Divide and Conquer: Unions Facing Tough Times

This article originally appeared in Labor Notes

William Ehman got acquainted with the current direction of collective bargaining in his industry from the back of a squad car. The former president of Steelworkers Local 1537, Ehman led a group of nine retirees to a mid-September union meeting to discuss current negotiations with Latrobe Steel.

After the last contract six years ago, the local had stopped providing transcripts of negotiations with the Pennsylvania specialty steelmaker. But Ehman knew the company's current offer included a two-tier wage structure and a shift from defined benefit pensions to a 401(k) plan. Meanwhile his checkbook issue, a retiree health care allowance whose value had tumbled over the past few years, wasn't going anywhere in current talks.

The local had said retirees were excluded from the meeting, despite a provision in the bylaws that guaranteed them access. Union representatives told the retirees to leave, but Ehman stood his ground. Soon six police cars arrived, and Ehman was hauled away from his union hall in handcuffs, facing a criminal trespass complaint.

"It went beyond the pale," he said. "When you start dividing your membership against itself, it's just a recipe for disaster."

A Pattern

The situation of Local 1537's retirees is all too common. Indeed, if anything the story of widescale givebacks under the gun of employers, courts, and (yes, even) union officials has been told and retold throughout hundreds of workplaces in the private sector in recent years.

Two-tier agreements, double-digit wage cuts, health care cost shifts, work rule changes, and defined benefit pension and retiree health care roll-backs have occurred in one major contract settlement after another with dizzying speed in the past six years. In one industry alone, airlines, wage and pension concessions given back to employers since 2001 by union pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, gate agents, and other ground crew workers totaled over $15 billion.

Beyond the obvious freefall in bargaining outcomes lie nagging questions for labor activists. What trends drive these givebacks? What continues to shift the power balance away from workers at the bargaining table?

Behind the simple answer of declining union density, lies another more fundamental loss, the drop off of strikes, shopfloor organization, and other member-centered levers that were the heart of earlier union victories.

Though these setbacks have all been bitterly felt, they come at the end of a long trailing off of the once-strong pattern bargaining agreements that spurred economic gains for U.S. workers. Forged in the fights of the 1930s and 1940s, the pattern agreements--codified in master contracts--grew stronger in most industries decade after decade until the 1980s, when the first concession wave struck.

Who’s the Master?

Unfortunately master contracts continue to unravel in many industries. In their controversial 2007 contract with UPS, the Teamsters agreed to pull 44,000 UPS members out of their multi-employer Central States Pension Fund in exchange for organizing rights at the company's non-union freight division. In addition to weakening a key institution of pattern bargaining--the multi-employer pension fund--new UPS Freight Teamsters with work under a contract substantially below National Master Freight Agreement standards.

Similar declines in master contracts have been seen in auto, grocery, and carhauling. The once-strong master contracts held by the United Food and Commercial Workers in Southern California provide a striking example. Health care givebacks were so steep in the wake of the 2003-2004 strike/lock-out that the number of workers with health care coverage fell from a pre-strike level of 94 percent to its current level of 54 percent.