If You Can't Organize Your Industry...

    ...why muck around somewhere else? That's what I thought when reading Matt Richtel's piece today in The New York Times about the struggles of the Communications Workers Union to organize in the telecommunications industry. It's possible that Richtel has his facts wrong--I never doubt that possibility when reading the Times (for example, it cannot be that the CWA has "2.5 million workers worldwide"...) --but, even so, the trend is unmistakable: an industry where we had a strong grip is now growing into a non-union operation.

    The upshot of the story is this: in the olden days, when we had something called the Bell system, it was heavily unionized. But, with the disintegration of the Bell system, the rise of cable and wireless, and the endless spate of buyouts and mergers, the industry's non-union sector is on the rise.

    Check these numbers out: from having 375,000 workers at the surviving Bell companies and 250,000 at AT&T in 1985, there are now just 229,000 Bell union workers and 30,000 at the decimated AT&T. By contrast, the wireless industry has grown to about 171,000 workers but only 22,000 are unionized (subscribe to that unionized Cingular system today!!!). In cable, it's worse: 133,000 workers with only 7,000 unionized. And let's not even talk about the closely-related computer industry, which is essentially 100 percent non-union.

    To be clear: this is a fairly common story. The reason CWA has had a tough time organizing workers, despite its laudable focus on organizing, is that this industry is fiercely anti-union and uses the usual diet of threat, intimidation and firings against workers.

    So, I thought back to a few weeks ago when I mentioned that CWA and UNITE-HERE were engaged in a fight over who should organize tribal casinos in California. John Wilhelm of UNITE-HERE has a letter in hand from Morty Bahr promising that CWA would not touch the casinos in California.

    Promises or not, the situation described in the Times article--a situaton that was no secret--just raises the question: when should a union focus on its core industry and when should it branch out? To its credit, CWA is one of the unions grappling with organizing every day. But, it worries me that, with such a big challenge out there, unions are spreading themselves into so many areas that they can't attack their own core jurisdictions.

    My lord, what will the labor movement do if industries with expanding roles in the economy (notice, I don't say that these jobs are the future of the economy because there will still be a lot of industrial jobs to organize) are largely non-union? One of these large telcom companies would be my choice for a labor movement-wide effort to target a few strategic companies over the next five years (which I suggested here).

Comments

[belleunion]

Is it really possible that CWA only has one full-time staffer working to organize Comcast?

[Jan Cornell]

CWA is organizing all over the country-Comcast, Cavalier, Verizon Wireless. These are national campaigns. But CWA has hundreds of thousands of members outside the telephone industry. Us for example here at UVA. CWA-Larry Cohen especially-actually UNDERSTANDS that organizing is the key to grow union membership-not politics.
The Times article was way off in my opionion. CWA doesn't have 2.5 million members even if you include international numbers.
There are enough UNORGANIZED workers here in the US that every union should try to organize anyone they can. Union membership is union membership no matter what union you belong to. Unions shouldn't be tripping over each other to get one industry or one company.
What really needs to happen is a worldwide call needs to go out to hire organizers.

[Mike]

Jan, I'm sorry, but it's just not true that "union membership is union membership." There are better and worse unions out there. There are lots of small, independent unions all over the U.S. who are either in bed with the boss, dominated by the mob, or whatever. Not that CWA is any of those things (to my knowledge). But all this aside, unions that keep a focus in a few industries can do a better job of building industry-wide power. Not that they necessarily WILL (CWA isn't doing that great in their core industry, and UNITE-HERE is only doing moderately well in hospitality and laundries), but it helps. I don't know details of the CWA contracts in the casinos, but if they undercut the HERE contracts in those industries, then the workers there get screwed, and worse, the workers in the other casinos that are building soidarity across the industry suffer too.

[benton]

CWA might, like other unions, have staff who are contingent laborers doing the actual organizing. They work on a temp basis for the organizing drive itself, not the union. While this sounds horrible - it isn't necessarily so bad. In some instances I know of, the contingent workers are unionized, have benefits etc. And experienced organizers can do well. However, in some instances it is so bad. If CWA is using this set up there might be dozens of organizers reporting to the full time staffer. I couldn't tell you if this was the CWA model. But it might explain things.

[Rob]

I am not a CWA member or staffer. It would be nice if one of them would chime in. To the extent I understand the "CWA model," though, I was under the impression that CWA relied much more heavily on rank and file volunteers like the SBC service technician and shop steward, Yonah Camacho Diamond, who was mentioned in the New York Times article. As far as I can tell, these members may be given paid time off work to come help organize, but they aren't reall "contingent organizers" because they do have another full-time job in a CWA-represented bargaining unit.

[Tasini]

I think Rob is right--CWA uses a lot of member-organizers. But, the fact is organizing does require significant resources. I'm of the belief that you need both--mobilization of members AND full-time staff resources.

[Jan Cornell]

In most cases CWA organizers come straight out of the workplace. They work 5 days a week, their local pays them. I retired from UVA to organize and I am the elected president also. This is a good model because it is always easier to organize at a place where you used to work. CWA does not believe in hiring organizers, dropping them in to a campaign for 3 months and then leaving. HOWEVER there aren't enough of these workplace type organizers and this model only works when there is a collective bargaining contract in place so the person can still have the 5 days off to work at organizing but not lose their insurance, pensions etc. We have no contract, ths is a right to work for less state and public workers cannot strike or collective bargain. All of our bargaining is done with the Governor and the legislature. If I hadn't quit UVA I could have never done this job without working 100 hours a weeek. We now have another part time organizer on board. But we have 12,000 people here--it's going to take 10 years. So all I am saying is in order to get new members we need alot of organizers on the ground-whether from inside the company or hired by the national for the large campaigns.

And I still think there are enough companies and public sector to be organized that unions don't have to stick with one industry. The goal should be to organize workers. Everywhere. There shouldn't be in fighting amongst unions as to who gets to organize who but obviously there shouldn't be any raiding going on. Happily, CWA is a good union who tries to play fair. I'm sure there are plenty of unethical, mobbed up unions still out there.

[Rob]

Jan:

Do you know if the NYT article was correct in stating that Lisa Morowitz is the only full-time organizer working on the Comcast campaign, or was that another factual error like the statement that the CWA has "2.5 million members worldwide."

[Jan Cornell]

Rob- I know for a fact that just in our district there are at least 3 organizers working on Comcast-along with other organizing projects. Getting Comcast workers involved in trying to organize their own workplace is the challenge the full time organizers face. I don't think the article in the NYT was researched very well. The Comcast campaign is national so I'm about 100% positive that Lisa is not the only one working on it. But of course, this isn't in my district so I don't know for sure. I know CWA is putting resources in to this campaign-they are fiercly anti union.