10/12/05

  Labor unions now represent a smaller portion of the private sector work force than at any time since World War II.  And this summer, the AFL-CIO broke apart.  What future do labor unions have in Michigan in the high-tech 21st century?  How have unions helped or hurt you?  How relevant are they to you?

Jack talks with Mark Gaffney, head of the Michigan ALF-CIO and the University of Michigan's Donald Grimes who studies labor and industrial relations.

Listen to the mp3  or  Real Audio

Comments

[Mark]

I think more than any other time in the last fifty years, groups of people can start organizing themselves and continue organizing. Organize all the time.

Service unions don't work. Organizing unions are the relevant organizations.

Each union, group of people that are organized together, needs to evaluate how it's "muscles" are, meaning if the group needs to act, can they. I am not sure many unions ask themselves that question.

[Mark]

see: Popular Education for Union Democracy...

http://www.rollingearth.org/wp/

[Elizabeth]

One thing I think the UAW has done to hurt themselves is forget that the auto industry is not the only one in which they have shops.
Not everyone who has to work with UAW is in the auto industry, and many of these are small businesses. I have seen the UAW expect from small employers (roughly 50-60 employees)the same sorts of employment packages and assurances that they want/get from large, multi-national companies with greater resources. No wonder that small businesses are looking to set up non-union factories whenever they can. I have worked in union places and non-union places. I have worked in industries that desperately needed the organized force that could bring fair wages and work conditions. However, I have also seen the UAW waste their members' time and money.

[elizabeth]

What would help?

Building strength and numbers is fine. Knowing they have the muscle to flex is good. But they need to stop flexing their muscles just for the sake of looking like they are doing something. Pick your battles wisely. And if you don't really need to fight the fight, then don't.

[Brenda Shinabarger-Howe]

The unions need to expand their organizing to non-traditional jobs and the UAW needs to be careful of nepotism within it's organization. I attended a AFL-CIO womens conference in Washington DC that provided me with a sense of solidarity with other females that the male dominated UAW did not.

[Bobbie]

As a Michigander in exile, I worked in Texas for 35 years without any opportunity to join a union. I returned to Michigan three years ago, looking forward to getting a union job. I was hired by a public institution in Flint which was non-union. Subsequently, we had a vote to unionize (which passed). The management hired lawyers to negotiate (employees were advised by a union employee who was knowledgeable but definitely not a lawyer); laid off workers (myself included); changed the job descriptions of workers to make them ineligible as members of the union(salaried); and fired workers. The union could not protect any of us.

I was on the negotiating team after many workers on the original team had job description changes, and we spent many days and hours (sometimes three times a week for four or five hours)and got bogged down in minutiae. I don't think that we had good counsel from the union employee who was advising us. We lost the confidence of the employees who saw the power of the employer and saw the union as weak. I saw attendance at the meeting go from 20 to 2 in a few months.

If we had been able to hammer out a decent agreement more quickly, we could have protected some of the workers and looked like we knew what we were doing. I don't think that the local union gave us very good counsel.

[Dan Smith]

I'm on the fence when it comes to unions. One thing I will say is that the Michigan AFL-CIO should be very fortunate to have a spokesman like Mark Gaffney. He is smart, articulate, and generally likeable. Great job on the show today.