RESEARCH Business Labor

LABOR LAW
Decline of union membership and power has led to rise in lawsuits

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

3/1/02

Photo by Bill Wiegand Matthew W. Finkin, a UI law professor, says the role of labor unions may evolve from workplace bargainers to special-service legal providers.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Will Brooks Brothers suits and hushed courtroom hearings replace the traditional bargaining table and raucous picket line?

According to a University of Illinois expert, the role of labor unions may evolve from workplace bargainers to special-service legal providers.
Although union representation has declined sharply for many years, the level of job-related grievances by workers has not changed. Nor have most employers shown any widespread interest in sharing power with their workforce.

These trends, coupled with the general rise in litigation, raise the prospect of revitalized unions, or something closely akin to unions, serving specific employee needs without being exclusive bargaining agents, Matthew W. Finkin, a UI law professor, said.

That would be a dramatic change from the present. Coming out of the guild tradition in Europe, the union movement grew in strength during the first half of the 20th century as a result of the "proletarianization" of the work force in American factories. Unions provided a diverse group of immigrants a means to address not only wages and hours, but were self-governing social institutions, providing dance halls, language classes, widows' funds and other services to members.

The need for those services has dwindled as the workforce has become more mobile and individual workers have become more attuned to their own concerns. At the same time, employers stepped up their opposition to unions through legal proceedings and political lobbying.

No longer can unions such as the United Mine Workers flex their muscle against companies in nationwide strikes or threatened walkouts. But today lawyers representing retired workers exposed to asbestos can bring massive class-action suits against large corporations, winning hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

Polls and other data suggest to Finkin that workers do not "necessarily want a single alternative organization to represent them, but may well want discrete bodies capable of dealing with particular issues of moment to them, while being assured that these bodies are independent of their employer."

Finkin said lawyers almost invariably would be part of groups that would sell services to employees or find clients to join in class-action suits against employers.

"The decline of unions has incited the rise of lawsuits," Finkin said. "It may be easier to get $100,000 for one worker [in a court judgment] than to get a nickel an hour raise for 100 workers" through collective bargaining.

"If unionization will not fill this gap, litigation will, albeit awkwardly and at a cost."

Finkin's comments were made in an article published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law.