The Buffalo News, February 28, 2010, Sunday

The Buffalo News

February 28, 2010, Sunday

The Buffalo News

Value of labor unions depends on reference point

New York leads U.S. in percentage of organized workers

A century ago, the suggestion that New York’s working men and women could band together to bargain for better wages and working conditions was considered a radical, even a revolutionary, idea.

Today, labor unions are an established part of the state’s economy and its politics, as settled as Wall Street or any government entity.

New Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers out this month show that New York State continues to lead the nation in the percentage of unionized workers, with 25.2 percent of employed workers paying union dues. Buffalo and other New York metro areas, with rates of unionization that also tend to run at about a quarter of employed people, are also near the top of the list of most unionized cities.

So, what has been the result? Has that meant a stable, dedicated workforce or the distorting entrenchment of an unaffordable status quo?

The answer, it seems, depends on whom you ask.

“It’s a good thing,” said Patty DeVinney, field coordinator for the Western New York Labor Federation, the regional branch of the AFL-CIO. “Where unions are in place, you find that there are higher salaries, better health care and more retirement security.”

Highly unionized economies, DeVinney said, also place less strain on taxpayers to pay for Medicaid or other public assistance services for workers who receive a living wage and health and retirement benefits from their jobs, not from the taxpayers.

But it is the strain on the taxpayers that most concerns Michael Moran, spokesman for the Business Council of New York.

Moran notes that New York’s high rate of unionization is fueled by growing the government class at a time when the private sector is contracting. In New York, 72.4 percent of the government workers at the local, state and federal level are union members. In New York’s private sector, unions represent only 16.5 percent of the employed.

“You can’t maintain an economy based on government spending,” Moran said. “You have to have a vibrant private sector.”

And among the impediments to a resurgent private economy, especially one struggling to recover from a global recession, Moran said, are the high costs that powerful public sector unions place on taxpayers.

Unions that represent teachers, health care workers and other public employees have a lot of money and organizational strength, Moran said, and thus have a disproportionate influence on the democratic process, particularly at the level of the New York Legislature. Those unions’ resistance to any reduction in spending that might affect their members’ jobs, he said, bends the political process to the detriment of taxpayers generally.

“That will distort the legislative process to some degree,” he said. “And that has set us on a spending curve that is unsustainable.”

Other states with high percentages of unionized workers include those with low populations and large numbers of government jobs — Alaska and Hawaii. The lowest rates of unionized workers are found in the South, with the lowest rate being North Carolina’s 3.1 percent.

Locally, the image of Buffalo and New York as a concentration of unionized labor is a factor in attracting new business, said Andrew Rudnick, president of the business-boosting Buffalo Niagara Partnership.

The area’s labor force is promoted by the partnership and other business leaders as skilled and dedicated, Rudnick said, and union membership is part and parcel of that. The problem comes, he said, when business people considering Western New York for expansion or relocation don’t look beyond the raw numbers.

“It’s a mixed attribute,” Rudnick said. “It all depends on whether it’s just the stats they look at or whether they bore down below the stats.”

If they do really investigate the labor climate in Western New York, Rudnick said, businesses are more likely to find things to their liking, with skills and experience they crave.

Arthur Wheaton, director of Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations program in Buffalo, also says the situation in Western New York proves that a highly unionized economy need not be a highly contentious one.

Wheaton points to recent announcements of the preservation, and possible expansion, of jobs at Western New York union shops General Motors and New Era Cap as evidence that active, well-run unions are an asset to the local economy.

The GM Powertrain plant in the Town of Tonawanda was recently chosen to make a new generation of high-efficiency engines, employing 470 more people than work there today. That decision, announced in tandem with United Auto Workers leaders, followed the winning of concessions from the union that includes a wage scale for new hires starting at some $14 an hour, half of what legacy workers have been paid.

“I don’t think the issues of unions should be boiled down to good or bad,” said Steve Finch, manager of the Powertrain plant. “However, I do believe where unions exist that both union and management should focus on common business objectives that will allow both parties to flourish.”

And the owners of locally grown, nationally known New Era, faced with the need to close two of its three production facilities, last month elected to retain its Derby plant and close two factories in the South, saving 300 jobs in Erie County. Workers who are represented by the Communication Workers of America approved wage, benefit and bonus concessions earlier this month to make that deal possible.

“We’re very fortunate here in Western New York that we have had very good labor-management relations,” Wheaton said. “We want to keep jobs here, and we’re more likely to do that with a strong labor force.”

Wheaton also backed the idea that a high rate of union members among an area’s workforce can ease the burden on taxpayers, as strong unions negotiate levels of pay and benefits that allow workers and their families to depend on their jobs, not welfare, Medicaid or other forms of public assistance, for the things they need.

He also noted that industries that require highly trained, skilled workers — from airline pilots to professional baseball players — tend to feature strong labor unions that allow those who do the work to have more say over how the work will be done. In the long run, Wheaton said, that can minimize labor-management discord and improve the lives of workers, the profits of the company and the quality of goods or services provided to the public.

“Strong labor unions give you what you most want,” Wheaton said. “To have things handled by adults with other people watching.”

gpyle@buffnews.com