By Kirstin Downey Grimsley Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 29, 2001; Page E01
Video production editor Fritz Flad, 34, was taken aback last month when his boss called him into the office and terminated his job. It was the first time Flad had ever been laid off. He got another surprise when District officials directed him to the AFL-CIO union headquarters, two blocks from the White House, to file his claim for unemployment benefits.
"When they told me to go to the AFL building, I thought that must be a mistake," Flad said in an interview last month, as he filled out the paperwork in a large room normally used as the union officials' lunchroom. Flad said that it was his first contact in his professional life with a union and that previously he had viewed unions with disdain. Now, he is rethinking that attitude, he said.
"A lot of white-collar jobs are turning into electronic sweatshops," said Flad, who lives in Rockville. "Sooner or later, I think more of them will turn to unions."
The AFL cafeteria-turned-unemployment center is one example of many around the country where unions have begun offering services to members and to other needy workers who lost their jobs after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 devastated an already troubled hospitality industry. These services help unions as they struggle to maintain links to workers who might otherwise leave the fold.
In Los Angeles, the County Federation of Labor is dispensing $3 million in aid to unemployed hotel and airport workers to help them keep their health insurance current and pay utility bills.
In Illinois, the AFL-CIO, which represents about 1 million union members, is helping displaced workers sign up for state and federal assistance and get retraining to find new jobs. In Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., the Hotel and Restaurant Workers union has been distributing bags of groceries to laid-off workers who say they are running out of money to buy food.
Walk-in emergency centers have been set up by unions in Boston and New York City.
"We've had thousands of workers laid off with no safety net," said Miguel Contreras, executive secretary of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, who said many of his group's members -- including airline workers, luggage handlers and parking lot attendants -- are new immigrants with limited resources. "For labor, it's about taking care of our own."
Unions are trying to do more on workers' behalf since the federal government has not acted quickly to increase benefits, as it did in past recessions. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, when recessions hit, the federal government boosted unemployment assistance packages for workers to help bolster the economy and keep workers financially afloat longer, primarily by extending the amount of time workers could receive assistance. But this time, similar efforts failed amid political wrangling over the economic stimulus package. Unions and charitable organizations say they were left trying to make up for the shortfall.
For unions, whose members have been hit especially hard by the economic fallout from Sept. 11, it is a matter of survival because their members' debts are mounting. It's also something of a return to the past, when unions operated as benevolent associations more than the powerful entities they became in the 1950s and '60s when union strength was at its peak.
"This is what unions did before the existence of any substantial social welfare programs," said Alexander Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "They gave out food; they gave out coal.
"Otherwise, they'd fall into the current public health system," he said. "It's already in a crisis. We don't need to add thousands more to the rolls."
In the District, where unemployment claims more than doubled after Sept. 11, the city needed a downtown site to process jobless claims, but the cash-strapped city was loath to pay up to $30,000 a month to rent a 10,000-square-foot space. District officials first approached hotels that had laid off the workers to see if one would offer a meeting room for free. But the hotels turned them down, city officials said. Then the AFL offered the space for free, through the end of the year.
"We were delighted to offer the space," said Linda Chavez-Thompson, the AFL's executive vice president.
Contreras said he hoped that in the future workers around the nation would recall that unions helped them when others did not.
"They'll know who was with them in this crisis," he said. "We think we'll have a stronger rank and file who'll know what it is to be part of a labor movement."