"The union strategy and structure of the building trades, which emerged out of the 19th Century economy, may in fact offer an appropriate model for the new employee relations in the 21st Century." That's a proposition offered by Jeff Grabelsky, special assistant to the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department, and Director of Cornell University's Construction Industry Program.

He's talking about the remarkable surge in the use of temporary employees, and the challenges this poses to a unionism that is generally based on a work force employed by a single employer who stays in a constant location.

According to Grabelsky, the number of workers dispatched on a daily basis by temp agencies in the U.S. has tripled over the past ten years. Contrary to popular impression, they are not office workers: clerical workers have fallen from 48% to 36% of all temps, while in that ten years the percentage of temps in industry and construction has risen from 25% to 38%. Over the next ten years the proportion of all construction workers employed by temp agencies will rise to almost half the total in the field. Manpower, Inc., a temp agency, is now the largest employer in the world.

Grabelsky acknowledges that "these temp agencies in this New Economy satisfy a range of needs for employers and for workers." For employers, they handle everything from "recruitment, screening, hiring and dispatch." To many contingent workers, they say, "We can provide you with a kind of stability and security that you can't get otherwise. We can provide you with portable wages and benefits that you can carry from employer to employer."

But Grabelsky contends that, with some important but manageable modifications, the traditional building trades hiring hall could fulfill the functions of a temp agency--and then some. One distinctive contribution that a union-managed arrangement could make is in training and skills development. Employers who use temp agencies are not inclined to invest in training for skills not needed for a particular job, nor are temp agencies, which are loathe to cut into profit margins. But workers themselves have a need for skills development, as does the society in general. Workers also have a need for an institution that can assist in responsibly managing portable pensions and benefits. By meeting these needs, Grabelsky argues,unions fashioned along the lines of the traditional construction crafts could benefit temp workers and the New Economy. (For a full text of Grabelsky's remarks, go to: (http://www.newecon.org/GrabelskyRemarks.html)

"Back to Class" Struggle: UK Unions Launch Learning Reps Program

(NEIS continues its interest in efforts by unions in the UK to work their way out of an era of disastrous setbacks by stressing labor's contribution to economic modernization.)

This fall the Blair Government will introduce legislation to create a legal right for union learning representatives to take company-paid time off for training to assist rank-and-file members in improving their aptitudes and skills. Bert Clough, Senior Educational Advisor for the Trades Unions Congress, estimates that as many as 22,000 of these learning reps will be trained by the end of the decade, and that in turn they will draw a half million union members into new learning programs. (See TUC's Learning Reps Brochure at: (http://www.newecon.org/LearningRepspCover.pdf)

This strategy of grass-roots engagement with educational challenges is Labour's response to weaknesses that have hampered the British economy for decades. It represents a peoples' program for strengthen- ing the supply-side of the economy, put forward to compete with the tax-cut approach offered by the Tories in the recent election.

A cabinet-level review of British competitiveness acknowledges that "The UK has a long-standing productivity problem. Statistics show, for example that output per head is 40 % higher in US, 20% higher in France and 10% higher in Germany than in the UK."(http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2001/workforce/analysis1.shtml) Levels of illiteracy and innumeracy may be even higher in the UK than in the US, and are distinctly higher than in much of Europe. Clough estimates that this costs the British economy some $15 billion a year in potential productivity.

Trained learning representatives will assist British workers in putting to work their newly-established individual learning accounts (ILAs.) These accounts provide a government grant of about $225 to each worker for use in accredited courses, on the condition that the worker puts up something over $30 of her own.

Clough and his Labour cohorts contend that unions have a unique role in helping mobilize the British workforce for an educational leap forward. "Workers tend to hide their inadequacies from company human relations directors because they are afraid they may get disciplined or sacked," he notes. "A union rep can get at the root of an individual's defi- ciencies or lack of motivation, and help that person move into an appropriate program."

The Confederation of British Industry opposes legislation granting paid time off on the grounds that the company itself should decide if it needs active learning reps. The unions respond that many companies that do need such programs have proved too shortsighted to provide it. And if paying learning reps becomes a universal practice, no business can gain competitive advantage by avoiding it.

Clough also points out that company-sponsored education and training is usually directed toward employees who already are in relatively high-skilled jobs. But there is a social obligation to hold out a ladder to climb to those with the lowest levels of skills. There may not be much you can do to train a floor-sweeper to do that particular job more efficiently. But you can help prepare him for something else.

Clough coyly observes that the British association that represents human relations directors, The Chartered Institute of Personnel Directors, has been notably more open to the plan for paid time for union learning reps than their bosses at the CBI. Cooperation with union reps in a serious learning program opens a more important role for human relations officials. A statement on the Personnel Directors' web site reminds the company chieftains that "…moving up-market is not simply a cosmetic exercise. It results in more people having customer-facing jobs, making decisions on their own responsibility and being involved in project teams, i.e., working towards high performance work practices, learning as the job changes. http://www.ipd.co.uk/Infosource/ProfessionalKnowledge/page1343.asp

Unions Take Key Role in Artic Drilling Vote

American labor has formed a close alliance with environmentalists over the importance of conditioning trade agreements on respect for workers rights and environmental protections. But on some other important issues labor and the environmentalists are much at odds. For example, the AFL-CIO urged members of Congress to vote in favor of the Bush Administration's proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Labor also has a long-standing opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. And some labor leaders have come out in opposition to higher standards for fuel usage in cars and trucks.

