11.30.00 | PALO ALTO, Calif. –– Stung by layoffs, underwater stock options and an iffy future, Internet employees –– once content with stock options and potential riches –– are weighing whether to create the first union shops in their industry.
* Amazon.com has generated most of the attention because of a movement to unionize 450 customer–service representatives at its Seattle headquarters and 5,000 workers at its eight distribution centers nationwide.
* In San Francisco, service representatives at Etown.com, an e–commerce site, filed a petition Monday to vote on a union. Two–thirds of the 30–person division staged a sick–out last month to protest inadequate pay raises. Four workers were subsequently fired.
More companies could follow. ''We're getting flooded with calls from dot–com employees interested in unionizing or supporting workers' rights,'' says Gretchen Wilson of Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, an affiliate of Communications Workers of America, which is trying to unionize Amazon.
If union organizers are successful, online firms face the same strained employee relations endemic at Fortune 500 companies. ''We're seeing the maturation of the glamorous New Economy after a honeymoon of a few years,'' says Erin Tyson Poh, an organizer at the Northern California Media Workers Guild, which seeks to represent Etown.
Blue–collar employees in distribution centers and other e–commerce back–end operations are heeding union entreaties. Although many have no union experience, they –– unlike their colleagues in engineering and marketing –– increasingly care more about job security, working conditions and pay.
''Customer–service jobs, for the most part, are stressful, low paying and hard work,'' says David Levine, a University of California at Berkeley professor specializing in workplace issues. People ''aren't as willing to put up with work conditions when they see their stock options suffering . . . Their next logical option is forming a union,'' Levine says.
That appears to be the choice for disgruntled support staff at Etown. Some 20 workers are set to vote on starting a union in January after months of strife at the 120–person firm. ''Promises of pay raises weren't kept. Workers weren't listened to,'' says Chase Rummonds, 31, a customer–service rep who was fired after the October sick–out.
Etown CEO Robert Heiblim acknowledges he could have ''done a better job of reaching out to employees.'' But he says none of the petition's claims have merit. He cites fixed, 40–hour work weeks at the company, low turnover, competitive wages and an open–door policy from management. ''Look, start–ups are hard. We never promised our employees they would be dot–com millionaires,'' Heiblim says.
The sentiments are similar at Amazon, where customer–service reps like Scott Alan Buss, 29, are worried about job security and the expansion of distribution facilities to low–cost locales. ''Unfortunately, management has made a series of moves that is forcing experienced reps out the door,'' says Buss.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says he favors unions, just not at his firm. ''We don't need them,'' he said earlier this month.
© Copyright 2000 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.