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

DATE: SUNDAY, August 7, 1994                   TAG: 9408060013
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

UNIONS GETTING MORE ACTIVE? AT LEAST, IT LOOKS THAT WAY

The union they picked to represent them was the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers, which began an organizing drive among the plant's 95 workers in April.

At first glance, union activity seems to be on the increase in Southwest

Virginia; both organizing workers and striking to settle contract differences.

In Martinsville, the Clothing and Textile Workers is seeking to represent employees at Tultex Corp. in a vote this month. And the United Mine Workers has begun a drive at DuPont's Martinsville nylon plant.

In Salem, the United Food and Commercial Workers has filed a petition for an election at the Valleydale Foods Inc. plant; and in Pulaski, Appalachian Power Co. employees voted in June for representation by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Strikes are in progress at the Yokohama Tire Corp. plant in Salem, where negotiations failed to produce a new three-year contract between the company and the Rubber Workers Union, and at the J.M. Clippers Polymer Corp. plant in Iron Gate, where the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the company failed to come to terms on a new pact.

Union employees of Rubatex Corp. in Bedford called off a two-day wildcat strike at the end of June before the company agreed to take a breach-of-contract dispute to arbitration.

Despite the activity, it's not really clear whether unions have increased their organizing efforts and their willingness to strike, or whether a series of highly visible but coincidental events are causing an inaccurate impression.

Some observers feel that union organizing in the region is, indeed, on the upswing.

The National Labor Relations Board's regional office in Winston-Salem, N.C., said the agency does not keep regional statistics on union organizing. Ron Yost, an official there, said it's his impression that organizing has increased over the past several months.

"My observation is there is an increase in interest in organizing among workers," said Michael Hensley of Virginia Tech's Economic Development Assistance Center. The interest comes from workers in industries that have not been traditionally unionized and from unions toward businesses whose workers they've not traditionally represented. He cited the United Mine Workers' successful organization of a medical center in Dickenson County and a nursing home in Wise County as examples.

If organizing efforts are up, that would reflect a similar turnaround nationally. Dane Partridge, an assistant professor of management at Southern Indiana University and a part-time Salem resident, said national statistics show union representation elections jumped 12 percent last year, the first increase since 1989.

Still, the 3,038 elections held in 1993 are fewer than half the 7,296 the NLRB says were held in 1980.

Union elections dropped off sharply during the 1980s when Republicans occupied the White House. In 1950, unions won three of every four elections held nationwide. Since the late 1980s, the union success rate in winning elections was around 50 percent.

Partridge said the number of highly visible organizing drives, like that at Tultex, has increased lately.

Partridge and Hensley mentioned conditions that could account for an increase in union confidence and in workers' interest in unionizing:

Having a Democrat in the White House and a more friendly NLRB has unions feeling more positive, Partridge said. And workers are recognizing the benefits unions can provide such as securing more and higher quality training, Hensley said.

The growth in global competition has workers in some industries feeling less secure in their jobs, making them interested in the job security unions might provide, Hensley said. On the other hand, the improved economy may make workers in other industries more secure in their jobs and, without the fear of replacement, more willing to strike, Partridge said.

Following 14 years of declines, union membership rose from 16.4 million to 16.6 million in 1993, according to Susan L. Behrmann, an economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The proportion of union members in the nation's work force remained at 15.8 percent, however, because overall employment increased at about the same rate as union membership.

Slightly fewer than three-fifths of union members were in private industry. The rest worked for state, federal and local governments.

Union workers tended to make more than nonunion workers, partly because more union workers are in higher-skilled jobs. The median weekly pay of union workers last year was $575 per week compared with $426 per week for nonunion workers.

Of the union workers in private industry, more were in manufacturing - 3.6 million - than in any other category. Transportation and public utilities followed with 1.9 million union employees. About one in four union workers were in highly skilled jobs and included such people as mechanics and electricians.

Harold Bock, organizing director for the mid-Atlantic region of the Clothing and Textile Workers, said his union has been active in organizing for some time and in organizing outside the textile and apparel industry. It has many more drives under way in the region that he's not free to talk about, Bock said.