MARKETPLACE MORNING REPORT (Minnesota Public Radio), March 15, 2005, Tuesday

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MARKETPLACE MORNING REPORT

SHOW: Marketplace Morning Report 6:50 AM EST SYND

March 15, 2005 Tuesday

HEADLINE: Organized labor trying to retool

ANCHORS: KAI RYSSDAL

REPORTERS: JOHN DIMSDALE

BODY:
KAI RYSSDAL, anchor:
This is MARKETPLACE. I'm Kai Ryssdal.
Organized labor in this country has been losing both membership and political clout, so it's trying to retool. And union leaders have targeted the fastest-growing segment of the labor force. That is professional and technical workers. But traditional unions haven't really kept pace with the way white-collar work is changing, with the new world of contracting and outsourcing and temporary projects. MARKETPLACE's John Dimsdale reports labor knows it's got to change or else.
JOHN DIMSDALE reporting:
This week, nearly 200 union activists from around the country have come to Washington to hear some pep talk about the potential for reversing membership declines among white-collar professionals. To do that, unions will have to adapt to changes in the way professional workers relate to their employers. That's according to the AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida.
Mr. PAUL ALMEIDA (AFL-CIO): In this changing environment with globalization, with more people working part time and in a contingent basis, they work for multiple employers across the industry. Workers go from job to job, project by project. If labor is going to succeed, it's going to have to figure out how to be relevant to these workers.
DIMSDALE: Unions don't have the traditional workplace connection to these transient autonomous workers. But Lynn Karoly, who studied work force demographics for the Rand Corporation, says they can be found in virtual communities on the Internet, and these workers need something unions can provide.
Ms. LYNN KAROLY (Rand Corporation): And you can think of a union or a worker organization as being a type of a home base for an individual. So if they don't have a steady relationship with an employer, they have that steady relationship with this organization, and that's where they have the continued access to these types of benefits.
DIMSDALE: Benefits such as health care and pensions, but also training and education, as well as a clearinghouse for industry information and employment opportunities. Cornell University labor Professor Richard Hurd says this guild type of employee association offers unions some income-generating potential.
Professor RICHARD HURD (Cornell University): You not only have a membership, you pay for the educational programs. They sell information on the labor market, so you can get actually a printout of what workers in Europe, particular specialty earn in a particular urban area, so if you're going there to interview for a job, you know what your demands should be.
DIMSDALE: However, adapting the traditional union structure to this new employee-employer relationship won't be easy, says Ed McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Mr. ED McELROY (American Federation of Teacher): When you do that, sometimes you set up an automatic tension within that organization; traditional union members in a traditional environment for collective bargaining and everything else. Now the union attempts to squeeze in non-traditional workers in a different work force environment. Sometimes that doesn't work.
DIMSDALE: McElroy's idea is to create new unions to accommodate new types of workers, but more unions is just the opposite of what other labor leaders are pushing. They want fewer larger unions to give workers more clout with management. These and other arguments over the AFL-CIO's future will be decided this July when union members vote on whether to keep current president John Sweeney for another five-year term. In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for MARKETPLACE.
RYSSDAL: And in Los Angeles, I'm Kai Ryssdal. Thanks for being with us.