As Economy Cools, Union Leaders Predict Further Decline in Ranks
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- The slowdown in economic growth threatens to reduce the size and clout of the nation's unions -- just as their political agendas are under fire from a Republican-controlled Congress and White House.
After nine years of economic prosperity that failed to reverse a long decline in union ranks, many organized-labor leaders predict their ranks will shrink again as the economy cools. That is because the first workers laid off in an economic downturn typically come from union strongholds in manufacturing, particularly its automotive sector.
Moreover, union officials say, many workers shun organizing campaigns during hard times and any losses will be difficult to recapture once the economy rebounds. An economic downturn, meanwhile, could drastically reduce labor's bottom line as the ranks of dues-paying members decline.
In 1999, the most recent year for which information is available, the percentage of the nation's work force belonging to a union remained at 13.9%, the same as the year before and the lowest level on record since 1977, when data collection began. The government is slated to release the 2000 figures Thursday, but union officials don't expect to see much, if any, improvement.
"It's not as if unions gain during good times and lose during bad ones," said Gary Chaison, a labor expert at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "They lose during prosperity and they lose during recession."
Some labor leaders fear political retribution for their strong support of Vice President Al Gore during his presidential campaign. The unions worry that a Republican-dominated National Labor Relations Board might reverse several decisions making it easier for them to organize various groups of workers, while a GOP-held Congress could roll back many of the union-friendly regulations issued by the Clinton administration.
The fact that unions remain vulnerable to an economic downturn underscores labor's failure to expand its base beyond the traditional, blue-collar workers it has long represented. The labor movement has begun making inroads among doctors, graduate teaching assistants, and temporary employees, but it still is dominated by workers in industries that shed jobs for much of last year. The manufacturing sector, for instance, cut 194,000 jobs in 2000, whereas the apparel-making and auto sectors each cut about 45,000 positions.
Consider the 113,000-member International Union of Electronics Workers, which merged with the Communication Workers of America late last year. With companies such as Delphi Automotive Systems Corp. making thousands of temporary and permanent job reductions, union officials say they are seeing the first big layoffs since the recession of the early 1990s.
"I'm concerned, no question about it," said IUE President Ed Fire. "This has all of the earmarks of what took place when the economy went down the tubes in the past, and we're already seeing the first wave of layoffs."
Labor experts say union jobs lost in an economic downturn generally don't come back once times improve because companies outsource or hire nonunion workers. Those twin trends have changed the faces of the auto and steel industries, which shed millions of union jobs in the 1980s and '90s. "The changes the companies make are structural, not temporary," Mr. Chaison said.
Even in the industries where labor is strongest, unions are now a shadow of their former selves. In 1983, for example, unions represented 27.8% of the country's manufacturing workers and 27.5% of its construction employees. By 1999, union representation in those industries had fallen to 15.6% and 19.1%, respectively. The only area of the economy where unions gained members over that stretch was in the public sector, where union representation inched up to 37.3% in 1999, from 36.7% in 1983.
Indeed, another reason that the economic downturn is so worrisome to union officials is that organized labor struggles even in good times to replace workers who have left because of automation, retirement and the migration of blue-collar jobs abroad. Paul Booth, organizing director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employers, which represents 1.3 million public-sector workers, said, "The problem we face is that the most powerful antiunion argument employers have -- the idea that bringing in a union will drive the company out of business -- seems even more plausible when the workers are already pessimistic about the economy."
For union workers, a weakening economy shifts the emphasis in contract negotiations from large wage, pension and benefit increases to strong job security, like the no-layoff clauses common in the auto-making and utility sectors. "During downturns, members demand that their unions protect their job security, and they're willing to sacrifice wage and benefit increases to get it," said Richard Hurd, the director of labor studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
To be sure, the devil is in the details of the unions' no-layoff clauses. In the auto sector, for example, many contracts prohibit layoffs within a single plant but don't do anything to prevent a company from shuttering an entire location, long the industry's preferred method of making large job cuts. Despite the lack of an ironclad job guarantee, however, many of the unions with no-layoff clauses in their contracts say they are glad to have them.
Earlier this month, for example, LG&E Energy Corp. announced 700 job cuts, the most in the Louisville, Ky., company's 162-year history. Few of the reductions will come from the ranks of the utility's 1,500 unionized workers because of a clause in the union contract barring LG&E from firing union members whose work also is performed by subcontractors.