Inside Report (5)

What's in a name? That's what one union is asking prospective members.

The United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers are better known as simply the United Auto Workers.

But many of the 14,000 new members recruited last year seem unlikely candidates for an auto union. Some are hospital service and laboratory employees; others make brewery containers; still others are nonteaching school employees. All are part of the union's effort to counter sagging membership among workers in the recession-mired auto industry.

Despite spending considerable union funds organizing the new workers, UAW was unable to halt its membership slide. The membership decline for 1981, unreported by the union, is estimated in the hundreds of thousands.