Unions find signs of hope

More than seven months have lapsed since Roger Glover has had regular work — seven months that have tested his finances.

Glover now faces the prospect of at least 10 more months of waiting, as a bitter labor dispute between his employer, Peterbilt, and his union, the United Auto Workers, drags on amid a stagnant economy. While Glover collects unemployment insurance payments, the work he once did will be done instead in a nonunion shop in Texas.

He knows whom he blames for the standoff.

"The union is providing us support," Glover said. "It's not about us wanting a lot. We were just trying to maintain a decent living and a decent wage."

This is shaping up to be a decisive moment for the labor movement, nationwide and in Middle Tennessee. The pressures created by the recession are pushing against rising interest in unionization and a new political alignment in Washington, D.C., that could prove to be the friendliest to labor organizations in decades.

How the conflicting forces balance out could shape the future of the regional and national economies.

As in previous recessions, unions nationwide are suffering setbacks. One of the latest came last week when Peterbilt shut its truck factory in Madison through the end of 2009. The company cited market conditions, but Glover and other union members believe Peterbilt's parent, Paccar, chose to shift work from here to another plant in Denton, Texas, simply because the other shop was not unionized.

Still, many labor organizers see signs of hope. Union membership actually rose in 2008 in Tennessee and across the nation, even as the economy shed jobs and moved into a recession.

Furloughs, layoffs and buyouts have left workers worried about job security, and union representatives say workers are contacting them frequently to discuss possible organizational drives.

In addition, the election of President Barack Obama and a U.S. Congress dominated by Democrats has opened the possibility of new rules and laws long favored by labor leaders.

Already, Obama has signed several executive orders favored by labor, and he has stated his support for a bill that would make it easier for unions to organize and would toughen penalties on companies found to engage in intimidation tactics.

The bill hasn't yet been introduced, but it is almost certain to pass in the House of Representatives and stands only a few votes short of surviving a filibuster in the Senate.

Return to 'New Deal' era

"The biggest difference is not so much the policies or views of the man (Obama) but the situation in Congress," said James Sherk, a fellow in labor policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that opposes the bill. "Arguably, this is the most pro-labor Congress since the New Deal."

Many experts have compared the situation to the election of 1932, when sweeping Democratic majorities and the pro-labor platform of President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the nation's collective bargaining rules.

The current economic situation is not nearly as dire, labor experts said. Unemployment, for instance, rose to about 25 percent in 1933, when the Depression was at its worst. Today, it stands at 7.6 percent in the U.S. for January.

But even before last November's elections, there was evidence that labor may have been on the rise.

Data released last month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the number of union members in the United States increased by 428,000 workers in 2008, the biggest jump in 25 years. The portion of workers in unions also rose, by three-tenths of a percentage point to 12.4 percent of the work force.

Tennessee also experienced gains in union membership, though they were more modest. Membership expanded by 1,000 workers for a gain of two-tenths of a percent.

Critics downplay gains

Anti-labor groups have downplayed the significance of the increase, which was estimated using survey data. They say most of the gains were caused by an increase in the number of workers in the government sector, which has a much higher unionization rate than private business.

Others say it's surprising that union membership would go up amid a downturn. Hard economic times usually result in fewer union members as workers cling to jobs like economic life rafts.

"The conventional wisdom is that unionization tends to be somewhat pro-cyclical," said T. Aldrich Finegan, a professor emeritus of economics at Vanderbilt University. "At times when the economy is doing well — when jobs are easy to find and employers have profits that workers can point to — that's when you'll see activity increase.

"It's not that workers are happy being laid off and having their benefits reduced. It's just that they don't see how a union is going to make their lives better," Finegan said.

The exception was during the Great Depression, when severe economic distress and a raft of pro-union legislation led to widespread unionization. The share of the work force in unions doubled during the 1930s, rising to more than 27 percent.

In more recent years, the decline of the manufacturing sector has whittled away membership. As recently as 1983, unionization stood at 20 percent of the work force, nearly twice the penetration of today.

Unions have seen several big setbacks locally, as well.

Peterbilt's decision to extend its lockout is a recent one. The stoppage, which started days after the company's contract with the UAW expired, has been a burden on the plant's 313 hourly workers, most of whom have not been able to find new jobs in a down economy, union leaders say.

"It's difficult for everybody right now," said Glover, a 25-year veteran of the plant.

Economy scares workers

Union leaders hope that the election of a Democratic Congress and president will lead to the passage of a long-sought bill called the Employee Free Choice Act that could help unions.

The legislation, which is opposed by business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, could prove to be one of the most far-reaching labor bills since the Great Depression.

Most controversial is a provision that would shift the power to call a secret ballot election to unions from companies.

Under current law, unions start the process of organizing by collecting signed cards that express an interest in collective bargaining from a majority of a plant's workers. Companies then have the option of accepting the proposed bargaining unit immediately or calling for an election.

Companies usually choose the latter approach, which gives them a chance to mount a campaign opposing a union.

The Employee Free Choice Act would instead give unions the option of calling for an election. But in most cases, they would be able to establish collective bargaining simply by gathering signatures from a majority of workers.

Unions say the switch would put an end to intimidation tactics by employers during the campaigns leading up to secret ballots. Businesses, however, say it would open the way for unions to intimidate workers into signing cards and take away their chance to rebut the case for organization.

"The act itself is basically misnamed," said Jim Brown, the Tennessee state director for the NFIB, a lobbying group for small businesses. "It's really the 'Employee Forced Choice Act.' "

Other provisions would establish a binding arbitration procedure for labor disputes that drag on more than three months and increase the penalties on businesses that engage in intimidation.

"It's not just enforcement," said Dan Cornfield, a labor professor at Vanderbilt. "It's also that the fines on employers are relatively low. Employers just factor it into the cost of doing business."

The bill could help labor organizers so much, they believe, that the UAW is holding back on new campaigns until it knows for certain whether the legislation will pass, said Mike Herron, chairman of the UAW's Spring Hill chapter at the General Motors auto plant.

"This will have a lot of value to unions, particularly in this downturn," Herron said. "When you get in times like this, I think everybody is walking into work every day and wondering whether they have a job."

Whether that anxiety will be enough to permanently shift the rules toward organized labor will play out in the coming months.

"A lot of people now are comparing the current economic moment to the Great Depression era and likening the current president to Roosevelt," Cornfield said. "More and more, workers are saying, 'The American Dream is much more elusive right now.' "

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