The Unionization of Clerical, Technical, and Professional Employees in Higher Education: Threat or Opportunity

[Excerpt] Union organizing among non-teaching white collar employees of colleges and universities persists. To the discomfort of many university administrators, high visibility union successes at Yale, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Illinois were not isolated instances but part of a trend. Professional, technical, and clerical employees\u27 desire for a more effective voice, has combined with the economic insecurity associated with stubborn budgetary pressures, to encourage these workers to pursue union representation. Unions have responded to this opportunity with enthusiasm, experimenting with innovative organizing and bargaining strategies in the relatively open environment offered by institutions of higher education. This chapter presents a sympathetic summary of this phenomenon. It touches on employee motivation to unionize, models of university white collar organizing, responses to unionization by university administrators, and the range of possible bargaining relationships. The concluding section suggests a management position towards organizing and bargaining consistent with the highest standards of the academy. To set the stage, the essay begins with a descriptive review of the extent of unionization

Professional Employees and Union Democracy: From Control to Chaos

[Excerpt] Much of the research on union democracy and almost all of the press coverage focuses on abuses of power at the top of the organization. I look at a case at the opposite end of the democracy spectrum. After an insurgent challenge to an established executive director toppled him from power, the chaos of democracy was unleashed in this small union of professional workers. The turmoil experienced by this organization for most of the past decade demonstrates that the democracy dilemma in unions cannot be successfully resolved by effective use of the democratic process alone and raises tentative questions about the bottom-up, rank-and-file insurgency approach to union transformation. Section II reviews relevant research on union democracy and the democracy dilemma. Section III looks at attributes of professional workers and the implications for unions that represent them. Section IV summarizes the experiences of the League of Creative Artists, a fictitious name for a real union going through a democracy crisis. The final section offers a brief analysis and suggests possible implications

The Unionization of Clerical Workers in Colleges and Universities: A Status Report

[Excerpt] The 1980s have presented a myriad of problems for the labor movement as membership and bargaining power have declined in manufacturing, construction and transportation. Attempting to come to grips with the new reality of an economy dominated by the service sector, unions have expanded their organizing efforts among white collar workers. In the process, they have discovered a particularly receptive clientele among the clerical employees of colleges and universities. This paper identifies factors which influence the outcome of clerical organizing drives on campus, estimates the extent of organization among these workers, and summarizes recent developments including strike activity. It is based, in large part, on interviews with over fifty union officials, and on a survey of nearly 300 university and college personnel administrators

Organizing Clerical Workers

[Excerpt] There are two organizing models that are effective among clerical workers. One model is the media-oriented, high-tech type of organizing. AFSCME does this very well; some other unions have also used it effectively. It starts with polling and opinion research on the work force that might be organized. This is followed up by targeted direct mail, telephone banks, radio and TV ads, campaign-specific newspapers and so on. This type of campaign is most appropriate for large public-sector units, especially when the clericals work in multiple locations. It is an important and successful means of organizing, but it has limited private-sector potential. The other successful model for organizing clerical workers is the grass-roots mass participation model, where the union staff representative builds the committee, and then the committee does the actual organizing. This approach was successful at Harvard University and at other high-visibility universities such as Columbia and Yale. It is also the approach that has been used in many less well publicized campaigns in the public and private sectors. This type of organizing is a very slow process because it is done one-on-one, worker-to-worker; but it builds strong commitment and involvement in the union

Contesting the Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement\u27s Search for a Future

[Excerpt] As labor contests the dinosaur image it will find no easy answers. Hard work, careful assessment of options, and a willingness to take risks are all required. Without widespread experimentation and a significant reallocation of resources to organizing, extinction awaits

Fear, Conflict, and Union Organizing

[Excerpt] Workers\u27 fears—of job loss, of strikes, of management retaliation—are well-documented obstacles to successful union organizing. Exploiting these fears is at the heart of employers\u27 union-avoidance strategies. Unorganized workers are well aware that management opposition creates real and potential risks in organizing. Not so well documented is the effect of conflict generated during the organizing process. Conflict is distinct from fear because the adversarial relationship itself has an impact on undecided workers. Management and their consultants can take actions that polarize the workplace and then transfer blame to outside union organizers and inside troublemakers. We believe that conflict is at least as important as fear in arousing anti-union sentiments, especially in organizing campaigns among professional, technical, and office workers. Our research indicates that understanding and addressing the issue of conflict is essential for success among these workers. Without more attention to its influence, by default, private-sector organizing may well appeal to only those workers with little to lose. The role of fear and conflict in employers\u27 union-avoidance campaigns will first be explored with the aid of several cases;\u27 we will distinguish between fear and conflict while demonstrating their entanglement. Next, we will explore in detail the campaign by the Communications Workers of America to organize computer technicians employed by AT&T\u27s NCR subsidiary. We will present survey data based on interviews with 320 of these technicians, which enable us to evaluate their attitudes toward unionization. The data along with field experience indicate that aversion to conflict provides a significant explanation for hesitancy to organize among workers who are otherwise favorably disposed toward unions. Finally, we will discuss strategies to overcome fear and conflict and argue that the extent to which workers build their own organizations is directly related to the workers\u27 likely success

