Work Force Is on Its Own as the Rules Shift
The Supreme Court decision last Monday that upheld the right of junior union flight attendants at TWA to cross picket lines and take the jobs of striking flight attendants with more seniority was a blow to unions, of course.
But the decision held a broader message. To everybody at work in America, it said: You’re on your own. Job security is a discounted commodity in an environment more individual than organizational, more opportunistic than secure.
A union provides no protection when co-workers might steal your job if you go out on strike. Solidarity is a word more respected in Warsaw than in Washington.
Strikes in any case have become almost an anachronism; last year there were 40 work stoppages, down from 235 in 1979 and more than 400 a year in 1974, 1969 and 1952. Strikers in the 1980s, from air controllers to TWA flight attendants, discovered it’s a losing game.
And unions have continued a four-decade decline and now represent 17 million members--only 16.8% of all U.S. wage earners.
But company loyalty gets you no protection, either. Restructuring has devastated big companies and spawned the rise of small companies, which now employ more than half the work force--at something less in benefits and security than big firms promised in the past.
At that, you’re likely to be self-employed whether you want to be or not. Many jobs today are on contingency--work when the company has it available. And “fire at will” is a doctrine that has been upheld by the California courts in wrongful-dismissal lawsuits.
Women Left Out
What has happened is that the long-term job connection--the idea of being a permanent employee of a company--has been torn, if not severed entirely. And the collective bargaining structure envisioned in the New Deal, in which labor and management would privately work out industrial relations for America’s workers, has declined in influence. It succeeded admirably in raising wages and living standards after World War II, but it failed to cope with social change. Some groups--notably women--didn’t feel their interests were properly represented.
“The idea of a long-term job connection never included women,” says Audrey Freedman, chief economist of the Conference Board, a business research group. “They were marginal employees.” Now, with the decline of unions and big companies, they’re earning more: Women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s went from 56% in 1946 to 47% in 1969 before climbing to 65% today. That’s only partly due to slow growth in men’s earnings--women are making more.
As unions have “receded,” says Daniel Mitchell, head of the Institute of Industrial Relations at UCLA, government and law have stepped in. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) took decisions on hiring, working conditions and pension fund investing out of the hands of both unions and management.
Law, not unions, now governs industrial relations--not without unintended consequences. As laws and regulations have proliferated, companies have increasingly contracted out for services--transferring to other firms or individual workers the responsibility for health insurance, tax payments and liability insurance.
On the other hand, contract employment often suits individual schedules and needs--temporary help has become big business in the new environment--and gives the economy needed flexibility.
What will happen in the 1990s? Will an aging work force demand more job security? Maybe not. Decline of loyalty cuts both ways, and working people don’t put their trust in companies or unions anymore. So reforms in the 1990s, as today, will be geared to individuals: portable health insurance and pensions for people who change jobs.
Are we better off than we used to be? As always, something’s lost as well as gained. What has been lost is a more forgiving economy in which only one family member really had to work, and competition for jobs was less intense.
What has been gained is flexibility and individual opportunity--which can be another way of saying, “You’re on your own.”
