JANUARY 2006 :: COVER STORY : CAREERS

The New Union Member
More White-Collar Workers Band Together to Gain Clout, Security

By Kris Maher
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Paul Davis wears two hats at NASA: optical physicist and president of his local union.

The union has about 200 members, twice as many as it had three years ago. "We're using union methods to make sure our scientists are heard," says Mr. Davis, who works in Mountain View, Calif., at the Ames Research Center, where researchers recently tested heat-shield tiles to help ensure the Discovery space shuttle's safe return.

Mr. Davis represents one of the few bright spots for the struggling U.S. labor movement: Despite a blue-collar image, many of the fastest growing unions in the U.S. represent white-collar professionals, including physicians, nuclear engineers, psychologists and judges.

About 3,200 psychologists in New York have joined the American Federation of Teachers, while hypnotists and podiatrists have recently signed on with the Office and Professional Employees International Union. Some district attorneys and congressional researchers have recently joined unions, as have many members of the staff of the British Embassy in Washington.

Precarious Jobs

The growth of white-collar unions says much about the precarious nature of jobs of all types in the current economy. Decaying job security and benefits and the effects of global trade on labor costs all have begun to reach into the ranks of professional workers.

"Professionals join unions because they feel that their work is being devalued. Many of these workers had good pensions and good benefits, and they don't anymore," says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. Some of them, she adds, may fear being replaced by independent contractors or losing their jobs to outsourcing.

Yet there often are restrictions on what white-collar unions can do for their members. In the case of government workers, federal rules prohibit collective bargaining in some cases; NASA scientists are represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, but their pay and benefits are set by Congress.

Other professionals, such as psychologists, don't need unions to bargain with employers, because they are mainly self-employed. But they do rely on unions' political influence to help shape legislation affecting their profession (see sidebar).

Some affiliations may stretch the definition of a union, but the lure of organizing often is the same for both professionals and blue-collar workers: It gives them at least the hope of wielding more clout in negotiations with management. The National Association of Immigration Judges, for instance, became a local of the Engineers union about eight years ago, when it was negotiating a contract and wanted the resources of a national union. The judges group, whose pay and pensions are set by Congress, bargains on other issues for roughly 200 immigration judges across the country.

Much of the professional unions' growth is coming in the public sector, among librarians, attorneys and state and local administrators. Unions have been able to add tens of thousands of workers in these areas, largely because they face far less employer resistance, labor experts say.

Unions like those in the AFL-CIO are welcoming professionals to their ranks because they realize they must reach this expanding pool of workers in order to grow at a time when their traditional base among manufacturing workers is shrinking. The addition of white-collar union members has helped offset losses in these traditional sectors.

Today, more than 51% of all union members are defined by the AFL-CIO as white-collar workers, according to Paul Almeida, president of the labor federation's Department for Professional Employees. The AFL-CIO also calculates that from 1985 to 2005, as overall union membership declined by about 1.5 million, it increased by nearly the same amount among professional and technical workers.

'Pressure to Squeeze'

One of these workers is Howard Hertz, a 52-year-old staff pharmacist at Kaiser Permanente's San Francisco Medical Center. Mr. Hertz says he learned the value of being part of a union five years ago, when his company cut vacation and sick leave for workers. "Pharmacists in general are a pretty quiet group," he says, but the cuts sparked an uproar.

Mr. Hertz's union, the Guild for Professional Pharmacists, has since won back the lost vacation days for pharmacists through two waves of negotiations, while other Kaiser employees never regained them. "Kaiser is a pretty benevolent employer but there's always the pressure to squeeze a little," Mr. Hertz says.

The pharmacists union represents about 3,500 pharmacists, mostly in California, who typically earn about $54 an hour. That's more than $10 an hour above what nonunion pharmacists make.

Kaiser Permanente says it is pro-union. "We have always acknowledged that Kaiser Permanente wouldn't exist without the support of unions, and they've been a very important part of our foundation and strength and success over the years," says Beverly Hayon, a company spokeswoman. About 100,000 of Kaiser's 140,000 employees are represented by unions, she adds.

Doug Stewart, a 49-year-old principal systems analyst at the Chelan County Public Utility District, a hydroelectric utility in Washington state, is one of about 20 computer workers there trying to form a union. Initially, they considered joining the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents other workers at the utility, but Mr. Stewart says he and others quickly came to feel their concerns wouldn't be well-represented by a "blue-collar, old-style" union.

Instead they approached the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, known as WashTech, a local of the Communications Workers of America. With WashTech's help, the pro-union employees won an election to be represented by WashTech. But the utility has disputed which employees should belong to the bargaining unit, and the appeals process has dragged on for a year.

"We see ourselves as professionals," says Mr. Stewart. "We were treated like we were cogs in a wheel."