Contemporary Period

1
Contemporary Period

• Lecture 1
• Contingent Employment and Employment Conditions

2
Administrative

• Reading for next time Material in Boris and
  Lichtenstein (Article by Ross, Temp Blues and
  Sweatshop Workers Speak Out) and Perspectives
  on Work (Article by Sleigh)

3
Review

• 1970s and 1980s
• New patterns of unionism, bargaining and conflict
• Government anti-unionism
• Post-industrial society
• Women in the labor force
• White men in the labor force
• New approaches to union organizing

4
Today

1. Growth of Contingent Employment
2. New Technology and Employment Conditions

5
I. Growth of Contingent Employment

• Categories workers classified as contingent
• Temporaries
• Part-timers
• Seasonal workers
• Consultants
• Contractors
• Free-lancers

6
Characteristics of Contingent Employment

• Insecurity
• No career ladder
• No fringe benefits
• No unionization
• Lack of legal protections
• Many temps are really perma temps working for
  the same company for years

7
Defenders of Contingent Employment

• Claim employees want the flexibility
• Provides employment that wouldnt be there
  otherwise for people who need it
• Employers need this to be able to compete in the
  global market place

8
Opponents of Contingent Employment

• In Europe, in several countries, temporary
  agencies are required to provide benefits
• Part-time employees are entitled to proportional
  benefits
• Employers will find employees unwilling to learn
  skills and insufficiently loyal

9
II. New Technology and Employment Conditions

• Physical difficulty of work
• Injuries at work
• Repetitive stress injuries
• Ergonomics
• Authoritarian rules
• on call

10
Growth of Sweat Shops

• Both in older technologies (shoes and textiles)
  and in newer technologies (computers)
• Employers increasingly demand that work comes
  before anything else
• Full service employers

11
Privacy at Work (and off)

• Electronic Monitoring
• Computer software that tracks how many key
  strokes you do per minute, how many seconds you
  are not working at the keyboard, what web sites
  you visit
• Reading employees e-mail

12
Privacy at Work (and off)

• Telephone Monitoring
• Camera monitoring
• Supermarkets and Department stores
• School buses
• Hired Investigators
• At work to check for theft
• Away from work to check on absences

13
Next Time

• Unions in the contemporary period

14
Contemporary Period

• Lecture 2
• Unions and Strikes

15
Administrative

• Reading on Union Organization, Employers and the
  Law
• Grady
• Roth
• Neither in BL

16
Review

• Growth of Contingent Employment
• New Technology and Employment Conditions

17
Today

1. Union Membership and Organizing
2. AFL-CIO
3. Strikes in the Contemporary Period

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I. Union Membership and Organizing

• What happened to union membership and union
  density in the 1990s?
• Tremendous number of union mergers
• Union interest in corporate governance

19
Union Organizing

• Continued failure of unions to organize fast
  enough to offset membership losses
• Growing organization among new groups, especially
  of low wage and powerless workers
• Successful organizing not based on the NLRB model

20
Union Organizing

• Organization of home health aids
• Dramatic growth of unionization among graduate
  student teaching assistants
• Union Network International

21
Unionization in Higher Education

• AAUP
• Yeshiva Decision (1980) Supreme Court
• Result was halt to faculty unionization in
  private universities
• Sudden and dramatic growth of Graduate student
  unions in 1990s
• Favorable NLRB decisions
• Employers responded as they always do

22
II. AFL-CIO

• No seriously contested election for president
  since 1900
• 1995 coalition challenged Lane Kirkland with
  President of Service Employees, John Sweeney
• Forced Kirklands resignation in favor of
  Secretary-Treasurer Tom Donahue
• Donahue still lost to Sweeney

23
II. AFL-CIO

• New officers represented the new work force and
  the new unionism
• Sweeney Service Employees
• Richard Trumka United Mine Workers
• Linda Chavez-Thompson - AFSCME

24
II. AFL-CIO

• AFL-CIO accepted need to diversify its own
  governing structures
• Attempted to increase dramatically resources
  devoted to organizing
• Developed the union summer program for college
  students
• Union City campaign

25
II. AFL-CIO the split of 2005

• Underlying issues
• Change to Win coalition failed to gain majority
  at 2005 AFL-CIO Convention
• SEIU and Teamsters disaffiliated
• Retaliation
• New Federation

26
III. Strikes in the Contemporary Period

• Continued frequent use of strike replacements and
  threat of strike replacements
• What happened to the pattern of strikes in the
  1990s?
• UPS strike - 1997

27
Opportunities for Effective Strike Tactics

• Tactics of graduate teaching assistants
• Opportunities due to lean production and
  just-in-time inventory management
• Beginnings of international union cooperation

28
Next Time

• Union Organization, Employers and the Law