St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), July 31, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Copyright 2005 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

July 31, 2005, Sunday

HEADLINE: St. Louis Post-Dispatch David Nicklaus column

BYLINE: By David Nicklaus

BODY:

SPLIT MAY NOT HELP LABOR UNIONS HALT MEMBERSHIP SLIDE: It sounds counterintuitive, but disorganized labor may do a better job representing workers than organized labor ever did.
The last time workers had two big labor federations competing to represent their interests was in the 1930s, '40s and early '50s, when the upstart Congress of Industrial Organizations was vying with the established American Federation of Labor. Unionization rose rapidly during that period and hit a high-water mark in 1955 at about one-third of the private-sector work force.
The AFL and CIO merged that year and, as is inevitable when competition is eliminated, big labor became more bureaucratic and less successful. Just 8 percent of private-sector employees belong to unions now.
Last week, the Service Employees International Union, Teamsters and United Food and Commercial Workers set out to restore competition by bolting from the AFL-CIO.
The split is over priorities more than principles. Andrew Stern, head of the Service Employees, wants to spend more money trying to organize nonunion workers. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney claims to recognize the importance of organizing, but doesn't want to divert money from political efforts.
Stern can claim to be building on success: His union has added 900,000 workers in the last nine years, while total AFL-CIO membership has shrunk.
Meanwhile, political action has come to seem futile: Union campaign contributions overwhelmingly favor Democrats, but the Republicans have firm control of Congress and the White House. Nor has labor had much success fighting globalization: Congress' approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement was only the latest of many defeats.
In short, a shakeup was long overdue. "Something's got to happen or labor is going to become irrelevant," says Jefferson Cowie, associate professor of labor history at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "You can't just be a club that services existing members, or you're eventually going to be driven out of business."
If Stern's Change to Win Coalition spends more money on organizing, it may persuade some low-wage service workers to join unions. But Marvin Finkelstein, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, thinks big labor needs a new vision, not just a better budget.
"They need to make a more compelling case to both prospective members and to employers about why unions can be a positive thing," Finkelstein said. In this era of job insecurity, a union that educates and trains workers for their next job might be more appealing than one that fights in vain to protect existing jobs.
Finkelstein doesn't believe the decline of unions is irreversible, but other scholars disagree. "Emphasizing organization could slow the decline, maybe even lead to a plateau level, but I don't think it's going to turn it around," said Ohio University economist Richard Vedder. "I just don't think the American public sees much value in unions."
The work force, after all, has changed since labor's heyday. The average worker is more educated and likely to toil in a clean office rather than a dangerous factory. Unemployment is relatively low, and our society is more mobile than ever. If you don't like one job, it's easier to find a new one than to band together and fight the boss.
Even the spread of 401(k) plans may be undermining the union message. "As you become a capitalist, even a small one, you start to look at capitalism and employers less as the enemy and more as the people who are going to provide me my retirement," Vedder said.
In an earlier era, a slogan such as "Workers of the world, unite!" might energize the masses. Today's worker responds simply, "What's in it for me?"
At the moment, unions don't have a good answer.
E-mail: dnicklaus@post-dispatch.com Phone: 314-340-8213