RESEARCH Business Labor

WORKERS' RIGHTS
Prospects brightening for unions seeking to organize high-tech workers

Mark Reutter, Business Editor
(217) 333-0568; mreutter@uiuc.edu

10/1/2000

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Were reports of the death of organized labor in the wireless world greatly exaggerated?

With the recent victory by workers at Verizon Communications -- together with a legal ruling that makes it easier to organize temporary workers -- it looks as though unions may gain a foothold in fast-growing high-tech companies.

"A few years ago, it was thought that the industrial model of unions was not applicable to the so-called New Economy," said Ronald J. Peters, professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois. "We are now seeing that is not the case, for the fundamental questions faced by employees of the Old Economy and New Economy are the same -- namely, are people getting their fair share of the new wealth being created and are they being treated with dignity and respect."

Take the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. After a 15-day walkout in August, the unions won not only a 12 percent wage increase from Verizon, (the mammoth merger of Bell Atlantic, Vodafone and GTE), but also a better chance to sign up employees in the company’s broadband and wireless divisions.

Of greater long-term significance may be the decision last month by the National Labor Relations Board making the organization of temporary workers easier.

"The decision reverses 30 years of legal precedent of disenfranchising temps," said Michael H. LeRoy, a UI professor specializing in labor law. Microsoft Corp., IBM and many Silicon Valley companies depend on temporary workers, independent contractors and contingent workers for much of the daily outpourings of computer parts and designs, service and billing.

"Perhaps the real distinction of the New Economy is its use of people to do similar work, using similar technology, as unionized shops, but with less job security and fewer benefits," LeRoy said.

Chasing after stock options isn't a pursuit for customer-service representatives and assembly-line technicians. Rather, according to LeRoy, the hot-button issues include enforced overtime and reduced break periods. Add to that worry over child care and sexual harassment by supervisors in departments with large concentrations of women.

"A younger generation of union activists, many of them women, are making headway on these issues, but it is frustratingly slow," Peters said.

As head of UI's labor education program, Peters has taught courses on labor bargaining and grievances to union representatives since 1976. Public interest in unions is growing, he said.

"Old-fashioned organizing, shop by shop, person by person, is going on throughout the country. But much of it goes unrecognized until there is a major strike or job action."