The New York Times, July 30,, 2005, Saturday

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

July 30, 2005 Saturday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: SPLINTERED, BUT UNBOWED

BYLINE: By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

DATELINE: CHICAGO, July 28

BODY:
Even as he was leading the revolt this week that has divided the labor movement into warring camps, Andrew L. Stern was wasting no time in trying to demonstrate that unions are capable of a resurgence.
Mr. Stern's union, the Service Employees International Union, kicked off an effort to unionize 8,000 janitors in Houston, even though the state of Texas is particularly hostile to organized labor. In one of the most ambitious organizing drives in the South, the service employees have set their sights initially on the Houston operations of ABM, the nation's largest cleaning contractor.
If the service employees can unionize the biggest cleaning company in the city, Mr. Stern argues, other companies will quickly follow.
For all their ferocious infighting, labor's chieftains agree on one thing: labor can rebound in the new economy because there still are plenty of opportunities for old-fashioned organizing.
Millions of workers, they say, are ripe for labor's message because of stagnating wages for ordinary workers, declining benefits, growing insecurity on the job, and a sense that the haves are leaving the have-nots further behind. Moreover, workers in the low-wage service sector are disproportionately women, immigrants and members of minority groups that have all been traditionally more open to unionization.
But there are cross-cutting trends that undermine labor's hopes. Workers in industries that face global competition -- from manufacturers to high-tech service companies -- fear that if they unionize, that may just hasten their companies' decision to ship their jobs overseas.
And as the House's narrow vote in favor of the Central American Free Trade Agreement showed, even though labor retains clout among Democrats, it cannot overcome a determined drive by the White House and a Republican Party that is not inclined to do unions any favors.
For all the obstacles, said Mr. Stern, whose union is the fastest-growing in the nation -- having jumped to 1.8 million members from 1.1 million a decade ago -- ''there are a series of things that make a revival possible.''
''First is the environment that Alan Greenspan talked about recently -- the growing disparity between the wealthy and other Americans,'' Mr. Stern added in a telephone interview from his office in Washington. ''A second factor is the category of jobs that are going to remain in this country, that can't be sent overseas: trucking, janitorial, hospitals, supermarkets. A lot of these workers aren't paid well, and they need a voice at work.''
In Houston, the service employees union certainly appear to have a strong selling point: ABM's janitors in Houston earn $5.25 an hour and have no health benefits, while its unionized janitors in Chicago, San Francisco and New York earn $15 or more an hour and have health benefits.
It is a classic, sophisticated service employees' campaign: a two-week strike, full-page newspaper ads, the city's Roman Catholic archbishop and several members of Congress decrying the janitors' wages and lack of benefits. Not only that, the union has staged support strikes by ABM workers from California to Connecticut.
But despite such tactics, the labor movement's vital signs have grown weaker by the decade. Half a century ago, the union movement was a behemoth, representing 35 percent of private-sector workers. Now it represents less than 8 percent.
But Mr. Stern -- who is widely viewed as the man who will spearhead a resurgence in labor, if there is going to be one -- prefers to focus on another, more encouraging statistic: 52 percent of nonunion, nonsupervisory workers say, according to polls, that they would vote to join a union today if they could.
Counterintuitive though it may be, Mr. Stern says the growing size of American corporations is another factor that may help labor.
''Employers are larger, and in the end that may be an advantage,'' he said. ''When we organize, it's easier to organize one huge retailer like Wal-Mart or Home Depot than 100 smaller companies that are totally disaggregated.''
Reversing labor's decline is a tall order. To increase the percentage of the work force that is unionized would require unions to recruit one million new members a year, more than twice the current rate of recruitment. Meanwhile, companies have grown far more sophisticated, and aggressive, in beating back unionization attempts.
Unions also face huge hurdles getting their message through to millions of young workers and high-tech workers, who tend to be independent-minded and often entrepreneurial and look solely to their own drive and talents, rather than unions, to help them climb the economic ladder.
''Unions have to find a new message,'' said Randel Johnson, vice president for labor, employee benefits and immigration at the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington. ''Stern keeps putting more troops on the ground to organize workers, but it's more troops with the same message.''
On Monday, the service employees and the Teamsters quit the A.F.L.-C.I.O., saying it has done to little to reverse labor's slide. [On Friday, the United Food and Commercial Workers also quit.] A fourth union, Unite Here, which represents hotel, restaurant and apparel workers, also plans to quit.
Those unions are cooperating with three other unions -- the laborers, farm workers and carpenters -- to develop ambitious, multi-union organizing drives at Cintas, the laundry company, as well as at FedEx and Wal-Mart.
Richard Hurd, a labor relations professor at Cornell University, says the most likely way for the labor movement to grow again is to focus on low-end service-sector workers.
''There's an opportunity for unions to build some kind of momentum by focusing on workers who are the most oppressed,'' he said. Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California at Berkeley, added, ''They need a message that resonates not that you have it bad, but that we can help make your life better.''
In the Houston campaign, the service employees union, which spends more than half its budget on organizing, is using several new strategies. For one thing it is trying to organize 8,000 janitors at once, rather than 20 at a time in individual buildings. The union is also using its pension power and political connections, getting public pension funds in California and New York to pressure Houston building owners to urge their cleaning contractors to pay better.
''Sometimes this can be done with the power of persuasion,'' Mr. Stern said. ''Sometimes it takes the persuasion of power.''
Union leaders agree that for the labor movement to revive, the turnaround must come in the private sector. Among government employees, unionization is expected to remain relatively easy even though the governors of Indiana and Missouri recently stripped state workers of the right to unionize. Because states and cities rarely go to the mat in fighting unions, 36 percent of the nation's public employees are unionized.
Factory workers were once the heart of the labor movement, but employment in many former labor strongholds -- steel, rubber and autos-- has plunged because of automation and imports.
''Our organizing efforts are not able to keep up with the loss of manufacturing jobs,'' said R. Thomas Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists. Mr. Buffenbarger said his union organized 5,000 workers a year, while losing 15,000 a year to factory closings and downsizings.
The United Auto Workers has recently organized several auto parts plants, including a 220-worker Dana auto parts plant in Virginia and a 1,200-worker Thomas Built bus plant in North Carolina. But noneof those successes have proved big enough to reverse the union's slide.
''The U.A.W.'s membership seems preordained to decline unless they make a breakthrough at the transplants,'' Professor Hurd said. ''That is hard because the transplants provide union wages and benefits. They're in regions not friendly to unions and use Japanese culture that gives workers a modicum of voice and feelings of belonging. They're very hard to crack.''
Professional and technical workers may be even tougher to organize. Despite years of trying, unions have failed to crack even one Silicon Valley company.
''Unions have to adapt to the changing economy in order to succeed,'' Professor Hurd said. ''A new model needs to be developed that provides these workers with an opportunity to take their benefits with them and provides them with a voice at work that may be outside of collective bargaining.''
One such model may be the Communication Workers of America, whose executive vice president, Larry Cohen, said his union is succeeding with a number of innovative approaches. At I.B.M., for example, 3,000 employees have joined a union-sponsored group, Alliance at I.B.M., that provides an advocacy forum for workers on pensions, career and job security.
The communications' workers, after persuading Cingular Wireless not to oppose unionization efforts, has organized 22,000 Cingular workers. And while the union expects to add new AT&T members now that Cingular has acquired AT&T Wireless, it is making little progress with Verizon Wireless, which is vigorously fighting unionization.
''When you take away the terror,'' Mr. Cohen said, ''workers are eager to sign up.''
But not many unions are organizing so aggressively. A decade ago, John J. Sweeney, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s president, urged unions to spend at least 30 percent of their budget on organizing. Stewart Acuff, the federation's organizing director, said that only five of the federation's 54 unions had met that goal.
''If we're going to turn this around,'' Mr. Acuff said, ''it's going to take more than a handful of unions.''


