Unions Prove They Won’t Be Bullied
Never in their history have unions in this country enjoyed anything close to the adulation that Americans are heaping on Poland’s union, Solidarity. Unions here have always had to fight for survival, and lately they have been under increasingly harsh attack.
But there are signs that their situation is improving: First, it is getting more and more difficult for blatantly anti-union corporations to break unions, and, second, it is no longer as easy as it once was for companies to force unionized workers to accept cuts in wages and benefits.
Take the victory won two weeks ago by the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers after a bitter four-month strike against Nynex, the giant telephone company in the Northeast.
Only a handful of the 60,000 strikers crossed picket lines despite management’s fervent appeals that they help break their own strike. And the contract settlement resulted in wage and benefit increases as big as or bigger than the highest-paying contracts in the telecommunications industry.
More importantly, Nynex workers forced the company to back away completely from its demand that employees pay more for their health care, and they even won some improvements.
Unions at Nynex also fought off a company demand that they accept one-time bonuses in lieu of larger increases in basic wages.
Significant, too, is that the two unions at Nynex helped themselves greatly this time by supporting each other, thereby ending a feud that had cost them dearly in previous contract negotiations.
Another example of the problem that companies face when they take on unions these days: It cost giant Boeing Co. an enormous amount of money to fight a machinists strike for seven weeks so that it could continue paying bonuses that have such a pernicious long-range financial impact on the workers.
There were few defectors in the strike by 57,000 members of the International Assn. of Machinists, who won wage and benefit increases estimated to be worth at least 6% more than Boeing’s pre-strike offer.
The company had offered bonuses of 11% and ended up giving bonuses of 19%. It will boost wages by 9% now, including a minimum cost of living adjustment (COLA) of 5% regardless of the actual hike in living costs. And over the next three years, workers will get COLA increases virtually matching inflation--but no less than 5% a year.
The union did not eliminate the bonus system. But the issue will be very much alive when the contract is renegotiated in three years because by now every worker at Boeing understands the argument made repeatedly by union leaders that, as enticing as they are, one-time bonuses are not compounded and therefore are far less valuable to workers than basic wage increases.
That means the strike cost Boeing an estimated $2 billion in lost production that will take years to recoup. And the loss may turn out to be a waste of a lot of Boeing’s money if it has to eliminate the bonuses in three years or face another furious, costly strike by an older, wiser work force.
And it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Pittston Coal Co., whose miners have been walking picket lines since April.
Contract negotiations have finally resumed, in part because of the heavy financial losses being suffered by the company that until the other day was saying flatly that it would make no changes in its pre-strike offer.
The miners, too, are suffering, of course, but they show no sign of weakening. Almost none of the strikers have crossed UMW picket lines. Thus, Pittston is another example of how hard it is these days for a company to try to break a union.
Even more devastated by a strike was Connecticut-based Colt Industries Inc. Colt said last week that it is selling its famed firearms division, which has been losing money since it was struck nearly four years ago by the United Auto Workers.
Tony Autorino, president of CF Holding Corp., which is buying Colt Firearms, said he “looks forward to negotiating a new contract with the UAW,” and praised the union for its “committed efforts to assist this buyout and to preserve jobs in Connecticut.”
Even the seemingly endless strike against Frank Lorenzo’s Eastern Airlines substantiates the argument that unions aren’t the easy corporate targets that they were a few years ago when he broke the unions at his Continental Airlines.
Until the strike, Eastern was the nation’s third-largest airline. Now it is one of the smaller ones, is in bankruptcy and has had to sell off $1 billion in assets to try to satisfy creditors. And it is hemorrhaging money at the rate of an estimated $2 million a day.
The decision by Eastern’s pilots and flight attendants to stop supporting the striking machinists may have slightly hurt the battle against Lorenzo, at least psychologically. But Lorenzo says he doesn’t need the pilots and attendants anyway because they have all been “permanently replaced.”
The pilots union hopes that it can somehow negotiate a contract with the foundering Eastern and make it a unionized company again one day.
But as of now, the pilots seem to have only made themselves look like deserters in the eyes of most pro-union people.
In sum, organized labor is not flourishing again, but it seems to be proving that it can no longer be easily battered or forced to surrender past gains without a costly fight.
Maybe employers will be more anxious now to try cooperating with workers and their unions instead of battling them in continued adversarial relationships.
