Unions Turn to Organizing White-Collar Professionals

What do auto workers in Detroit and attorneys from the county Public Defenders Office have in common? Blue-collar workers and white-collar professionals are often labor adversaries, but the assembly-line worker in Michigan and public defender working in a San Diego County courtroom may soon be represented by the same union.

For the past four months, the United Auto Workers quietly have been organizing about 160 attorneys and 60 investigators from the public defenders office into a union. The lawyers and investigators are part of a growing trend in California, where blue-collar unions are competing for the hearts and minds of the state’s public-sector lawyers and other white-collar professionals.

The UAW and Teamsters have emerged as the most aggressive recruiters of deputy district attorneys, public defenders and legal aid lawyers in the state and nationally. The two unions have gone head-to-head in the battle for attorneys in a few California counties, but the UAW has a big edge in the recruiting war, which is being led by UAW District 65, based in New York.

UAW Gaining Membership

District 65 vice president Dwight Loines said from New York that the union represents about 5,000 attorneys, paralegals and law clerks in 30 states, most of them independent employees of the federally funded legal services program. However, in New York City and Long Island, the UAW represents about 1,000 community defenders who are categorized as private employees and contract with the city and Nassau County, Loines said.

One labor expert called white-collar professionals in the public sector, including lawyers, a fertile field for traditional unions whose blue-collar membership in the private sector has been declining steadily for the past decade.

At the same time, workers in the public sector have seen a decline in government spending and are becoming increasingly concerned about working conditions, while demanding better pay and benefits. In California, many public employees are forsaking independent employee associations in favor of labor unions.

Mary Ann Massenburg, District 65’s chief organizer in Northern California, said the union represents about 900 legal aid and California Rural Legal Assistance attorneys in the state, including San Diego County. The nonprofit legal aid offices are independent and funded by the Legal Services Corp., which was established by Congress in 1973. The union negotiates with a management team representing each office.

In addition, District 65 recently organized about 210 employees at Bancroft-Whitney in San Francisco. The company is a major legal publisher in the United States.

If the UAW succeeds in organizing the public defenders in San Diego, it will mark the first time the union has organized county-employed attorneys in the state, said Terry Skotnes, District 65’s chief Southern California organizer. However, the San Diego County Employees Assn., which currently represents the public defenders, is expected to challenge the UAW’s petition to serve as the attorneys’ bargaining unit and decertify the association at a hearing next month.

Lawyers Felt Slighted

Attorney Marsha Duggan, who has led the effort to unionize public defenders, said she and her colleagues felt they were not being adequately represented by the employees group. She complained that lawyers were lumped in with architects, health-care professionals and other white-collar workers in bargaining sessions with the county.

“We were represented at the last session by an architect. Nobody in our office was aware that we had an opportunity to become part of the bargaining process. We weren’t aware of who our representative was until our contract was negotiated. . . . The idea of an architect knowing what our needs are was appalling. We have interests and needs that are different. We need a bargaining unit more closely aligned to our needs,” Duggan said.

Robert Warshawsky, a lawyer with the Public Defenders Office in Solano County, echoed Duggan’s complaint. The Solano County public defenders and deputy district attorneys were organized into a single bargaining unit by the Teamsters last October. Warshawsky complained that the Solano County Employees Assn. frequently ignored the lawyers’ interests during contract talks because they were a relatively small group.

“There were too many cooks spoiling the soup. . . . When you try to make too many people happy, you’re going to make some unhappy. We felt we were too small a group for the association to look out for our particular needs and interests,” Warshawsky said.

Presentations Were Requested

Attorney Jacqueline Crowle, who also was involved in the organizing drive in San Diego County, said the lawyers contacted several unions, including the Teamsters and UAW, and invited them to make a presentation.

“We listened to several representatives and voted for the UAW,” Crowle said. “District 65 is fairly well-known for the work it’s done in the legal aid services. We felt it had the best track record.”

Crowle said the drive to affiliate with an international union began earlier in the year in a series of meetings involving public defenders from the downtown, Chula Vista, El Cajon and Juvenile Hall offices.

“We had these meetings to see what interest there was among our colleagues, whether they wanted to stay with the CEA or look for a new bargaining unit. We had presentations from the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) and others, but the overwhelming support was for the UAW,” Crowle said.

Attorneys Called Undecided

Frank Bardsley, head of the public defenders office declined to comment on the drive by his staff to unionize. However, Richard Gates, a veteran defense attorney, said a large group of attorneys are still undecided about which union will represent them.

