WASHINGTON -- Lane Kirkland, a labor statesman who as president of the AFL-CIO and was credited with uniting the nation's major unions at a time of rapidly changing economic conditions at home and abroad, died of lung cancer Saturday at his home in Washington. He was 77.
A plain-spoken South Carolinian who served in the Merchant Marine in World War II, Kirkland spent his working life in the labor movement. He joined the research department of the American Federation of Labor in 1948. He was a protege of the legendary George Meany, who became president of the AFL-CIO when it was formed in 1955 through the merger of the AFL with the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 1979, Kirkland succeeded Meany in the top job.In an interview shortly after he retired in 1995, Kirkland expressed his philosophy in these terms:
"The role of the trade unions is to try to keep big people from kicking around little people without a reaction. Your capacity to defend yourself is far greater if you're organized, if you do it as a union rather than as an individual."
He sought to put these principles into action against increasingly difficult odds. In the mid-1960s, labor unions represented about 35 percent of the U.S. work force. By the mid-1990s, unions represented only about 15 percent of workers. Part of the reason was corporate downsizing. Part of it was the shift to a service economy, whose workers are difficult to organize. Still another part was the expanding global economy. Kirkland believed that the greatest threat to U.S. workers was low-paid foreign competition.
Labor felt besieged on the political front as well. Ronald Reagan's victory in the 1980 presidential election ushered in 12 years of Republican control of the White House, and Reagan's firing of striking federal air traffic controllers in 1981 set the tone for stronger measures against unions in the government as well as the corporate sector.