The New York Times, September 5, 2005, Monday

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

September 5, 2005 Monday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Column 5; National Desk; Pg. 7

HEADLINE: Amid Difficulties, Leaders Of Labor See Opportunity

BYLINE: By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

BODY:
As they have on past Labor Days, the nation's union leaders are vowing to reverse labor's decline, but that goal is made more difficult this year by the schism in the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and by the likelihood that striking mechanics at Northwest Airlines will suffer a bruising defeat.
''Labor is in some pretty tough rapids right now,'' said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
The labor movement's troubles come as millions of workers are feeling squeezed. Notwithstanding the steady job growth over the last year, median household income remains below 1999 levels, and wages have trailed inflation over the past year, partly because of rising gasoline prices. And millions of workers have lost health care coverage while many companies have reduced retirement benefits for their workers.
''Employers are, for want of a better word, in the ascendancy,'' said Daniel Mitchell, a professor of management and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.
With polls showing that most Americans are dissatisfied with their economic situation, John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said conditions seemed ripe for unions to rebound.
''A record 53 percent of nonunion workers say they'd join a union tomorrow if given the chance -- that's the highest percentage in 20 years,'' Mr. Sweeney said. ''It is our job to reach out to them.''
Unions have enjoyed some successes, he said, noting that the Communications Workers of America unionized 2,100 Cingular cellphone workers in recent months. And the Service Employees International Union, which quit the labor federation in July, said it was close to organizing 6,000 janitors in Houston.
Still, the percentage of workers in unions has steadily fallen, to 12.5 percent last year from nearly 35 percent a half century ago.
One reason for the continued decline is that labor's longtime base -- manufacturing -- has lost three million jobs since 1999, representing a sixth of manufacturing's total. Also, fewer than 10 unions have heeded Mr. Sweeney's appeals to vastly step up their efforts to unionize workers.
Even as union leaders talk rebound, labor has taken a pounding in the most prominent recent labor dispute, the 16-day walkout by 4,430 mechanics at Northwest Airlines. Northwest has continued to operate smoothly, helped by replacements and outside contractors, many of them former union members.
Northwest had made elaborate preparations to weather a strike as it made stringent demands: $176 million in concessions and cutting the mechanics' numbers in half. More than a year ago, Northwest hired outside contractors to service its aircraft; three months before the strike deadline, it began hiring and training more than 1,000 licensed mechanics to cross the picket line.
''Mechanics were thought to be a fairly protected group with a fair amount of bargaining leverage because of their skills and the difficulty in replacing them,'' said Harry Katz, dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. ''Unless a crash occurs at Northwest-- and nobody is hoping for that -- it looks as if the union will lose dramatically.''
Industrial relations experts say the strike is bound to have destructive ripples for labor, even though most unions view the mechanics' union, the Airline Mechanics Fraternal Association, as an isolated, maverick outfit. Labor experts say that if Northwest continues running smoothly, the strike will effectively be lost and the union busted.
''There is a demonstration effect,'' Mr. Katz said. ''This shows the other airlines the way to do it.''
Airlines and automobiles have long been considered the industries in which labor was strongest, but now they are the fields in which labor seems most embattled, largely because of the companies' staggering financial losses. More than any other union, the United Auto Workers had set the pace for the nation's workers, especially in its talks with General Motors Corporation, which for decades was the nation's largest company.
But now General Motors has thrown the U.A.W. on the defensive, insisting that it will face dire competitiveness problems unless the union agrees to measures reducing the company's nearly $6 billion annual health care bill. G.M., which lost $1.2 billion in the first half of the year, spends an average of $1,500 per car on health costs, an amount believed to be $1,000 more than Toyota.
The auto workers are by no means a weak union, and unlike Northwest, G.M. would have an extraordinarily hard time replacing its workers if they walked out.
The union is resisting G.M.'s demands to reopen its contract, which expires in 2007, and to grant concessions now. Nonetheless, many labor experts predict that the auto workers will be forced to accept some important concessions, either now or in 2007, to help preserve jobs.
''One strange thing is that this dispute is happening when auto sales are booming,'' said Mr. Katz of Cornell. ''G.M. has very high pension and health care costs, and if the union agrees to only incremental changes now, that will lead to a really deep, deep crisis when the next recession comes.''
Not all unions are on the defensive. On Saturday, 18,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers went on strike against Boeing, seemingly taking the offensive against a company whose profits are soaring.
The workers overwhelmingly rejected the company's offer of $6,000 in lump-sum payments and a 5.5 percent raise over three years. Boeing also proposed a 10 percent increase in their pensions while calling for workers to shoulder more of their health insurance costs.
Noting that Boeing's profits have tripled over the last three years, Mark Blondin, president of the main machinists' local at Boeing, said the union had ''simply asked Boeing to do the right thing for their work force.''
While manufacturers facing increased global competition slug it out with their unions, labor leaders in the service sector see growth opportunities among low-wage workers whose jobs cannot be sent overseas or lost to foreign competition, including janitors, cashiers, dishwashers, hotel maids, security guards and nursing home aides. The three unions that quit the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the service employees, the Teamsters, and the food and commercial workers, vow to help revive labor by seeking to unionize those workers.
In a Labor Day statement, Andrew Stern, the service employees president, said, ''A new innovative group of unions is committed to turning hope into action.''
Some labor experts say the schism in labor could spur a healthy competition between the breakaway unions and other unions that results in more workers being organized. But the schism could also lead to a destructive rivalry in which one union seeks to take members from another, as is happening with the service employees' efforts to take 9,000 home health aides in Riverside County, Calif., from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
With all the troubles workers face, Professor Shaiken of Berkeley sees hope for unions.
''When you read the polls about worker anxiety,'' he said, ''and you put that together with rising gasoline prices and declining wages and all the other things that are out there, if we didn't have unions, we'd have to invent them this Labor Day.''


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GRAPHIC: Photo: Four workers with a total of 78 years' service joined an aircraft mechanics' picket line against Northwest Airlines yesterday in Minneapolis. (Photo by Janet Hostetter/Associated Press)