In Defense of Public Service: Union Strategy in Transition

[Excerpt] Public sector unions have displayed healthy durability for the past twenty years, apparently immune to the economic and political forces that have buffeted the broader labor movement. While unions in the private economy have lost power and seen density decline by more than half, unions of government workers have retained influence and market share. Early in the twenty first century there are signs that this era of relative comfort may be coming to an end. In the 1980s private sector unions were sent reeling by the combined forces of globalization, deregulation and increased management hostility. Today their public sector associates face the parallel threats of massive budget deficits, privatization and the expanded power of the Republican right. When unions addressed their conundrum in the private economy two decades ago, inertia and strategic rigidity forestalled an effective response (Hurd 1998). Today public sector unions are determined to avoid similar mistakes and intend to confront systematically the challenges that they face

Barriers to Union Organizing

[Excerpt] The current environment presents dramatic challenges for the American labor movement. Structural change in the economy has meant job loss in traditionally unionized sectors such as heavy manufacturing, and job gains in the less unionized service industries. Deregulation and increased international trade have created competitive pressures on unionized industries, resulting in significant concessions and a reduction in bargaining power. Simultaneously, unions have contended for twelve years with unfriendly government regulators who have displayed little commitment to timely and vigorous enforcement of protective labor legislation. In particular, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of the Reagan and Bush administrations has reinterpreted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), weakening protections for union activity and relaxing restrictions on management practices. The combinations of competitive pressures and a more congenial legal setting has fostered more vigorous management opposition to unions at the bargaining table, during organizing campaigns, and in the courts

Dueling Federations: U.S. Labor in 2006

[Excerpt] Labor unity in the U.S. lasted exactly half a century. At the convention to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1955 merger of the American Federation of Labor with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, bitterness and rebellion swept away plans of celebration. On the eve of the August 2005 event in Chicago, seven major unions announced that they would break away from the AFL-CIO. Six weeks later they formally established the Change to Win federation, spawning both proclamations of labor’s rebirth and simultaneous warnings of the movement’s destruction

Organizing and Representing Clerical Workers: The Harvard Model

[Excerpt] The private sector clerical work force is largely nonunion, simultaneously offering the labor movement a major source of potential membership growth and an extremely difficult challenge. Based on December 1990 data, there are eighteen million workers employed in office clerical, administrative support, and related occupations. Eighty percent of these employees are women, accounting for 30 percent of all women in the labor force. Among private sector office workers, 57 percent work in the low-union-density industry groups of services (only 5.7 percent union) and finance, insurance, and real estate (only 2.5 percent union). With barely over ten million total private sector union members, the labor movement can ill afford to overlook the thirteen million nonunion women who work in private sector clerical occupations. Concerned trade unionists are now searching for appropriate models for organizing and representing these workers. Two schools of thought have emerged. Some believe that clericals are like other workers and can be organized when job-related concerns predispose them to action. According to this view, private sector clerical organizing can proceed if and when unions devote sufficient attention and resources to the endeavor using conventional organizing techniques. Other unionists argue that clericals are different. Not only are they primarily women, but they also tend to be traditionally feminine and turned off by macho blue-collar unionism. According to this interpretation, a special approach is required regarding style, tactics, and/or issues to be addressed. I will focus on one highly visible private sector clerical organizing victory: the 1988 union win among Harvard University clerical and technical employees. The Harvard case is, in many ways, representative of the success unions have experienced among university-based clerical workers in recent years using rank-and-file grassroots oriented campaigns. And, as a private sector campaign that confronted intense management opposition, it also offers tactical lessons that are relevant beyond the confines of academia. Perhaps most important, the Harvard case presents us with a distinct organizing and bargaining model whose relevance to other organizing efforts deserves careful evaluation: the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) not only employed a grassroots organizingapproach, but also devised a unique bargaining strategy that succeeded in institutionalizing and preserving rank-and-file involvement