-Caveat Lector-
Special report: Fading union influence
Chemical Processing June 1999
Saddled with declining membership, the chemical industry's three unions are
relegated to the less dramatic pursuits of organized labor, like reporting
plant HS&E violations, providing legal counsel to members and negotiating to
retain employee benefits in plants where they still have a foothold.
By Mike Hrickiewicz, executive editor
The dangerous and demanding automotive assembly lines of the 1920s had
nothing on the chemical facilities of the era.
Chemical plants, often situated out-of-doors with workers exposed to the
elements, were labor-intensive, rife with hazards and staffed with
shift-workers whose decisions were sometimes developed through a prism of
poorly thought-out or nonexistent training programs and fatigue.
It is perhaps no wonder, then, that the industry saw widespread union
activity among its operations and maintenance personnel from its inception
through the 1970s.
Since that time, however, the industry's three major plant workers' unions
have each seen dramatic membership declines.
How did this happen and how can the unions remain effective after having
suffered such losses?
These are questions Chemical Processing sought to answer when it recently
spoke to representatives of the industry's major workers' unions.
'70s high point
By most accounts, membership in the U.S. chemical industry's unions peaked
during the 1970s when the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers (OCAW) claimed
165,000 members; the International Chemical Workers Union (ICWU) had more
than 100,000 members; and the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), which
organized some chemical plants and inherited others when it merged with the
mineworkers, held a similar number of chemical plant members.
This is in addition to unions dedicated to the crafts; the teamsters; and
company-based unions, such as those at DuPont and Exxon.
Since then, however, the three groups have experienced dramatic drops in
membership, with each currently having anywhere between 10,000 and 35,000
chemical workers, depending on whose estimates are to be believed.
This decline is underscored by the fact that they've all merged with other
unions.
For instance, the OCAW merged with the United Paperworkers International
Union (UPIU) this year to become the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and
Energy (PACE) Workers International. Similarly, the ICWU merged with the
United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) to become the
International Chemical Workers Union Council of the UFCW.
Finally, although chemical workers are a minority of its members, the USWA
has announced plans to merge with the United Auto Workers and the
International Association of Machinists into a 2-million-member mega-union
by next year.
Lending perspective to these data, one organizer said approximately 70% of
Canada's chemical workers are unionized vs. about 10% to 20% of chemical
workers in the United States.
'Management's scare tactics work in the chemical industry because you just
don't have the density of workers that you have in the auto plants or the
steel mills.'
What happened?
So, what happened? How did the unions go from such highs to such lows?
Interestingly, union officials attribute the declines to many of the same
factors blamed for the reduction in the number of chemical plant engineers
over the past decade.
For instance, each official blamed industry consolidation, and the
downsizing and plant relocation that goes along with it, as a major
contributor to decline in union membership.
"I think consolidation and discontinued or moved product lines have been a
big influence," said Harry Lester, director of USWA's Michigan-based
District 2, which represents workers at Dow Chemical's and Dow Corning's
massive headquarters operations in Midland, among other facilities.
An old-school organizer who came up through the steel industry, Lester said,
"Management's scare tactics work in the chemical industry because you just
don't have the density of workers that you have in the auto plants or the
steel mills."
Additionally, most of the chemical industry's union organizers concede that
increasing use of plant automation has greatly hastened this trend.
"Automation is doing a lot of it," Lester confirmed. "Chemical plants
haven't always had so few workers."
"You only have to look at a chemical plant," added L. Calvin Moore, a
retired vice president of PACE, who worked at a National Starch & Chemical
Corp. plant for 21 years before joining the union in 1975. "You can see that
they've been completely automated with computers and all the other
technologies."
"In a lot of ways the more mechanized plants end up making things a lot
safer--you know, less open processes, less batch operations and direct
loading and so on," said Michael Sprinker, director of health and safety for
the ICWU Council of the UFCW. "But it's also meant some decrease in the
number of workers needed at the plants.
