Posted on 3-9-2002

Labour Divide Looks To Unions In US
By Steven Greenhouse, NYT, 2 Sept02

With longshoremen, janitors and Boeing employees threatening major strikes
and employees reeling from corporate scandals and rising unemployment, the
mood among American workers has turned anxious and even angry this Labor
Day. Unions are threatening walkouts by 10,500 longshoremen, 10,000 Boston
janitors and 25,000 Boeing employees for reasons that are worrying American
workers in general: fast-rising health care costs, slower wage growth and
fears about job security.

Baseball players have settled their labor dispute, but dockworkers are
still warning that they may close all West Coast ports because they fear
that new technologies will cause layoffs. Boeing workers in Kansas, Oregon
and Washington State will soon vote on whether to strike because Boeing is
moving jobs overseas and wants them to contribute more toward their health
care. In Boston, janitors at hundreds of buildings are threatening to
strike, and in Chicago, 7,000 hotel workers have authorized a walkout —
saying, in both cases, that they want improved health coverage and wages
high enough to support their families.

Economists say the mood has soured among American workers, union and
nonunion, because wages are stagnating and unemployment has climbed to
almost 6 percent, the highest level in eight years. The number of
private-sector jobs is down nearly 2 percent from early 2001, while layoffs
in the recent recession were unusually large for women and college
graduates compared with past recessions. "There is high unemployment, and
it will remain that way for a while," said Lawrence Mishel, the president
of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. "Although it
may have looked like a shallow recession, for some work force groups it's
not so shallow." In its new study, "The State of Working America," the
institute found that wages were growing at their slowest level since 1995
and that the income gap between the richest Americans and everybody else
was widening again, after narrowing in the late 1990's.

Large-scale layoffs occurred after Sept. 11 in many industries, most
notably airlines, hotels and financial services. But the fiercest anger
about layoffs stems from the dismissals at Enron and other scandal-plagued
companies. Enron laid off 4,200 workers, and WorldCom 17,000. "For years
I've heard people talk about distrust of their employers, but something new
is happening," said John J. Sweeney, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
"People are really fed up and furious with corporate America." A survey of
900 workers, union and nonunion, by Peter D. Hart Research Associates,
found that 58 percent were dissatisfied with the state of the economy, up
from 34 percent in early 2001. The poll, released on Thursday, also found
that 39 percent had negative feelings toward corporations, and 30 percent
had positive feelings, a sharp reversal from January 2001, when 42 percent
reported positive feelings toward corporations and 25 percent said they had
negative feelings. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage
points. In the survey, commissioned by the A.F.L.-C.I.O., 60 percent of
workers said their employers fell short in balancing concerns about
employees with concerns about profits.

For organized labor, all this anxiety and anger has produced some good
news: Americans have warmed up to the idea of joining unions. The Hart poll
found that 50 percent of nonunion workers said they would vote to join a
union if they could, the highest level in two decades, up from 42 percent
last year and up from 30 percent in the early 1980's. The number who said
they would vote against unionizing fell to 43 percent, from 65 percent two
decades ago. Whether labor unions can translate these sentiments into
increased membership is unclear. Despite Mr. Sweeney's efforts to prod the
nation's unions to do far more organizing, overall union membership has
remained flat over the last decade.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O., which represents 13 million union members, plans to take
the offensive this fall against President Bush and members of Congress whom
the federation views as having done little to support labor. Mr. Sweeney
was in Minnesota this weekend to campaign for Senator Paul Wellstone, a
Democrat regarded by the federation as a champion of labor, who faces a
tough re-election battle. "The Bush administration has been the worst for
working families in decades," Mr. Sweeney said. "The Bush administration as
well as Congress have refused to add a prescription drug benefit to
Medicare, and they have given a trillion-dollar tax cut to the wealthiest
Americans." He criticized Mr. Bush and most Republicans for approving new
trade legislation that provides few safeguards for workers and for
repealing rules intended to protect workers, like secretaries and meat
packers, from repetitive-motion injuries.

Mr. Sweeney's political efforts may be undercut by several unions, most
notably the carpenters' and the Teamsters, who have strengthened ties with
Mr. Bush and Republicans, backing them on numerous issues, including oil
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Those unions wanted to
develop influence with Republicans and feared that the Democrats had been
taking labor for granted.