JOB SECURITY, HEALTH CARE TOP ISSUES FACING LABOR

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992                   TAG: 9201280465
SECTION: ECONOMY                    PAGE: 4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
JOB SECURITY, HEALTH CARE TOP ISSUES FACING LABOR
In more than 20 years as business agent of Carpenters' and Millwrights' Union Local 319 in Roanoke, James Wright said he's never had as many telephone calls "begging for work" in construction.
The phone rings every day at his office on Wells Avenue Northwest, he said. A man called from Georgia asking about a job for only two or three days a week.
Jobs turn up occasionally, Wright said, but "it looks as dim as it has for years" for union members in construction.
His main complaint is that non-union contractors bring workers from out of state. "If we could take all of the workers from out of the country and ship them back, we would fare much better," Wright said.
So far, work on the expansion at Roanoke Memorial Hospital is being done with non-union labor, he said, and there's only "a slim possibility" that union labor will work at the Spring Hollow Reservoir project in Roanoke County.
Labor is up against "another rough year" in 1992, said Dane Partridge, assistant management professor at Virginia Tech.
Labor unions are coping with recession after a year of scattered factory layoffs in the Roanoke Valley and major contract gains at General Electric and ITT. GE's promise is in the competitive world market while ITT has carved out a big chunk of the market producing night-vision goggles, one of the essentials of the declining defense industry.
Contracts in the building trades will be up for renewal in 1992.
Job security and health care costs are the two big issues for labor in 1992, Partridge said. He's concerned about the "scary" numbers of layoffs, spreading from blue collar to white collar workers for the first time in this recession.
As General Motors, Xerox and other major employers cut their work forces, they are "tipping back to more adversarial relations" with labor, Partridge said. These are companies which have provided increased security, guaranteed job levels and retraining in their contracts.
Union organizing becomes more difficult in recessionary times when there is a real threat of job loss, he said. Unions must decide if they will make concessions to keep their jobs. "Get what you can while you can" may be the strategy, Partridge said.
"Something needs to be done to rein in the cost of health care," he said. "The days of a company providing all health care benefits are a thing of the past, given the double-digit increases."
With the election of Ron Carey as Teamsters president, that union "has been transformed from perhaps the least democratic to the most democratic," Partridge said. Carey will have to demonstrate "that he'll walk his talk."
Jim Guynn, president of Teamsters Local 171 in Roanoke, said, "We should get along just fine [with Carey]. We're already doing what he wants" in union reforms. Guynn said his local has never had a sweetheart contract agreement with a company.
Gerald Meadows, president of International Union of Electrical Workers Local 161 at General Electric Co.'s Salem plant and of Roanoke Central Labor Council, said, "so many companies are out to break unions but locally, we're doing well."
Unions are on the upswing, Meadows said. "The community looks more favorably on unions because of their record in public service."
Meadows said unions will push for a national health care plan and for congressional approval of a bill outlawing striker replacement.
Bobby Myers, business agent for Laborers Union Local 980, said labor will try to tell the public "that if people had a living wage, they would not be a burden on taxpayers" for welfare and other services. "We'll be trying to put more pressure on political leaders to see that we have more of a level playing field."
Dan LeBlanc, president of Virginia State AFL-CIO, said, "Working men and women are struggling to keep their hard-won benefits in the Reagan-Bush era."
Unless controversial federal striker replacement legislation becomes law, LeBlanc said, people will be in a position of choosing between their jobs and their health care benefits. "We say to Congress that when people exercise their right to withhold their labor [in a strike], they ought not to lose their jobs. If we lose that right, the middle class will be hurt."
The state labor executive predicted "the worst year" ahead for union jobs but he said labor organizations "have more solidarity than they've had in a long time." Membership is down, he admitted, `'but we've got to have jobs."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB