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Union labor under attack
Givebacks threaten workers' good life
By Ron French, Louis Aguilar and Brett Clanton / The Detroit News
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Brandy Baker / The Detroit News
Northwest mechanics: The airline keeps running without striking workers such as Carolyn Andreis.
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Give back or give up?
Detroit, the cradle of the labor movement, is ground zero in a battle for the soul -- and survival -- of organized labor. Unions are losing pay, losing members, and even losing the sympathy <http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0508/23/A01-289731.htm <http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0508/23/A01-289731.htm> > of supporters like Roth to the corporations that employ them. Are the concessions being asked of the unions out of line?
Yes
No
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As a daughter of public school teachers in Brooklyn, Megan Roth once spent a month making signs, picketing and shouting slogans demanding better pay for her parents and their co-workers. "It was a blast," recalls the 43-year-old Southfield resident.
So when a striking Northwest mechanic handed her a pamphlet asking her to boycott Northwest Airlines, she read it intently. Then the financial adviser proceeded to check into her Northwest flight to Atlanta.
"I feel for them," Roth said. "But who is right or wrong? I honestly don't know how to answer that."
It's tough times for organized labor.
Membership is at its lowest in a century. Locally, teachers and auto workers are being pressured to take pay and benefit cuts. Mechanics for Northwest went on strike Saturday and watched helplessly as replacement workers took their place and members of other airline unions crossed picket lines.
Detroit, the cradle of the labor movement, is ground zero in a battle for the soul -- and survival -- of organized labor. Unions are losing pay, losing members, and even losing the sympathy of supporters like Roth to the corporations that employ them.
The cracks in the House of Labor are spreading well beyond the picket lines and union halls. Last month, 4.6 million workers from the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the Service Employees International Union split from the AFL-CIO, the biggest rift organized labor has seen in 70 years.
If the power and popularity of unions continues to decline, "it will make an enormous difference to the average American," warned labor expert Harley Shaiken, professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "An erosion of unions today is an erosion of wages and benefits tomorrow."
Union leaders have not been able to organize workers fast enough to stem the losses. Labor groups have repeatedly failed to sign up workers at Wal-Mart stores or the foreign-owned auto assembly plants popping up throughout the South.
The threat of a strike no longer strikes fear in CEOs the way it once did.
A work slowdown by mechanics of Northwest in 1999 brought Metro Airport and the airline to a halt. Strikes in the 1980s and 1990s paralyzed airlines like Pan American World Airways.But when mechanics went on strike Saturday, Northwest shuttled in replacement mechanics and kept most of its planes in the air. Northwest wants to cut the number of mechanics in half and give remaining workers a 25 percent pay cut.
Members of other unions as well as passengers crossed the picket line, some for the first time.
Michael Raymore is a 28-year-old Detroiter who has grown up in a period of declining union clout.
"The idea of job security is too foreign for me to understand," said Raymore, a corporate trainer flying to Louisville on Monday. "I'm already on my second career, and I graduated from Western (Michigan University) four years ago.
"When I hear (strikers) say that their jobs and livelihoods are at stake, I'm like, 'Well, yeah ... whose job isn't always on the line?'"
'We've given enough'
Leaders of the United Auto Workers are meeting in Chicago this week to discuss giving ground on hard-won pay and benefits in order to help General Motors Corp. <javascript:companybox('GM')> and Ford Motor <javascript:companybox('F')> Co. survive. The companies are struggling with huge pension and health care obligations for current UAW workers and retirees.
"We've given enough, gee whiz," said Grant Muncy, chairman of UAW Local 211, which represents 2,800 workers at a GM engine plant in Defiance, Ohio. Employment at that plant has been cut in half in five years, and the union agreed to higher co-pays for prescription drugs and doctor visits in the last national contract in 2003.
The atmosphere at the annual conference was more somber than usual. GM and Delphi Corp., the Troy-based auto supplier, are pressuring the union for relief from rising labor costs now -- two years before their contract expires in 2007.
