Report: Workers seeking out unions

BANGOR – More workers are looking at joining unions these days than in the recent past because of dissatisfaction with the way they are being treated by their employers, according to the Maine AFL-CIO.

The union is going to need the new enrollees if it wants to maintain its current level of membership, according to a recent report by the University of Maine Bureau of Labor Education, because layoffs by manufacturers are cutting into the ranks.

Ed Gorham, president of the Maine AFL-CIO, said Thursday unions statewide have taken “several hits here, several hits there” in membership numbers because of layoffs or the closing of some plants.

However, it has picked up members from the ranks of state government workers and nurses.

But wanting job security because of the recent downturn in the economy is only one of a few reasons people are giving unions a look, Gorham said.

“It boils down to the way individual employers treat their employees,” he said. “Wages aren’t keeping pace with the cost of living. Overtime is an issue because people are getting more of it and they don’t want it. Businesses are using overtime instead of hiring more workers. It’s always the basics – wages, hours and working conditions.”

Health care costs also are a concern, Gorham said.

“Those that got it don’t have it as good as they did years ago,” he said.

A “couple dozen” inquiries representing thousands of workers are being looked at by the AFL-CIO, Gorham said.

Those asking for help on organizing a union include people in manufacturing, government and telemarketing, including EnvisioNet workers, he said.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Dennis Bailey, a spokesman for EnvisioNet. “They’ve been through a lot. But I would argue whether a union for them at this point really would be a solution. It’s a tough place to be in.”

On average, 14 percent of Maine’s workers were members of a union in the last five years, according to the UM Bureau of Labor Education report.

Union membership dropped each year from 1996 to 1998, from 14.5 percent to 12.6 percent, but grew to levels approaching the 1996 mark in 1999. Then, in 2000, when the state added 11,900 jobs, the unions lost 6,000 members and the percentage of workers who were union members dropped to 14 percent.

The state lost many manufacturing jobs during that year but managed the net employment gain because of the increase in service-sector jobs such as telemarketing and Internet support positions.

Bureau director John Hanson, author of the report, said what has kept that average relatively constant during the last five years is the growing number of public employees who have joined unions.

“That’s kind of taken up the slack for all the lost manufacturing jobs, including papermaking and shipbuilding,” he said.

For Maine unions to keep the 14 percent membership level, “they will need to organize an additional 10,000 workers by 2008 or 1,250 workers per year,” Hanson said.

“In 1982, organized labor represented 20 percent of Maine’s wage and salary work force,” Hanson wrote in his report. “For Maine’s unions to re-establish a 20 percent representation rate for the state’s wage and salary work force by 2008, they will need to organize an additional 48,000 workers or 6,000 workers per year.”

Hanson, in a telephone interview, said unions need to grow to survive.

“I think it’s something they need to do,” he said. “They need to grow because staying the same means to be stagnant, to atrophy.”

What may be attracting workers from other employment sectors to unions is hearing the plight of manufacturing employees once they are told they are losing their jobs, Hanson said. Plus, with collective bargaining, union workers typically make more and have better benefits than nonunion workers, he said.

It’s discouraging to hear employers say they are laying off workers temporarily because in most cases the layoffs are permanent, Hanson said.

“They know they’re never going to be recalled,” he said. “We might as well be honest about it and say, ‘You’re fired. You’re gone.’ When the doors are shut and the barbwire goes up, that’s when the level of frustration goes up.”