THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510280330
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 176 lines
The United Parcel Service package-tracking center in Newport News is a snapshot of the labor union movement in 1995.
UPS is the largest unit of the 1.3 million member Teamsters union.
But the UPS tracking center that opened in August is not unionized.
UPS contracted with APAC Teleservices Inc., a privately run Chicago telemarketing company, to operate the center. The prevailing wage for telemarketers working directly for UPS is $10-$12 an hour. But APAC pays about $7.50 an hour.
Despite the non-union pay scale, more than 8,700 people applied for 300 initial jobs.
With plans to employ more than 800 by the end of the year, APAC had 10 times as many applicants and turned off its hot line after being swamped with calls for four days. More than 100 job seekers came to the building that the UPS center would occupy to tape pieces of paper with their names, addresses and phone numbers to the door.
Unionized or not, Hampton Roads residents want the work.
Apathy towards unions in Hampton Roads, in Virginia and across the country, shows why the labor movement is hurting.
Growth in the service sector has diluted the strength of unions, which sprang forth and thrived in traditional industries like trucking, mining, automobile and steel production.
As Service Employees International Union President John J. Sweeney won election last week to head the AFL-CIO, many stories forwarded the idea that unions are poised for a comeback.
But some say unions will continue to stagnate and even dwindle, despite Sweeney's efforts to reinvigorate ``the movement.'' The labor market today is similar to the 1920s, when corporations had almost wiped out unions, said Neil Palomba, a labor economist at Ball State College in Indiana. It took the Roosevelt administration and the federal courts to revive the movement.
Labor union membership may fall to half its present level in the next decade if government unions shrink, Palomba predicted. About 39 percent of government employees are union members, but federal, state and local governments are cutting their payrolls.
``I`m extremely pessimistic about the future of labor unions in our country,'' Palomba said. ``In their heyday, they made very important contributions to our nation. But they are past their heyday and may no longer have a role in our society.''
One bright spot has been the service-employees union. Under Sweeney's hand, service employees swelled from 625,000 in 1980 to more than one million today.
Sweeney's aggressive ``Justice for Janitors'' campaign harkened to days past of unionism, with the service employees using wacky tactics to embarrass and harass companies into unionizing. In one well-publicized effort, service employee organizers rattled diners at the Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington by shaking Coke cans full of ball bearings and shouting, ``Justice. . . . Justice for janitors.''
The chic restaurant doesn't employ janitors, but the building it occupies does. As in other cases, the union wanted to shake up the Grill's management so it would put pressure on the building's owners who employed non-union janitors.
Another high-profile service employee event saw union supporters block the 14th Street bridge in Washington for two hours on Labor Day.
``There are a number of unions in the AFL-CIO who have pioneered this kind of tactic,'' says Ray Abernathy, Sweeney's spokesman. ``But the AFL-CIO has been slow to adopt them. Yes, we're going to bring a more active approach to dealing with employers. . . . We'll go to jail if we have to.''
If unions intend to make a comeback, they'll have to reverse a four-decade trend. The labor force doubled in size from 1955 through 1994, but union membership shrank from 33 percent of the work force to 15 1/2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Only 8.7 percent of Virginia's workers have union representation.
If labor unions are to survive and have a say in the compensation of workers in the future, they will have to continue to make headway in the service sector. The BLS projects that the service sector - which now employs 77 percent of the work force - will add 23 million jobs over the next 15 years.
So the question underlying last week's election of Sweeney as the leader of the AFL-CIO - its only contested election this century - is whether working conditions in the service sector make unionism ripe for a comeback.
``The answer is `Yes,' '' says Alan Draper, chairman of the government department at St. Lawrence University. ``A fair wage for a fair day's work remains as much of a goal of workers today as it was in 1937, and unions remain the only way to achieve that.''
In other words, theoretically, conditions are ripe for unions to recruit. Worker productivity is up. Corporate profits are up. Wages aren't keeping pace.
