 percent in 1983 and have declined each year since. In 2006, 15.4 million Americans belonged to a union, down by 326,000 from 2005.

Alabama remains the most highly unionized state in the Deep South — with 8.8 percent of its work force organized. The decline is evident here, too — down from 10.2 percent in 2005.

The decline of industry goes hand-in-hand with the decline of unions, said Davis. "We've lost so much industry here and lost so many union members" in the process, he said.

A changing economy is changing the makeup of the unionized work force in the United States.

Manufacturing used to account for the highest percentage of unionization in the country. That's not true today.

According to the Associated Press, the Center for Economic Policy Research "noted that the 11.7 percent union-membership rate among manufacturing workers is lower than the 12 percent membership rate for the total U.S. work force, a first since the federal government began tracking union membership."

As manufacturing declines, this trend most likely will continue.

The traditional strongholds of unionized labor — the industrial work force of steelworkers, iron workers and mill workers — has declined throughout Alabama.

"The biggest danger to all of us is outsourcing of jobs," Frost said. "Steel mills and textiles really hurt us."

That also means there is a new look to the modern labor movement.

Public-sector jobs — people working for federal, state and local governments — are now the most highly organized sector of the work force, at 36.2 percent compared with private industry at 7.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This includes heavily unionized occupations like teachers, police officers and firefighters.

In Anniston, according to Department of Labor figures, every union local has seen a decrease in members since 2000, except for the Association of Federal Government Employees, which represents the federal workers at the Anniston Army Depot and the National Association of Letter Carriers, which represents postal service employees. The AFGE has grown from 1,547 members in 2002 to 2,473 in 2006, while the NALC has maintained a steady average of 69 members since 2003.

Nathaniel Davis, 69, of Anniston is an example of the highly unionized public sector. President of Branch 448 of the National Association of Letter Carriers in Anniston, he has served in that position since 1979 and also served as the state association's vice president and president.

He also cited the decline of manufacturing and increased outsourcing as a key factor driving the decline of union membership.

But Davis identified another reason for the decline, a factor that also is cited by most union members interviewed for this series — that is a shift in thinking among workers themselves, particularly younger workers — who no longer see the benefits of belonging to a union.

That is a perception that is shared by many on the management or industry side of things, too, who argue that the time is past when unions were necessary.

Union membership is eroding because workers today are not thinking about the future, Davis said. "They care less about benefits" and more about their day-to-day paycheck, he said. "The generation today could care less. They want it all at all cost; they're not thinking about getting health benefits."

That mindset persists "even among those in a facility where there is a union." There's a mentality that they "don't have to belong. There's a 'me too' mentality" where the other employees get the benefits without belonging to the union, he said.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 1.5 million wage and salary workers in 2006 were represented by a union, while not belonging to a union themselves.

Many Americans still identify strongly with unions and believe they benefit the economy and workers, according to a Gallup poll from September 2006.

Fifty-nine percent of those polled said they approve of unions, with 20 percent disapproving. According to the poll, approval is highest in the East and lowest in the South, and "lower-income Americans are more supportive than either middle- or upper-income Americans."

Why it matters

To understand why the decline in membership matters, union members say, one must understand what is gained by union representation. They also stress the important role organized labor had in securing many benefits now taken for granted in the American work force. If labor unions disappear, they say, those hard-won benefits could disappear, too.

Those gains include health and pension benefits, high wages, the eight-hour day and 40-hour week, child-labor laws, collective bargaining, grievance procedures, and health and safety oversight.

Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that in 2006 union workers had median weekly earnings of $833 compared with a median of $642 for nonunion workers.

Safety is better with a union, too, said Frost. With no union, "safety declines," he said. "As unions get weaker," he predicts safety will decline, too.

A union gives workers a voice and a set way of dealing with disagreements and health and safety issues, Davis said. With a union, "at least you have an opportunity to address" problems, he said. "If you have a problem at (a department store), goodbye, you're gone." If it weren't for a union, people at the Postal Service would be making the same as those at department stores, he said.

Modern obstacles

Union members identify several key obstacles to organizing in the 21st century.

These include poor public perception; a younger generation that fails to see the benefits of unions; the decline of manufacturing and increased outsourcing; labor laws that hamper efforts to organize; companies that are stridently anti-union, and right-to-work statutes.

Alabama is a right-to-work state, and most of the states that have right-to-work statutes have lower rates of unionization.

Right-to-work laws ban the "closed or union shop" — workplaces where employees are mandated to join the union that represents workers there.

"Being a right-to-work state hurts us, it definitely does," said Frost.

Since workers can opt out of belonging to the union while simultaneously benefiting from union-negotiated benefits, the laws hamper efforts to maintain members and organize workplaces, he said.

The fact that the state is not as heavily unionized as other regions doesn't hurt recruitment of prospective industry, said Jim Hayes, director of the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama. But he noted that in his experience, companies have not specifically asked about the union climate in the state.

All union members interviewed said they think the automotive industry's arrival in Alabama is because this is a right-to-work state with low unionization rates. "If the UAW [the United Auto Workers union] was here, they wouldn't be here," Davis said.

And, he said, most of the new workers in the auto industry may not see the need for a union. "They look at their paychecks and knowing they don't have a union but get paid well, say, 'I could care less (about a union), this is a better wage than I've ever had.'"

Alabama is attractive to industry because of several factors, Hayes said. These include the state's ability to deliver a "viable work force" trained to fit available jobs, incentive packages, low taxes, "reasonable" environmental requirements, geography and infrastructure, he said.

"It's not like unions don't exist here," he said, citing the large United Auto Workers local at the Delphi automotive plant in Athens. But, Hayes said, in Alabama a union presence is "prominent, but not dominant," compared with places like Michigan, where there's "a whole different culture." Michigan is a key stronghold of the United Auto Workers and the American auto industry.

Hayes said the companies locating in Alabama still pay highly competitive wages, provide good benefits, are "really good corporate citizens" and "treat their workers well."

Unionism might be more attractive to Alabamians if that weren't the case, he said.

Auto industry newcomers to the area, such as the Honda plant in Lincoln, continue to provide manufacturing jobs to Alabamians. The automotive industry could be the face of the future for manufacturing in this state, and none of the new plants are organized, although Honda workers in Lincoln recently met with representatives of the UAW to explore the possibility of unionizing.

And the UAW-represented plant Hayes mentioned in Athens now is slated for closing in 2009. That is the result of an agreement voted on by the UAW national membership, which also requires union members to accept wage cuts.

Frost doesn't pin the blame for the decline in union membership on any one culprit. Everyone is complicit in the problem by not buying American products, he said.

Frost said he believes union membership ebbs and flows in cycles and that unions could make a comeback in this country.

Free trade, foreign imports and outsourcing will continue to negatively affect the American labor movement, especially in manufacturing, said Davis.

"That's a phase that will never recover. It will continue to decline," he said. "What happened to U.S. Steel? What happened to Republic Steel in Gadsden? What happened to the big steel plants in Birmingham?"

All are shuttered.

But, labor historian Colin Davis said, union membership plummeted in the 1920s as well, only to revive during the 1930s.

"Historians are careful to not make predictions," he said. "But I would never ever say unions won't come back or will disappear."

When workers get "so it's at the bottom," Frost said, "it will swing back around."