PERSPECTIVE ON LABOR : Move Beyond the 1929 Mind-Set : Seek new ways to reach part-time, temporary workers and focus on more effective methods for dispute resolution.

This Labor Day marks another year of a pattern in employment relationships that has eroded the collective-bargaining process between labor and management. In the 1980s and the early ‘90s, the most significant protection available to the American worker shifted to the non-union sector, which now constitutes 85% of the work force. This is a dramatic shift since the mid-1950s when unions represented 35% of all workers.

The reasons for this change are complex. But among the most fundamental are the composition of the work force and the rise of new industries. Twenty-four percent of U.S. employees are contingent workers, those who are employed on a part-time or temporary basis, and they are appreciably less likely to be organized in unions. Moreover, in industries like trucking, where the International Brotherhood of Teamsters was once regarded as the country’s strongest union, the transformation of some employees into independent contractors has meant the loss of labor law coverage for them.

These workers are not easy for unions and the collective-bargaining process to reach. The problem is compounded by the presence of illegal immigrant workers. They are afraid to protest sub-standard employment conditions and afraid to support an independent relationship between labor and management because of the threat of deportation.

And it is not just the new workers that pose obstacles to collective bargaining. Employer resistance to unionization in the service industry is fueled by the prospect of increased labor costs that cannot be absorbed by improved productivity and thus may be passed on to the public.

Moreover, new high-tech industries--California’s Silicon Valley was the first dramatic illustration--constitute unfamiliar terrain for organized labor. For the unions, the problem is as formidable as that encountered during the Great Depression, when the industrial unions formed to recruit in the mass-production industries of auto, steel, rubber and aluminum.

And in the 1980s and ‘90s, the emergence of new, union-free firms has occurred simultaneously with the demise of traditional union strongholds in manufacturing and transportation due to foreign competition and deregulation. Many employers, through means both legitimate as well as unlawful, have become more skillful in warding off union-organizing campaigns.

Law--indeed, the law for which I have had responsibility for administering the past six months--has been a factor because of its weakness and loopholes. In the 1980s, the National Labor Relations Board was hijacked by those who were openly hostile to the National Labor Relations Act’s 60-year-old public policy in support of collective bargaining. The Reagan-Bush era was characterized by pro-employer one-sidedness and the failure to provide the evenhanded neutrality that is critical to the rule of law in a democratic society.

But the irony is that just as employers found themselves free of unions, workplace problems have been exaggerated by an avalanche of litigation under various statutes and judge-made law. The challenge is to make the employment relationship more fair and equitable and one in which employees have a genuine opportunity to opt for collective bargaining. Simultaneously, we must rid employers of archaic and inflexible work rules as well as multiple rounds of employment-related litigation.

The National Labor Relations Board can help by expediting its procedures and seeking prompt and tough relief in the courts against serious unfair labor practices by both employers and unions. Congress, through sensibly balanced legislation, and the board, operating within existing law, should foster cooperative relationships in both the union and non-union arena. The goal of global competitiveness dictates enhancement of communication, participation and both information- and decision-sharing.

Rather than focus a disproportionate amount of attention on the right to strike--the absence of which remains an anomaly and scandal for a democratic society because strikers can be permanently replaced--policy-makers should be looking for more rational bases for resolving disputes through mediation and advisory arbitration and the like.

Finally, Congress can redeem the promise of the National Labor Relations Act through such measures as providing both unions and employers the opportunity to communicate with workers about the benefits or lack thereof of unionization on company property. Under existing law, the board must find ways to make collective bargaining available to the working poor whose only opportunities are in part-time or temporary jobs.

In cases where the negotiation of the initial labor contract is stalemated from the beginning, the board should have the authority to order the parties to proceed to arbitration. More often than not, representation without contractual protection is completely meaningless.

What the country needs this Labor Day are new approaches that reject contemporary assumptions about the employment relationship, assumptions fostered in the entirely different era of the Great Depression. Mutual respect and interdependence can never be imposed by government, but the impartial administration of law can promote more harmonious relationships than exist at present. That will assist our nation’s need to reduce the divisiveness and acrimony that both erode a productive and effective economy and fail to promote fairness.