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GRAPHIC: Photos: Andrew Stern, right, president of the Service Employees International Union, says millions of workers would like to unionize. (Photograph, right, by Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press
illustration by The New York Times)(pg. C1)
Members of the Service Employees International Union rallied Thursday in Houston at the end of a strike against a cleaning company. (Photo by Michael Stravato for The New York Times)
John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has watched his labor group steadily shrink. (Photo by Frank Polich/Bloomberg News)(pg. C13)Chart: ''Waning Membership''Percent of U.S. workers who were union members from 1948 to 2004.In 1948, membership was at 31.8% . . .. . . while in 2004, it decreased to 12.5%Graph tracks membership since the 1950's.(Source by Bureau of Labor Statistics
Leo Troy, author of Union Sourcebook, 1975)(pg. C1)Chart: ''Union Work Force''Percent of each U.S. sector or industry that was represented by a union in 1975 and 2004.Though overall membership has declined, the number of unionized government employees has risen.1975: 25%2004: 36Membership in the private sector, however, has decreased.1975: 21.52004: 8The industries below have had sharp declines.CONSTRUCTION1975: 352004: 16MANUFACTURING1975: 362004: 13TRANSPORTATION1975: 472004: 27(Source by Bureau of Labor Statistics
Leo Troy, author of Union Sourcebook, 1975)(pg. C13)