Unions Struggle as Communications Industry Shifts
SAN FRANCISCO, May 31 - Lisa Morowitz, a longtime union coordinator, knows the taste of defeat.
She spends her days trying to organize Comcast cable workers. But not only are the workers declining to sign up, they have in many cases voted to end existing union ties.
"We're not winning, we're losing," said Ms. Morowitz, who works for the Communications Workers of America, the dominant union in telecommunications. "If we don't move the direction this industry is moving, we could become obsolete."
Even as unions struggle nationwide, with just 12.5 percent of the total work force unionized in 2004 compared with 22 percent in 1980, they face a particularly bleak future in the telecommunications industry.
The industry was once a labor stronghold after the Bell monopolies became unionized in the late 1930's. But mergers, deregulation and technological change have reduced the number of jobs at the traditional phone companies while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in cable and wireless companies, which are largely union-free.
Since 1985, the number of union workers in telephone and data services has been cut in half, to fewer than 275,000, from 625,000.
To slow the rapid decline, unions are fighting to organize workers at cable and wireless companies. They have had little success, outside a big victory in 2000 when they organized workers at Cingular Wireless.
At Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider, workers have voted to decertify nearly two dozen union shops in the last three years.
The labor battle took on newfound intensity last month when the Communications Workers of America published in three major newspapers a full-page letter signed by 112 members of Congress contending that Verizon Wireless was not cooperating with labor groups. Verizon Wireless countered by circulating among employees a document that favorably compares its benefits and wages to that of Cingular Wireless, the only wireless company with a union work force.
In April, Verizon Wireless's chief executive, Dennis F. Strigl, sent a letter to members of Congress urging them not to sign the union petition, which he said was an unfair attack.
The employees "have repeatedly rejected the efforts of the union to insert itself between them and their company," Mr. Strigl wrote. "Unfortunately, the union will not take 'no' for an answer."
The communications workers union contends that Verizon Wireless has harassed organizers and moved three major call centers from the Northeast to southern states where it is tougher to organize. It plans to hold a pro-union rally Wednesday in Meriden, Conn., the site of a Verizon Wireless business customer service center.
Also Wednesday, the union plans to organize a protest rally at Comcast's annual meeting in Philadelphia.
The union has taken greatest aim at Comcast and Verizon Wireless. But it is trying to organize other companies, too. The C.W.A. and other international unions plan later this month to try to jump-start talks with T-Mobile, one of the five largest national wireless carriers, by negotiating with executives from its German parent company, Deutsche Telekom.
But reversing the antiunion tide will be enormously difficult. In 1985, unions represented 375,000 workers at the Bells and 250,000 at AT&T, said Jeffrey H. Keefe, an associate professor of labor and employment relations at Rutgers University.
In 2004, the union work force at the Bells dropped to about 229,000, while AT&T's union work force dipped below 30,000, Mr. Keefe said.
The wireless industry, meanwhile, has grown to about 171,000 employees, with only about 22,000 workers at Cingular unionized. In the cable industry, which has 133,000 workers, only about 7,000 workers are unionized.
In terms of pay and benefits, the difference between union and nonunion workplaces can be substantial, Mr. Keefe argues. Based on research compiled by Mr. Keefe and Harry C. Katz, a professor at Cornell University who studies collective bargaining, a union technician at a Bell company in 2003 earned on average $46,500 a year, compared with $39,400 for a technician in the wireless industry and $35,700 at a cable company.
Mr. Katz said the erosion of collective bargaining in telecommunications was not as severe as in the garment and textile industries, but as bad, if not worse, than in many other industries.
The unions, he said, need to modify their message to give workers a sense that organized labor can protect them in an era of great turbulence. "Employees are not worried about losing a limb in a steel plant," Mr. Katz said. Conveying a message that resonates with prospective members in the current environment is an issue "the unions are struggling to answer."
