MarketWatch, February 25, 2010, Thursday

MarketWatch

February 25, 2010, Thursday

MarketWatch

U.S. workers unlikely to go the way of Greece

Weaker unions, cultural differences make any mass walkouts unlikely Explore related topics
Europe United Parcel Service Inc AMR Corp Story Quotes Comments Screener (278) Alert Email Print ShareBy Liana Balinsky-Baker & William Spain, MarketWatch

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Ballooning deficits. Troubled banks. Budget cuts. Wage freezes. All these, and a basketful of other economic woes, fueled a general strike that paralyzed much of Greece on Wednesday -- and many of the same conditions exist in the U.S. as well.

But considering the history of American labor, currently high levels of unemployment, the fragmentation of the union movement and considerable cultural differences, a similar nationwide walkout here seems extremely unlikely, almost regardless of how bad things might get.

Greek Debt Crisis: Athens Choked By General StrikeA massive general strike to protest E.U.-mandated austerity measures closed banks, government offices and post offices, crippling the Greek capital Wednesday. WSJ's Andy Jordan reports from the streets of Athens.
First of all, only about 12% of American workers are organized, the lowest level since before World War II. In Greece, union membership is 28% based on the latest available data, with 60% of the public sector and 18% in the private organized. Elsewhere in Europe, Germany is at just over 20%, while the U.K. is at 30%.

Also, in the U.S., the union membership rate for public-sector workers, at 37.4%, is far higher than the private industry level of 7.2%. And many government employees here are forbidden, either by law or contract, from walking off the job.

"I have a very hard time imagining a general strike like Greece, where trains are stopping, and ferries are stopping, and public transportation is put to a halt, and people are on the streets," said Jefferson Cowie, an associate professor of labor issues and history at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

In the U.S., "class identity is very fractured," he said. "The bread-and-butter working class issues aren't' as galvanizing as they once were. The politics of cultural values have eclipsed questions of class and economic equality."

He said that union membership is at "pretty much rock bottom," and while "unions still have a lot of political power and money ... the days when the statement of a union leader is front-page news have fallen by the wayside."

But, "the big question is the public sector," he said. "This is a huge issue in California, in New York City, where there is a large number of public-sector employees who are facing budgetary crises."

And with state governments and other public employers faced with firing people, cutting wages and/or outsourcing to private contractors, "the question is: Will there be a pushback from public-sector unions?"

The last big general strike on U.S. soil took place in Puerto Rico in 1998. It began as a job action at the local telephone company in protest of a privatization plan but eventually mushroomed to a two-day walkout by an estimated 500,000 workers that crippled commerce across the island.

Ultimately unsuccessful, the phone company workers went back to work after about a month, and the utility was eventually sold to a GTE-led group for $1.9 billion.

Before that, one would have to go back to 1934, when dozens of unions in the San Francisco Bay area called a general strike after several picketing dockworkers were killed by police. That one lasted four days, virtually shutting the region down in the process, but pretty much ended in a draw.

In the modern era, strikes against individual companies have rarely been able to gain much traction, with the notable exception of a Teamsters action at UPS Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!ups/quotes/nls/ups (UPS 59.61, +0.43, +0.73%) in 1997 that resulted in the workers getting much of what they wanted after a 15-day walkout.

Earlier that same year, however, a strike called by pilots at AMR Corp.'s /quotes/comstock/13*!amr/quotes/nls/amr (AMR 9.35, +0.05, +0.54%) American Airlines never even got off the ground after President Bill Clinton, using powers granted him under federal law, ordered them back to work within minutes of the walkout.

"What's going on [in Greece] would not ever occur here," said Leo Troy, a professor of economics at Rutgers University. "Greece has [a] revolutionary record of overthrowing governments, and that's not the case in the U.S. It's just not part of the background or history of the labor movement."

He said that such actions have occurred in France, Greece, and even in the U.K., where there was a general strike in the 1920s, but "we're talking nearly 100 years ago. It's never happened here [and] it's not in the cards."

Further, "the government sector is prospering and is doing all right," Troy said. "There's no pushback and the public-sector unions have benefited from the Obama administration, and they will continue to do so. They're in bed together."

Liana Balinsky-Baker is a News intern

William Spain is a MarketWatch staff writer in Chicago.