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Labor strikes back
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August 3, 1998: 7:55 p.m. ET
Unions return to the bargaining game, but experts say the rules have changed
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Some say it's the tight labor market. Others point to the growing discord between shrinking wages and soaring profit margins. And still others believe it's a combination of factors that include corporate downsizing and burgeoning workloads.
But whatever the reasons, it seems, one thing is clear: Organized labor is "mad as hell and [they aren't] going to take it anymore."
"For the past two years, unions have been promising they would become more active and what we are starting to see is new leadership putting that strategy in place," said employment law professor Richard Steer of Pace University School of Law in White Plains, N.Y. "Secondly, with the good economy, there is more merger activity and more possibilities of people losing their jobs. It heightens their risk in ways they hadn't seen for the past few years."
Add to that the increasingly competitive global marketplace, and Steer said worker insecurity is running rampant.
"There's a real bread and butter issue here for unions," he said.
Striking back
In recent weeks, a protracted 54-day strike shut down 27 of General Motor's (GM) 29 North American plants and cost the nation's No. 1 automaker more than $2 billion.
More recently, Northwest Airlines Inc. (NWAC) is facing the threat of a strike after contract negotiations between the airline carrier and its pilots broke down last week.
And on Friday, union workers came out swinging against United Parcel Service to protest what they believe is the company's failure to follow through on the contract it agreed to last year.
In each case, analysts say, the notes may be different, but the song is the same.
"It's a tight labor market and company profits from the worker's perspective seem to be surging," said Melvyn Dubofsky, a history professor at New York's Binghamton University and author of the book The State and Labor in Modern America. "If you look historically at when labor markets are tight and profits are rising, workers tend to be restive. They want their share."
Dialing up demands
Not to be left out, telecom workers now appear to be getting in the action.
The unions representing workers at US West Communications, BellSouth (BLS) and Bell Atlantic (BEL) Monday gave labor leaders the green light to strike if contract negotiations fail to lock in greater job-security and revised overtime policies.
At US West (USW), workers are lashing out against a 17 percent drop in the employee base and the exploding demand for new services and telephone lines -- resulting in what the union calls "extreme pressure on employees through abusive, forced overtime, inflexible scheduling and unreasonable work."
Unfortunately, Steer said, downsizing is a necessary evil, a cost-reduction strategy that is here to stay.
"There's always going to be room for downsizing, if not from mergers and acquisitions then from technology," he said. "That's always going to be an issue."
The Communications Workers of America, the umbrella union that represents some 400,000 telecom workers, already has reached contract agreements with AT&T, Lucent Technologies, SBC Communications and Ameritech.
CWA spokesman Jeff Miller said the union renegotiates labor contracts on behalf of telecom employees every three years.
He added that early contract agreements with SBC and Ameritech should help grease the wheels for talks with BellSouth and Bell Atlantic.
Bull market tramples union
Ironically, industry analysts say the surging U.S. economy has become the nemesis of organized labor and the instigating factor behind the recent surge of strike activity.
"I tend to think of it as a macro-economic factor," said A.G. Edwards analyst Tony Ferrugia. "The economy is growing well, there is really no inflation and the labor market has been tight everywhere, so you start to see some things show up, like the GM labor dispute. Unions get more aggressive."
At the same time, experts say, the landscape for labor negotiations has changed dramatically since the 1980s, prompting unions to set their sights on less lofty goals.
Once, unions fought for higher wages and better health benefits, said Jeff Guiler, professor of management at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh. Today, he said, employees are struggling to hold the line on what they've got.
"Across the nation, there is a theme of holding onto what we've got right now, while management is trying to cut, cut, cut because of the pressures of international competition," he said. "There are a lot of traditional workplace practices that are going out the window these days. " 
--by staff writer Shelly K. Schwartz
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