NONUNION ORGANIZATIONS ~

Vol. XXI, No. 11 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. November 1998

I Issue in Brief I Where Is the Labor Movement Today?

Strikes and Protests

Globalization and the GM Strike

Telecommunications

Airline Industry

Side bar: UPS Employees Did Not Gain from Teamsters Strike

Strikes: Quality or Quantity?

Organizing

Campaign Snapshots

Focus on Women and Low-Paid Workers

AFL-CIO Campaigns

Religious and Community Alliances

Conclusion

0 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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A Special Report

Where Is the Labor Movement Today? Not since the early 1980s have unions received as much publicity as they

have recently. And the publicity these days is a lot better. Back then, the publicity was all bad, and the public saw unions as increasingly toothless and irrelevant, a perception abetted by President Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers. Then, as now, the pressures on unions from globalization and the export of former union jobs were intense. The union movement seemed to be in a state of permanent decline.

Three years ago, however, John J. Sweeney and other labor movement reformers won the AFL-CIO’s first contested election by promising to revitalize the labor movement. Since taking the helm of the federation, which represents 78 unions with 13 million members, Sweeney has urged the beaten-down union movement to confront management and has imple- mented numerous strategies aimed at bringing labor back. In the summer of 1997, the Teamsters scored a perceived win against United Parcel Service (UPS), one seen by observers as likely to boost labor’s prestige and spur more success in organizing and bargaining. This past year has seen labor’s biggest single organizing victory in 20 years, a number of high- visibility strikes against brand-name companies, and some very intense organizing activity employing new tactics.

If a union can point to gains for workers as the result of strikes, this helps to counter employees’ fear of becoming called out on strike i f they join a union.

Is labor really back? Is it gaining? This special issue of Management Report takes a comprehensive look at where labor is today.

Strikes and Protests “We went through an era where a strike was an invitation for disaster,”

says labor expert Harley Shaiken, a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley, recalling the highly publicized failures of strikes in the 1980s at Phelps Dodge, Eastern Airlines, and Greyhound. But last year’s strike at UPS and strikes this year against General Motors, telecom- munications companies, several airlines, and others prove they can be used effectively, Shaiken said. The number of major strikes plus other job