MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (AP) - Marvin Bailey remembers his father being tired and stressed out from work in the mill and as a union official. It was enough to propel him away from becoming a third-generation steel mill worker.
'When I woke up in the morning to go to school, my father had already gone,' Bailey said. 'When I came home from basketball practice, or whatever, he was already in bed, just from being worn out from the day's work.
'That was probably what helped me with my decision,' said Bailey, 27, who is studying commercial art design at the Cincinnati Art Academy.
That attitude was typical of the 26-to-42 age group that turned away from steel, auto and other struggling domestic industries, cutting family ties to their unions along the way.
'Unionism and generational dynamics are a pretty strong mixture,' said Chuck Underwood, founder of The Generational Imperative Inc., a Cincinnati-based consulting firm.
While baby boomers (ages 43 to 61) tended to be pro-union, their children were more likely to see unions as wanting too much and protecting nonproductive workers.
'They came of age reading bumper stickers that said, 'He who dies with the most toys wins.' They tended to be self-sufficient and self-reliant, and less sympathetic to a union's protection and support,' Underwood said.
Marvin Bailey's father, the Rev. Michael Bailey, 52, was a laborer in the Middletown mill of AK Steel Holding Corp. for 20 years, when the company was known as Armco Steel. Then he spent 10 years as a leader of the Armco Employees Independent Federation, the union that represented about 7,200 hourly production and maintenance employees in the 1970s.
Some plant operations were discontinued and others modernized since then, reducing membership to about 2,600 by early 2006. Retirements and resignations during a lockout that lasted more than a year cut membership to about 1,750 and further diminished the clout of the union that gave up its independence last year by affiliating with the International Association of Machinists.
Michael Bailey's two other children are managers but he isn't disappointed that they, like Marvin, didn't follow him into a union.
'I am well pleased with where they are,' he said. 'From their experience, coming up in a union environment gave them a better opportunity in management because they understand both sides. I'm proud of them.'
The drop-off in union membership in Middletown reflects a national trend that has been downward since membership peaked at an estimated 21 million in 1979. Membership was down to 15.4 million last year, with manufacturing seeing particularly sharp declines in union jobs.
The American Iron and Steel Institute, an industry group, says jobs in the steel industry peaked at about 650,000 in 1953 but declined to about 150,000 in 2005.
Michael Bailey's father worked at Armco in the late 1950s and early '60s. In those days, it wasn't unusual for extended families -- father, brothers, uncles, in-laws -- to work in the mill and belong to the union.
To an errant worker, the worst thing a supervisor could say was, 'I'm going to call your dad,' said Brian Daley, 52, president of Machinists Local 1943 here.
'It used to be a proud thing to get your son in the mill,' he said. 'That pretty much ended with my generation.'
Times changed as old Armco was reorganized as AK Steel. New management began negotiating contracts the company said were needed to be competitive in an increasingly global business, and pressed for a smaller work force and fewer employee benefits.
Machinists union spokesman Jim Tyler thinks children of the lockout will grow up with positive feelings about unions and their importance for workers.
'From seeing the effects of the lockout in Middletown, the children out on the picket line, they will be raised in a union environment,' Tyler said.
Underwood sees a possible reversal in union attitudes among America's millennial generation, those workers 25 or younger.
'They've heard countless stories of today's executives receiving unprecedented compensation, oftentimes because those executives pleased Wall Street by cutting costs, by laying off moms and dads of millennial kids,' Underwood said.
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