"Plus--you hear this in a lot of places--the maintenance staffs in a lot of
plants have been cut back, too," he continued. "We have plants that used to
have a number of instrument techs, and now they're down to one or two and
contract out any extra work that comes up."
Finally, these consolidations and plant relocations are being helped along
by the drive toward industry globalization, union officials believe.
"The globalization of the chemical industry has caused a great part of the
problem," Moore said. "The companies have been able to move their technology
from the United States to someplace that is less unionized or where the
unions are weaker."
Taking an even dimmer view of globalization, another union official said,
"What globalization has meant is an effort by employers
to take power away from workers at the worksite and even take power away
from their governments and their ability to regulate industry. Globalization
is not just a question of a shrinking world or interdependency of markets or
dropping of trade barriers, but a question of seizing power and control."
As if these factors were not enough to cause the free-fall in union
membership rolls, the industry's union officials are very upfront in
attributing additional declines to what they consider union-busting or
obstructionist tactics on the part of chemical company management.
"The chemical companies would think nothing of paying $20,000 a day to hire
a consultant to come in just to keep the union out," the USWA's Lester said.
"These consultants use scare tactics by having people fired," he continued.
"Then, we'll go before the labor board to get the workers their jobs back,
but that pretty much ends the activity."
His voice rising, Lester added, "These consultants are slimy individuals who
make their livings off the backs of the working poor."
According to another union official, these tactics are aided by the
country's labor laws.
"The labor laws in this country are slanted to favor employers and are
slanted to ensure that workers have to overcome tremendous hurdles and
obstacles in order to organize themselves in trade unions," the official
said. "And companies have used those laws to their advantage in order to
beat back their workers to stop them from unionizing."
One major complaint against companies appears to be that they don't allow
union organizers to hold meetings on plant grounds, though they hold
anti-union meetings there.
Beyond the battles
While such battles will undoubtedly continue, the industry's union leaders
currently find themselves serving an extremely downsized member base with
nowhere near the clout they once had.
This is not to say that the unions are seen by top chemical company managers
as benign. In fact, neither of the two nonunionized chemical companies
contacted for this story agreed to speak with Chemical Processing on the
subject. (Two unionized chemical companies were also contacted for this
story, though neither was able to supply a representative to speak in time
to meet the magazine's deadline.)
Nevertheless, in place of exercising their former organizing muscle and
negotiating power, the chemical industry's three major workers' unions have
largely dedicated themselves to taking care of less-dramatic concerns like
reporting plant HS&E violations, providing legal counsel to members and
negotiating to retain employee benefits in the plants where they still have
a foothold.
Moreover, many of the more routine duties are carried out by unions working
in partnership with plant owners.
Indicative of this era of union-management cooperation, Lester spoke of the
USWA's "Living Agreement" with Dow Corning and Wacker plants in his
district.
"Under this agreement, all unresolved issues between the union and
management go before an arbitrator," he explained. "This way, there's no
chance of a strike and the chemical company's customers are assured of a
steady, uninterrupted flow of product.
"We've had this type of agreement at Dow Corning for 10 years and people are
so happy with it, they just keep renewing it," Lester added. "You know,
coming into the 21st century, you have to make some changes."
On the macro side, the unions have worked with industry leaders and
governments on making voluntary initiatives such as Responsible Care� more
acceptable to the unions, who are generally suspicious of HS&E monitoring
efforts that don't include government oversight and enforcement.
Sustaining mission?
While such tasks are undoubtedly helpful and occasionally vital, they are
still being delivered by unions that are unlikely to ever match their
previous member numbers, most union representatives admit.
"I think it's going to be very, very difficult to get back where we were,"
Moore said. "I think the entire labor movement has shrunk, and that's
indicated by numbers that the AFL/CIO have published.
"I think the union organizing in the chemical sector has reached its apex,"
he added, saying that the attitude of the workers has been more conciliatory
in the face of fewer jobs.
Thus, the final question on chemical industry unions will be answered in the
next century, when it becomes apparent whether or not there was enough
substance remaining to sustain their continued existence.
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