Workers Say They No Longer Need Unions
by: Robert Guy Matthews & Kris Maher
The Wall Street Journal
Monday, August 15, 2005
Many See Unions As Ineffective Dinosaurs
Debbie Moore belonged to a union 14 years ago when she worked at a dish factory polishing ragged edges as the china came off the manufacturing line. But now Ms. Moore works at a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. automotive center in Newcastle, Pa., and in March she and her colleagues voted 19 to 0 against organizing a union.
"Right now, in this day and era, I don't think I need a union to pay for anybody to protect me," says Mrs. Moore, 52 years old, who is a cashier but also does oil changes and other tasks. "Years ago, I believe work conditions were bad, and unions had their place of bringing standards up and making jobs safe. Unions are headed downward now. And the government is there to help."
It is attitudes like Mrs. Moore's that make union organizers cringe -- and illustrate the challenges facing unions that have left the AFL-CIO vowing to reverse the steady decline in the share of American workers represented by unions. Union organizers face stiff resistance from management and a government less supportive than in years past. But that's not the whole problem: Unions have an image problem with workers, even though complaints about wages, health benefits, pensions and job security would seem to make the rank and file ripe targets for organizers.
Some American workers see unions as ineffective dinosaurs too rigid to be useful in today's fast-moving global economy, where workers expect to change jobs and companies periodically. Some white-collar workers associate unions with blue-collar jobs. Others see the labor movement as a special-interest group useful only to poorly paid, less skilled and less ambitious workers. And still other employees worry that union membership would be a liability as they try to get better jobs or switch to management.
"As an IT [information technology] person, I probably wouldn't join a union," says Mary Gilleece, director of a technical school in Somerville, Mass., and a former computer database administrator. "I think the only way that you learn in IT is by crossing over and working with other people and learning to do their jobs. If you're unionized you'd be locked in to doing your own duties." People in the computer field, she says, are used to switching companies often and don't necessarily want to make a long-term commitment to a company or a union. "If it's a decent company," she says, "you don't need a union."
Polls suggest the image of labor unions hasn't changed much in recent years. About 40% of Americans say they feel "somewhat positive" or "very positive" about unions, compared with 38% a decade ago, says pollster Peter Hart, who has conducted surveys for the AFL-CIO. Nevertheless, in 2004, just 7.9% of private-sector workers belonged to a union, down from 16.8% in 1983, the first year for which the Labor Department has comparable figures.
Of the 13,144 union-representation elections held in the U.S. over past five years, unions won 7,224, according to the National Labor Relations Board. That success rate is remarkably low, say some labor experts, given that unions pick the time and place for elections and typically hold them only if they think they will win.
The poor showing is a major challenge as organized labor intensifies its efforts to broaden support into industries like high tech, health care and retailing. Such stepped-up organizing was a goal of the recent defection from the AFL-CIO of roughly four million members of the Service Employees International Union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers. These groups said they believed the AFL-CIO hasn't done enough to attract new members.
In recruiting members, labor leaders face a fundamental hurdle: In the U.S.'s upwardly mobile society, many people don't identify with a movement that's viewed by many as blue-collar -- even though unions today represent millions of nurses, teachers and government bureaucrats. The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, for example, represents engineers and scientists at Boeing Co., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Lucent Technologies Inc. and General Electric Co.
But misperceptions have persisted. "I am not blue-collar or a steel worker," Zulema Gonzalez, a registered nurse at Chicago's Resurrections Medical Center, recalls saying two years ago when an organizer asked her to join the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. She felt that unions didn't belong in a hospital, where strikes would interfere with patient care.
But then, Ms. Gonzalez says, she learned that strikes and protests weren't labor's only tools, and that her main concerns -- pay and health costs -- dovetailed with those of unionized employees. (She is paid $27.24 an hour and pays $91 every two weeks for health insurance and $25 for dental insurance.) Now, she is working with AFSCME to help organize a union at the hospital.
In some cases, workers' worries about job security result in their steering clear of unions they see as too weak to protect them. Willie Tart, a custodian for 30 years at Yale-New Haven Hospital, says he has been trying unsuccessfully to organize fellow custodial workers since 1999. Sometimes, he says, when he is handing out union literature in front of the hospital, his colleagues turn and walk in the other direction.
"They look at me like I am a threat," he says. "They are too scared to talk to me." Even though unionized custodians make about $3 an hour more than nonunion ones, he says, his colleagues are more concerned about holding onto their positions than organizing a union. "They think they might lose their jobs," he says.
Joel Rogers, a professor of law, political science and sociology at University of Wisconsin Law School, says workers have a right to be afraid of retaliation from management. "The major problem for unions really is manager resistance," he says. "It has been a routine practice to fire people. The law does not do a very good job of policing."
In the 1950s, unions saw themselves -- and were seen as -- representing all workers. Then, beginning in the Reagan years, Prof. Rogers says, unions were marginalized and began to be viewed as just another interest group. Now that is changing, he says, as some unions ally with other kinds of groups to boost organizing efforts. In New York, for instance, teachers unions' have linked up with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a nationwide group dedicated to improving all aspects of community living, to help unionize home health-care workers.
"Unions are starting to reach out again and becoming part of a broader social movement," Prof. Rogers says.
But labor has a long way to go to restore a positive image, says Harley Shaiken, a labor and economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. While much of union leadership's time is spent working privately with corporate management and policymakers, trying to avoid confrontation, the public often sees the union once negotiations get intractable, leading to strikes, denouncements and posturing. And for better or worse, Prof. Shaiken says, that image is what sticks in people's minds.
Some union leaders acknowledge that they've done a poor job of selling themselves. "We don't have enough stories that have broken through the public consciousness about groups of workers getting together and having a success story. If we did, the attitude and perception of the union would change," says Andy Levin, director of the AFL-CIO Voice at Work campaign. "We need to take the plunge and take the risk and become a labor-market intermediary in some of these newer job categories."
