The Hartford Courant (Connecticut), August 12, 2007, Sunday

Copyright 2007 The Hartford Courant

The Hartford Courant (Connecticut)

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News

August 12, 2007 Sunday

SECTION: BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS

HEADLINE: Pratt's Union: How Powerful?: Would The Machinists Dare To Strike? Few Unions Now Do

BYLINE: Eric Gershon, The Hartford Courant, Conn.

BODY:

Aug. 12--Now it's Pratt & Whitney's turn to bargain.

In May, Hamilton Sundstrand Corp. and its Machinists union came to a quick and bloodless contract agreement. Without a hint of strike preparations, workers approved a proposal that offered annual wage increases of 3.5 percent and a $3,000 signing bonus, but that also raised their health care costs.

Union members adopted the contract by a margin greater than 9-to-1.

By contrast, slightly more than a year earlier, Teamsters at Sikorsky Aircraft, another United Technologies Corp. unit, put up a bitter, deep-winter fight.

About 3,600 workers went on strike, crippling Sikorsky factories for six weeks and damaging both sides. The company fell behind in its production schedule, and the union won no major concessions, proving that a strike can be all pain and no gain.

As UTC's jet engine unit and its 4,135 Connecticut Machinists negotiate a new contract, the question is not just whether workers would strike, but also what power the union brings to the table. Its ranks are thinner than ever, and the company has gradually moved much work to lower-cost locations, but at the same time, Pratt faces a massive backlog of orders with tight production deadlines.

The talks take place in an environment in which the peril of organized labor's single most powerful tactic -- the strike -- has made it a rare choice. The Sikorsky Teamsters' strike may have provided high-stakes drama, but the Hamilton accord better represents the politics of 21st- century labor negotiations.

"Now, to go on strike, it's practically a suicide mission," said Jefferson Cowie, a scholar of labor history at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. "If your employer wants to replace you, you're virtually powerless."

Unions are well aware of their precarious circumstances, and data on strikes show it.

In 2006, there were just 20 new strikes of 1,000 or more workers nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In 1996, there were 37, and in 1986, there were 69.

Before 1981, the year President Ronald Reagan defeated a walkout by federal air traffic controllers, strikes were far more common. In 1976, there were 231 new strikes -- and that was not extreme for the time. Two years earlier, there were 424 strikes in the United States.

The Machinists are far from having to consider a strike, and it very well might not come to that point at all. While talks started Tuesday -- two months early, at Pratt's request -- the real deadline is months way.

The current negotiations end Aug. 19, when members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers are scheduled to vote on Pratt's proposal. Because the existing contract does not expire until Dec. 2, they can reject it without considering a strike.

"If they reject it, we continue negotiations," James Parent, the union's veteran chief negotiator, said before talks started.

The union and the company both say they want a contract this summer, and both agreed not to talk about the issues on the table. Job security is the union's top priority, officials said before the talks began.

Pratt would not discuss why it sought early negotiations. Observers say its leadership is eager to guarantee labor for the company's heavy workload, and specifically to head off the possibility of a December strike.

Pratt's short-term need for labor in an aerospace boom gives the Machinists leverage going into talks, labor leaders and union experts say. The company had 2006 operating profits of $1.8 billion on revenue of $11 billion; it has a large order backlog and recently won contracts worth about $3 billion. Coming awards from the Pentagon could add to its full plate.

But even if Pratt's Machinists win short-term concessions, the Machinists' vastly diminished ranks and the company's increasingly global manufacturing network present a long-term problem for the union. Similar problems beset manufacturing labor unions across the nation.

"In terms of raw leverage, they can't stare down business because business's threats are, to some extent, real," said Jonathan Cutler, a Wesleyan University sociologist who studies labor. "Can you really strike and make serious demands without them shutting down your plant and moving to wherever -- the Czech Republic or Poland or China or the South of the U.S.?"

Pratt workers went on strike in 2001 after rejecting a deal that would have let the company move the work of 500 Machinists out of state. The proposal offered a 10 percent pay raise over three years, a $1,000 signing bonus and an early retirement package. The strike ended 11 days later after Pratt made short-term job guarantees that expired with the contract.

In December 2004, union leaders again called for a strike, criticizing Pratt's final offer for its lack of job security provisions and its demand for health benefit concessions. But union members failed to support it, which the labor group's leaders attributed to holiday pressures and members' belief that a long strike would be necessary to force Pratt's hand.

Despite the withered state of the strike threat, the bargaining unit can draw strength from a variety of other sources and circumstances, which the Machinists and other unions used to their advantage.

Companies can't easily find replacement workers when unemployment is low, and they can't move work to new locations quickly. Labor strife raises the ire of politicians and other community leaders, and it damages long-term stability, which companies value.

Unions also arm themselves through careful research about companies -- such as production schedules and finances -- which helps them to identify management's bluffs. "The power is to be good at gathering information," said John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, which includes the Machinists union.

Still, refusing to work remains a union's single greatest source of power.

"The leverage at the end of the day is that you have the power of a strike," Olsen said. "It's still a powerful tool because they can't move offshore overnight. They have customers they need to deal with."

Last year's six-week Sikorsky strike -- largely over proposed increases in health care expenses paid by employees -- won workers almost nothing. For an extra $1,000 in signing bonus, the strikers accepted the provisions.

So far, Pratt's Machinists don't appear to be bristling for a fight, despite spicy rhetoric in union-issued fliers updating members on the talks' progress.

Meanwhile, the few known details of Pratt's initial proposal -- one that offers the same financial incentives as those given to Hamilton's workers, including a $3,000 signing bonus -- hold appeal, at least for some workers.

"There's a lot of people that jump at that," said a worker who did not want to be identified.

At the Crowne Plaza hotel in Cromwell Thursday morning, as the third day of talks was getting underway, there were no union workers assembled outside chanting slogans or rally cries. There was no assembly of any kind. Inside, union negotiators sipped coffee and joked with each other in a conference room.

Cutler, the Wesleyan professor, said American labor unions are far less feisty than in their heyday of the 1950s, sometimes because of comfort among their leaders. Unless union leaders feel pressure from members -- through internal power struggles, for example -- they're less inclined to fight, he said.

The Machinists union's top priority this year, winning job security provisions, strikes Cutler as timid.

"It's like collective begging instead of collective bargaining," he said. "'Please don't hurt us anymore.' Pratt smells blood when they hear that."

Yet Cutler and others caution that union culture varies and each contract negotiation has a unique, unpredictable dynamic, and underdogs don't always lose.

Joshua Freeman, a labor historian at Queens College in New York, noted the 1997 strike by United Parcel Service workers, in which 185,000 Teamsters stopped working for 15 days, forcing management into major concessions.

"None of this means you can't have a big, successful strike," he said.

Contact Eric Gershon at egershon@courant.com

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