Larry Cohen, executive vice president of the communications workers union, which represents 2.5 million workers worldwide, said the union had made some strides. In a rapidly changing industry, the union, he said, can negotiate better benefits, training and pay for workers and prevent management from eliminating jobs arbitrarily or changing work conditions.
But given the antagonism of the industry to unions, Mr. Cohen said, workers are often too tired to fight. The battle with Comcast highlights challenges faced by the C.W.A.
In November 2002, Comcast completed its acquisition of AT&T Broadband, a company in which union representation had been steadily growing. Since Comcast's takeover, 22 bargaining units from the former AT&T Broadband have voted to decertify their union status, including one in Fresno, Calif., where technicians voted 92 to 58 on May 12 to get rid of the union. In California alone, the union lost decertification votes at Comcast shops in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Modesto - all in 2003. Comcast still has 22 union shops.
Comcast says workers are voting to decertify because they may be more satisfied with Comcast management, which it says is more receptive to worker needs than the national top-down management of AT&T Broadband.
David L. Cohen, an executive vice president at Comcast who oversees human resources there, said the votes were evidence that workers under Comcast management did not feel they benefited from union representation.
"We take pride in providing a safe, enjoyable and productive work environment," he said. Workers "do not need to be represented by a union to gain all of the advantages."
But the company does aggressively lobby for its cause. One worker, a technician in Fresno who voted to retain the union in the recent election, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear he could lose his job, said that in the five weeks preceding the vote, the company flew in human relations managers to meet with workers collectively as well as individually by taking workers out for drinks and lunches. Some even rode with technicians on service calls, the worker said.
Mr. Cohen, the Comcast executive, declined to talk about the specifics of the Fresno vote. "We convey our message in all ways we're permitted to under the National Labor Relations Act," he said.
In at least once case, the National Labor Relations Board found that Comcast violated federal labor rules. In a ruling dated April 13, the labor board concluded that Comcast of Maryland had threatened, coerced and fired employees to dissuade them from working with the Teamsters.
In that case, the board ordered the company to reinstate two workers to positions they previously held. The board also ordered Comcast to stop discharging or coercing employees involved in union activity and putting them under surveillance.
The company has been vigilant in warding off union organizing efforts. A leadership training document Comcast published in January 2003 instructed managers on how to spot possible union activity. One section - titled "Early Warning Signs" - urged managers to look for situations where "employees not normally seen together are seen gathering" and for "increased curiosity and questions about benefits and policies."
Managers are also told to look for employees who want things "in writing." In some cases, workers have been given written warnings about discussing union activities with colleagues on company time.
At the same time, the Comcast manual also informs managers that among the best ways to prevent union inroads is for the company to offer competitive wages and benefits, provide excellent working conditions and to allow employees to express their complaints.
"We are anything but antiunion," Mr. Cohen of Comcast said. Ms. Morowitz, 39, hopes to persuade those workers that being part of the union has big advantages. As the only full-time communications union staff member trying to organize Comcast, she focuses her time on California, which was a union stronghold in the days of AT&T Broadband. The union estimates there are about 6,000 Comcast workers in California, not including contract workers.
She meets with Comcast workers, usually at the workers' request, telling them about the union election process.
The meetings are held in secret, she said, because she said that Comcast had a history of harassing workers involved with union activism. The mood is often upbeat, but she said she was pessimistic about her meetings yielding any success.
"Comcast has so relentlessly bad-mouthed the union, we are unlikely to have a successful election," she said. "Even if we succeeded, the real question is, Can we get a contract?"
Joining her at some meetings is Yonah Camacho Diamond, a service technician and union shop steward who works in San Francisco for SBC, which is unionized. Mr. Diamond, 34, said he was lobbying Comcast workers not for the sake of the union but because he believed that telecommunications on the whole is becoming inhospitable to workers.
The days of the professional telecommunications worker "are not long for existence," Mr. Diamond said. "I've got a good job at a good wage, with a pension and a 401(k). But that may not be available to me, or my son, in the future."
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