Small groups of men huddled in serious conversation, asking who had heard what and playing out various doomsday scenarios.
"The unions are going to survive," said Gerald Horton, 61, alternate committeeman at a Wentsville, Ohio, plant that makes GM full-size vans. "But they're going to get beat up."
Detroit Public Schools teachers are taking a strike vote today after the school corporation asked them to take a 2.5 percent pay cut and reductions in various benefits.
"I know everybody is taking a cut, but it has got to stop somewhere," said Patsy Bell, 55, of Detroit, who has a granddaughter and three nephews who live with her and go to Detroit's Vernor Elementary. She is worried that school won't start on time but supports the teachers. She doesn't think they should take a pay cut. She says the district's budget problems aren't their fault.
Bell, who is a union member as a housekeeper at Harper University Hospital, said she's saddened that unions seem to be losing their clout. "It's a shame," Bell said. "How many people fought and lost their jobs and were jailed ... for the struggle? We are going to go back five steps instead of going forward."
Fewer Americans have connections to unions than at any time since the beginning of the 20th century. Fifty years ago, 35 percent of American workers were union members. Today, union workers have dropped to 12.5 percent -- 8 percent when only private-sector unions are counted.
Difficult time for unions
Organized labor has faced tough times before. In the 1980s, companies demanded concessions from unions routinely. "But I don't think there has ever been as bad a time as this," said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial management at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.
"In the past, there was always a sense that it was just a bad economic period and things would get better," Chaison said. "Now there is a real sense of gloom about the labor movement, a sense of disarray about what it is to do."
As membership has declined, so has unions' image in the eyes of the public. Labor organizations that once were seen as hero of the common man are often portrayed as greedy special interest groups.
"Consumers don't seem to care (about unions)," Chaison said. "A typical American worker would probably say unions were once effective voices in the workplaces, but in the face of globalization, they don't have a role anymore."
The threat of jobs moving to Mexico or other cheap labor markets has taken the teeth out of labor, Chaison said. "Traditionally, unions made demands and management reacted," he said. "Today, companies can just pick up and move (to a cheaper labor market)."
Northwest mechanics know that Jet Blue, for example, performs maintenance on its airplanes in El Salvador to save money. Northwest already outsources some of its maintenance.
"I think the days of big organizing and labor clout in the way that we usually mean by that phrase are pretty much gone," said Glenn McDonald, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Strategy at Washington University in St. Louis.
"There are a few industries, like construction, where old-fashioned labor clout is still there. But most of the economy just doesn't work like that anymore," McDonald said.
What unions must do
To stay relevant, unions must do a better job of public relations, Shaiken of UC-Berkley said.
"The public has been inundated for decades by an anti-union message," he said.
If unions are to survive in today's competitive global economy, they must be willing to work with management in solving mutual problems, including recognizing that the health care costs are hobbling many employers, said Jules I. Crystal, a Chicago labor attorney.
"The unions have to go beyond the knee-jerk reflex that management is always wrong," said Crystal, a University of Michigan law school graduate who represents management in labor disputes. "They have to take a more flexible, innovative approach."
If unions fail to respond to today's economic pressures, Crystal said, "I think it is possible they will become even more irrelevant to employees and employers than they are today."
Chaison worries that unless organized labor finds new strategies, "they could represent just islands of membership. They'll get smaller and smaller."
Shaiken hopes that doesn't happen. "So much of what American workers enjoy today was pioneered by unions or given by companies trying to avoid unions. Pensions, paid health care, the 40-hour workweek, overtime pay, all were a result of unions in past generations," he said. "Labor is going through tough times, but there can still be solidarity."
Detroit News Staff Writers Richard A. Ryan and Christine MacDonald contributed to this report. You can reach Ron French at (313) 222-2175 or rfrench@ detnews.com.
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