Gates said, “If I were working with the UAW, I would be working harder to get more support. There’s nothing that binds us right now to accept the UAW as our union, even if they are the central figure in decertifying the CEA. While there is a strong feeling in our office that we should be unionized and be represented by professional people, I can’t say whether that feeling extends to the UAW specifically.”

If the UAW’s organizing drive succeeds in San Diego County, local public defenders would form a unit that would be affiliated with UAW Local 635, the international union’s and District 65’s bargaining agent for its legal service members.

District 65 was founded as the Distributive Workers of America, which was a textile union in the 1930s, and later was affiliated with the Hospital Workers Union in New York City. Its name is a leftover from the old Congress of Industrial Organization’s practice of giving charter numbers to its member unions. District 65 was the 65th charter given by the congress. The union affiliated itself with the UAW in 1980 and has concentrated its efforts in organizing the legal services.

Petition May Be Challenged

The UAW’s Skotnes said the public defenders may be able to sever their ties to the CEA by early next year. However, CEA sources, who requested anonymity, said the association was planning to challenge the UAW petition by arguing that it was filed in an untimely manner. If the CEA position is upheld by a hearing officer, the UAW would have to wait another year before it could petition again.

“The CEA is not an appropriate bargaining unit for them to be in,” Skotnes said. “They have to sever into a smaller unit with a clearer community of interest where they could bargain appropriately.”

However, in some counties where the UAW and Teamsters have attempted to organize attorneys in the public sector, the unions’ detractors have succeeded in keeping them out by arguing that lawyers and auto workers really do not have much in common.

Such was the case in Tulare County, where both the UAW and Teamsters lost out to the local county employees association. Tulare County Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Yoshimoto said that earlier this year prosecutors and public defenders debated whether to join the UAW as a single bargaining unit.

Teamsters Court Attorneys

Meanwhile, the Teamsters have been courting both groups since 1978, he said.

“Together, we are a small organization of about 45 lawyers,” Yoshimoto said. “We’ve been concerned for years because we are such a small group represented by our association, and we kind of get lost in the shuffle during the bargaining talks.

“But then the question was asked, ‘What do we as lawyers have to do with the UAW? What do we have in common?’ ” Yoshimoto asked. “But the UAW has a number of different organizations under their umbrella. There is a point to be made about solidarity.”

Crowle, the San Diego organizer, and Warshawsky, the Solano County public defender, said they see nothing wrong with being represented by unions that are more closely identified with blue-collar workers.

“It is precisely their blue-collar concerns that made us interested in them. We feel that their concerns, combined with our professional concerns, are a legitimate representation of our clients’ needs,” Crowle said.

Ties With Truckers

Warshawsky, noting that public defenders usually represent poor defendants, said lawyers in his office never worried about “being lumped in with truck drivers” when they signed with the Teamsters.

“The attorneys in this office feel there is a blue-collar essence to this place. . . . We see ourselves as county workers,” Warshawsky said.

Solano County represents the Teamsters’ only victory in California in the union’s drive to organize public-sector attorneys. The Teamsters succeeded in organizing about 36 public defenders and 40 deputy district attorneys into a single bargaining unit, where the UAW failed.

“The Teamsters are the labor organization as far as I’m concerned,” Warshawsky said. “They’re established and have strength. . . . The thing we didn’t want to do is to go with a union that when push came to shove would tell us, ‘We did our best. We’re sorry.’ We felt that the Teamsters by virtue of their strength were in a position to push back and back us realistically.”

Unions Target Public Sector

Dan Mitchell, director of the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations, said that unions are looking for new members among professionals in the public sector because “that is a more fertile field.” He noted that the UAW lost an important election in July at the Nissan automotive plant in Tennessee, where auto workers voted to keep the union out.

“Unions have been doing poorly in the private sector, but have been more than holding their own in the public sector,” Mitchell said. “If you’re a union official, you tend to look to the public sector. The climate is more receptive there.”

He said that public-sector employees such as lawyers are becoming more and more receptive to unions because they are becoming increasingly concerned about working conditions and reductions in benefits.

“Most studies that have compared the impact of unions in the private and public sectors show that unions have had a much bigger impact in the private sector,” Mitchell said. “Working conditions are better, and pay and benefits are much larger in the private sector where unions have organized workers.

“This may explain why the public sector is no longer as resistant to unionization.”