See unions’ future here this week, but hurry

By Michael Mishak

Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Unionizing success stories are rare in the modern labor movement — and even rarer in the private sector.

Victories, however marginal, have come in the public sector, with government workers accounting for the bulk of the gains. Just 7.6 percent of American workers in the private sector belong to unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s down from a high of 24 percent in 1973.

Labor experts say that unions, now more than ever, must try harder to connect with white-collar and high-tech workers to remain relevant in a rapidly changing economy, and they point to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers as a model.

The union, which is holding its national convention this week in Las Vegas, represents 100,000 workers in the United States and Canada, and its organizing campaigns are changing the face of American labor.

Its members are engineers, technicians, scientists, researchers and analysts — 35 percent of whom work in the private sector. The union’s largest unit is the Boeing Co., where it claims about 25,000 engineers and technical workers.

As Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor expert at Cornell University, put it: “This union has proved that nerds organize and they can be militant.” In 2008 nearly 53 percent of all union members were classified as “professional and technical” workers.

Greg Junemann, the group’s president, says the downsizing craze and offshoring boom of the past 20 years has changed the dynamic among a group of workers that has traditionally been hard to reach.

“Professional workers, in a lot of cases, could write their own ticket in the past,” Junemann said. “But now it’s not quite so easy. More and more professionals are finding themselves in the cross hairs of the bean counters. They want some sort of say in what tomorrow might bring, and they see the union as a vehicle for that.”

Elaine Bernard, director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, said the professional and technical engineers were smart in targeting a growing sector of the workforce at a time when those employees are being squeezed in the workplace. Technical workers, she said, often face a situation where the workers below them on the pay scale have union representation — and the supervisors above them control their livelihoods.

“These people are caught in the middle,” said Bernard, who addressed the union’s convention Monday. “And they’re not getting the respect and attention they should as really knowledgeable folks.”

In 2007, 10 national unions joined with eight professional associations, including the American Chemical Society, in the hope of reaching more technical workers.

Bronfenbrenner said globalization prompted a sea change in the worker-management relationship, particularly in high-skill trades. “Professionals used to be very tied to management,” she said. “They trusted executives to take care of them. Then management broke the promise to workers, laid them off, outsourced their jobs and treated them like anybody else on the line.”

Another selling point: Bernard said the professional and technical workers have mastered the balance between international and local autonomy. Local unions are oriented toward specific occupations, so they have the feel of a professional association, she said.

Notably, Bernard said, the union has succeeded in marketing itself as “something more than an insurance company.” To point, Junemann said his union is working on career development programs at the local level, offering workers training and leadership classes so they’re better prepared in the event of a plant closure or a layoff.

“We need to plant seeds for the future of the movement,” Junemann said. “Instead of just addressing wages and benefits, we need to do something for people that we haven’t done before. The evolution of society and employment demands it.”