But Bob Ballow, founder of the Nashville labor-law firm King & Ballow, says a union can't offer ``anything that a person who doesn't belong to a union doesn't already have.''
Ballow's firm is nationally known for helping corporations defeat unions.
The creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and wage and hour laws make unions less important, he said.
``It's hard for me to see what Mr. Sweeney says that going out and getting in fights with employers is going to help the workers,'' Ballow said. ``Unions aren't lobbying for employees; they're up there lobbying for laws that would require everybody to be a member of a union.''
The blame for the diminishing significance of unions is usually laid on one of the following doorsteps: the recession of 1990 made workers desperate for any job, no matter what the pay; President Reagan's 1981 firing of air-traffic controllers; foreign competition; and a societal attitude that makes it acceptable to hire permanent replacements for striking union members.
But it was all of those events, not one in particular, that put unions in their dreary state in 1995, experts say. Long-term changes in the international economy are mostly responsible for minimalizing unions, Draper says, and corporations jumped at the opportunity those shifts created.
``Employers are simply more powerful than the unions are,'' he said. ``They have the whip of the market to strike fear into workers, and secondly, a government which does little to support those who speak out for unions.''
Somewhere along the way, public perception of unions also seemed to change. Many point to Reagan's firing of air-traffic controllers - and hiring replacements - as a turning point. The importance of directing jets safely onto runways was something almost anybody could understand, and the public supported Reagan's decision.
The resulting change in terminology reflected a new public attitude: People who crossed picket lines and stepped into union jobs used to be called ``scabs,'' but now they're called ``replacement workers.''
``Thirty years ago it was considered just simply wrong to have massive layoffs and hire replacement workers,'' says Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of Virginia. ``Today, this is considered a good thing, and Wall Street applauds it.''
Companies have also proven to be more nimble in steering away from labor strongholds than unions have in getting the best of labor. Businesses have moved operations to the South, where right-to-work laws make unionizing difficult. And they've been creative in dodging unions, such as UPS's hiring of APAC.
Unions will have to carry the fight for new members to the companies that have dodged their organizing efforts if they are to have a chance of revitalizing, experts say. Other unions will have to follow the leader of the service employees union and go after some of the lower-paying service-sector jobs, such as nursing home workers and telemarketers.
In other words, Lichtenstein said, it's time for unions to get radical again.
``The trade union movement in the '50s and '60s expelled the radicals,'' he said. ``They should make the tough argument that the rich are getting richer and the workers are getting screwed. The Republicans didn't get where they are by being nice.''
David Vinson, president of Teamsters Local 822 in Norfolk, plans to follow Sweeney's model and go after workers who bear little resemblance to the traditional truck-driving Teamster. Vinson would like to hire a young, female union organizer after the first of the year to better target nursing and retirement homes, car-rental agencies at the airport, telemarketing and catalog operations - and probably the UPS center in Newport News.
Since many of the lower-paying service jobs are held by women and minorities, Vinson thinks they could relate better to a woman organizer.
``That's where a lot of locals make their mistake,'' Vinson said. ``They send an ex-freight driver to organize 30-year-old women. And they say, `What do you know about what I do? What do you know about the pressure of being a mother in the work force?' ''
Even with new strategies, unions probably can't goad workers into organizing until pay and working conditions become unacceptable enough to risk repercussions from their employer. Hoyt Wheeler, a labor expert at University of South Carolina, says the insecurity that makes workers need unions also makes them vulnerable to an employer's implied threat that they may be fired if they talk to a union.
But he says the management-union scale is out of balance, and that could work against employers if they continue to exploit their upper hand.
``It's very difficult for managers, with stockholders screaming at them, with suppliers screaming at them, to have time to look out for the workers,'' Wheeler said. ``But employers are kidding themselves if they think employee dissatisfaction is going to go away.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
The Virginian-Pilot
UNION MEMBERSHIP
Percentage of the U.S. nonagricultural work force that was composed
of union members.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB