Unions target workers in the new economy

Strike at Verizon gives hope to organizers in high-tech industries in Puget Sound region

Monday, September 4, 2000

By PAUL NYHAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The nation's unions have organized truck drivers, steelworkers and even engineers. Now, they want a bigger chunk of the new economy.

Seattle area unions are already reaching out to some workers at Homegrocer.com, local AT&T cable and wireless operations, Microsoft Corp. and elsewhere.

While their success has been limited, they may get some fresh opportunities, thanks in part to the recent strike at Verizon Communications Corp. and to a maturing high-tech sector, according to academic observers.

The first Labor Day of the new millennium finds U.S. unions emboldened, reaching out for workers of the new economy.

But the new economy isn't like the old. And the sometimes rough-and-tumble organizing efforts that brought American unions influence in the last century aren't likely to work in the new one.

Nor are the issues the same. Workplace safety and a fair wage for a day's work were key issues of the past.

While a reasonable work schedule and job security are often still high on the want lists of employees in the new economy, some of the unions' organizing efforts are focusing on workers with incomes that hardly equate to the blue-collar privations of the early to mid-20th century.

"We are seeing wildfires, shots across the bow," said Tom Juravich, director of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Labor Center, who watched the Verizon dispute burst into a devastating strike by 85,000 workers.

The 18-day walkout crippled communications services along the Eastern Seaboard, finally yielding contracts late last month for the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

But, Juravich said during last month's strike, "I would not say this is the beginning of major organizing in high tech."

Paul Osterman, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offered another view.

"It doesn't open the door wide, but it opens the door," he said. "What the Verizon strike gives unions is the opportunity to make the case that they can articulate and represent the . . . workers."

And union organizers are doing just that in Seattle.

Officials at Communications Workers of America Local 7800 are hoping to get a boost from the Verizon strike in their effort to organize hundreds of workers at AT&T's cable and wireless divisions.

Unorganized workers may be "looking at the Verizon strike and see (what) CWA is accomplishing, and it may raise their interest," said Fred Tricarico, executive vice president of Local 7800.

So far, Tricarico said, his organizers haven't had much success among local AT&T workers, although the effort will remain a priority.

Kirkland-based Homegrocer.com has also become a union target.

Local 1105 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union has been trying to organize workers who fill delivery orders at HomeGrocer.

Currently, the two sides are arguing over the size of a possible bargaining unit, according to an official at the local.

"We are aware of it, and we are dealing (with it) as a course" of business, said Pauline Yoshihashi, a spokeswoman for Homegrocer.

The situation at HomeGrocer is complicated by the fact that Webvan Group Inc. is in the process of acquiring Homegrocer.

That transaction is fueling concern among some employees about the security of their jobs, according to Paul Quaintance, the organizing director at Local 1105.

Perhaps the highest-profile battle between labor and high-tech in Seattle is the fight between the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech, and Microsoft Corp.

WashTech, which is affiliated with the CWA, has been trying for two years, with limited success, to organize the contract workers who make up roughly one-third of Microsoft's Puget Sound-area work force.

Those workers are embroiled in a class-action suit against Microsoft, seeking millions of dollars in appreciation on Microsoft shares they were denied because of their temporary status.

WashTech co-founder Marcus Courtney says the Verizon strike may resonate among other high-tech workers.

That's because Verizon negotiators grappled with issues on the minds of many technology employees, including forced overtime, access to pensions, 401(k) plans and training, according to Courtney.

"I think we can point to Verizon and say there are the same issues . . . and how the unions have shaped solutions," Courtney said.

Still, Courtney admits that the success at Verizon isn't likely to translate into quick organizing victories for WashTech.

"It's a long-term process," Courtney said. "It will make it easier down the road to organize."

Others don't think so.

The fast-changing software and digital industry simply may not be fertile ground for hopeful union organizers, according to Sean Bell, a product manager for Loudeye Technologies Inc.

"The industry is one that is based on knowledge transfer. It's based on you being able to transfer knowledge for the company," said Bell, who stressed that he was speaking on his own behalf and not for Loudeye. "How does a union go and bargain with management on those issues?"

Traditional union messages, focusing on the mistakes of management, may not resonate with all high-tech workers, according to one labor observer.

So, unions will have to change their look and message to succeed, said Thomas Kochan, another professor at MIT's Sloan School.

"That new message has to be one that we are prepared to address your interests, but you don't have to be deeply dissatisfied with your job or distrust your employer," Kochan said.

Unions' success at convincing the white-collar work force of that may prove key to their future.

Overall, unions are no longer losing members, but the groups aren't adding many recruits, either, according to federal statistics.

In fact, the proportion of workers who were members of a union remained essentially steady at 13.9 percent of the work force from 1998 to 1999, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, a division of the federal Labor Department.

"They stopped the heavy bleeding, in terms of losing membership," said Harley Shaiken, a professor specializing in labor issues at the University of California at Berkeley. "But they haven't really begun increasing the percentage share of the work force."