Labor's central role in the 226-203 House vote on Arctic drilling was sketched in a report in the Fairbanks, Alaska,Daily News Miner, on the day after the vote. The paper reported that Representative Don Young, one of the bill's managers, "…thanked a White House lobbyist outside the House chambers Wednesday night, saying, 'you guys did your homework,' but he told reporters that President Bush's support wasn't the key to his victory. 'I don't know whether he was that engaged,' Young said. 'I give total credit for this to the unions.'"

"Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. and the anti-drilling amendment's sponsor, expressed the same view a few moments later. Building trade union representatives stopped his progress, he said. By mid-day Wednesday, when he couldn't find more than 210 supporters for his amendment, he suspected he would lose the vote."

One reason many construction unions pressed the pro-drilling position is that the bill's sponsors included a provision that guarantees that many of the jobs generated will be union jobs.

The vote against higher fuel mileage standards was supported by the Auto Workers, traditionally one of labor's most liberal unions.

Unions and Professional Associations: Is There Convergence?

Cornell University scholar Richard Hurd says "yes," but it is a highly qualified yes.

Changes in the nature of work in the New Economy are forcing professional associations to explore "…ways to increase attention to workplace concerns through job search assistance, portable benefits, and setting standards for employers in terms of how they treat professionals." Hurd notes that some professional associations are moving toward unionization, or forming alliances with unions.

On the other hand, Hurd insists, most unions "have focused primarily on collective bargaining objectives and institutional preservation, and concern for professional excellence has been secondary." To draw professionals closer, he says, unions will have to create a culture that stresses professional development.

Professional associations, like the traditional craft guilds, base themselves on the skills and recognized qualifications of their members. They seek licensing requirements for those who have either educational certification or demonstrable competency in specialized fields. They are quite skilled in the kind of political action required to gain and maintain licensing and certification requirements. But this form of political action and lobbying can be quite different from that generally practiced by most unions.

Hurd, who has written widely on labor issues and consulted often for the AFL-CIO, only recently turned his attention to America's myriad professional associations. He reported on his in-depth series of interviews with association leaders at a recent international seminar sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute (http://www.ashankerinst.org/) and the New Economy Information Service.

Hurd found that these associations "maintain cordial relations and often close collaboration with key employers"--not always the case with unions. Their sophisticated political activities are focused on state governments, which generally regulate licensing standards and procedures. (This, perhaps, is why such efforts are not more widely recognized.)They want to provide their members with the most up to-date and sophisticated information and training available. But sometimes-- surprise!--they find that their members are unhappy about paying for what this costs, or are uncomfortable about being tested on how well they grasp it.

Even so, these associations are driven by the desire of their members to improve specialized knowledge and to refine the requirements that govern admission to their fields. If unions pay closer attention to these matters, and workplace pressures on professionals continue to increase, the prospects for a labor/association convergence increases.

(Hurd's remarks can be found at: (http://www.newecon.org/HurdRemarks.html) The text of his article can be found at: (http://www.newecon.org/HurdThirstforKnowledge.html) A list of associations Professor Hurd discusses in his study can be found at: (http://www.newecon.org/HurdAssociations.html)

Hartford's AFT/School Board Partnership Gets Noticed

After a decade of strife, school management and the Hartford Teachers Union decided to work together, and are rescuing Hartford's crumbling public schools. This dog-bites-man story about educational success was told on the front page of the July 31 New York Times.

Hartford's schools have many poor and minority students, in a state known for its green and affluent suburbs. But today the test scores of Hartford students are rising. School superintendent Anthony Amato gives much credit to the union: "They were tired of being last, tired of being laughed at. They were saying,'We want to be a class act, we want to be an urban system that can be watched.'"

It was not without a cost: teachers salaries, once the highest in the state, now rank as 28th. An outside company brought in by the school board to run the schools had to be bought out at a cost of $3.3 million. But the union has shown that when the teachers are brought fully into the effort, and when union leadership is constructive, a seemingly hopeless situation can be turned around.

HR Directors: Profit Maximizers or Allies for Progressive Unions?

In a useful article in "Perspectives on Work", the journal of the Industrial Relations Research Association, Bruce E. Kaufman traces the history of the human resources function in American industry. Not surprisingly, he finds that HR departments came into being because management thought they would add to profits. In certain periods, this led to the introduction of some humane, employee- friendly labor policies. But many companies still view labor as a non-strategic cost (unlike marketing, product development and finance), and HR offices are left simply to manage administrative matters.

"[T]he more that labor issues have the potential for impacting the bottom line, the more that top management will start to look at HR from a strategic perspective," Kaufman observes. As NEIS has often noted, as America moves deeper into the New Economy, the importance of recruiting and retaining staff--critical human capital-- increases. And the role of the HR office gains importance.

In another survey, this one of service centers of national telecommunications companies and Internet service providers, Professor Rosemary Batt of Cornell's School of School of Industrial and Labor Relations finds that "high involvement" HR practices significantly boost performance for telecommunications companies nationwide. She concludes that such practices can be expected to do the same for other service businesses. Employee training and ongoing investment in employee development are a large component of such "high involvement" practices. (http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cahrs/hrSpectrum.html May/June 2001 Issue).

Research of this kind suggests that unions that help companies recruit, train and retain highly qualified personnel may find allies--or at least greater toleration--in the HR office.

About NEIS's E-Bulletin

This E-Bulletin is published by the New Economy Information Service (NEIS), a project of the Foundation for Democratic Education. NEIS provides information and reviews debate on the impact globalization and technological change has on democracy at home and abroad. Current interest focuses on how American workers can be equipped with the skills they need for decent employment and economic security, and on how the globalization of the economy and the expansion of democracy can strengthen one another.

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