The New York Times, November 17, 2007, Saturday

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

November 17, 2007 Saturday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; NEWS ANALYSIS; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: On Strike to Protect the Gains of the Past, With an Eye on the Future

BYLINE: By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

BODY:
Suddenly, it seems, organized labor is flexing its muscles again.
In the first strike in its 121-year history, the stagehands' union local in New York has shut down much of Broadway, while a walkout by 12,000 Hollywood writers is creating havoc for television and film producers. These work stoppages come on the heels of brief strikes by 74,000 workers at General Motors and 45,000 at Chrysler.

Do the walkouts portend a resurgence of labor, even a new union militancy? The answer, for various reasons, appears to be no.

Harley Shaiken, a labor relations expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said the disputes showed that unions, although weaker than before and going on strike far less frequently than before, will not shrink from some battles.

''To paraphrase Mark Twain, all this shows that reports of the death of strikes are greatly exaggerated,'' he said. But many labor experts said the strikes resulted not from a newfound aggressiveness, but from a defensive effort by unions to hold onto what they have.

When 350 stagehands went on strike last Saturday, closing down 27 Broadway shows, it was after the producers announced a policy that would reduce the number of stagehands per production as well as the overtime that stagehands would receive. The theater producers complained that the old union contract had unreasonably increased their costs on many shows by calling for more workers than necessary.

In Detroit, G.M. and Chrysler workers went on strike after the automakers, with higher labor costs than their Japanese competitors, demanded a less costly health plan for retirees and a lower wage scale for new hires. Some auto workers said union leaders had orchestrated short strikes to try to convince the rank and file that they had fought their hardest; the union leaders described the strikes as effective bargaining tactics.

''These aren't strikes to explore new territory, but rather to protect past gains -- to prevent deterioration in working conditions and job security,'' said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. ''All this shows that management is getting stronger and much more confrontational.''

Detroit's automakers, in their struggle to compete against Toyota and Honda, took their toughest bargaining position in decades. The latest U.A.W. talks seemed light-years removed from those of a half-century ago when, with each round of negotiations, the mighty union would win an ever-better health plan or pension.

U.A.W. leaders said they agreed to concessions with Detroit's Big Three because the union and its members have a stake in seeing the automakers grow competitive and survive.

The Writers Guild took to the picket lines after Hollywood producers refused to increase the payments they give writers from sales of DVDs and refused to offer extra payments when many works were used in new media like the Internet or cellphone transmissions. Many writers were seething that the producers continued to offer them only around 5 cents in payment per DVD.

''In all these situations, management basically said you do what we want you to do or you have to stage a strike, and the union viewed a strike as a good piece of strategic leverage,'' said Richard W. Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University.

He saw an important parallel between the disputes in Hollywood and Detroit. ''The unions there are struggling to keep up with the changing structure of the industry,'' Mr. Hurd said.

Ruth Milkman, director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Los Angeles, argued that the writers' strike was an offensive struggle, not a defensive one, because the union was pushing to increase the payments.

''They're trying to push the envelope, but they don't have tremendous leverage,'' she said.

''They don't have the type of leverage that auto workers and the truckers once had when they could shut everything down.''

Mr. Shaiken suggested that the stagehands had more leverage than the writers. ''The stagehands have darkened the theaters. Period. With the writers, it's a long test of wills,'' he said. ''The TV networks can always show reruns, but the strike will exact a long-term toll in a volatile industry.''

He said the stagehands' dispute is a more conventional confrontation. ''Broadway producers can't simply move a play to a theater in Mexico and have a New York audience watch it there,'' he said.

These much-publicized strikes are by no means the only ones where unions are on the defensive. For example, 600 nurses went on strike seven weeks ago at Appalachian Regional Healthcare, a chain of nine hospitals in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, after management insisted on increasing health insurance premiums, reducing holiday pay and eliminating a policy of giving 40 hours of pay for 36 hours of work.

Mr. Chaison said the strikes in Detroit had a lot in common with another recent strike: the walkout by subway and rail workers in France that crippled high-speed train service and the Paris subways. The workers in France flexed their muscles to block President Nicolas Sarkozy's demand to raise the age at which train workers can retire with a full pension, now 50. Most French workers cannot receive a full pension until age 60.

Mr. Sarkozy has argued that overly generous salaries and benefits for public employees have raised taxes so much as to weaken the competitive position of French industry.

''The U.A.W.,'' Mr. Chaison said, ''is trying to defend their jobs and income against the pressures of globalization, and the French government is trying to hold down costs because of pressures from globalization.''

These labor experts see some recent gains for America's labor unions, despite their weakened position.

Over the last year, unions have organized tens of thousands of low-wage workers, most notably at hotels, in child care, janitorial service and home health care. And the experts said labor was looking to make further gains in next year's election.

''Unions have a tremendous amount of influence in the Democratic Party,'' Mr. Hurd said.

''Labor knows that the Democrats have a pretty good chance of winning the White House, but whether they can win a big enough majority in Congress to enact pro-labor legislation over a filibuster, that may be tough. A lot of unions are placing their future hopes on that.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: The Writers Guild picketers outside Fox Studios last Friday. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID MCNEW/GETTY IMAGES)

LOAD-DATE: November 17, 2007