Focus On Part-Timers A Strategic Labor Move Numbers On Lower Rungs Dictate New Thinking By Unions

Until now, almost every strike that has commanded the nation’s attention has involved organized labor’s high-paid elite: the four-month steel strike in 1959 involving 650,000 workers, the two-month General Motors walkout of 1970, the air controllers’ strike of 1981 and the highly unpopular baseball players’ strike of 1994.

But the 6-day-old walkout at the United Parcel Service is the first strike to capture the national spotlight that involves labor’s lower castes, in this case part-time parcel sorters and truck loaders who earn about $10,000 a year.

This high-visibility walkout by 185,000 Teamsters reflects not just deep changes in the makeup of the labor force and the labor movement but also a profound shift in the focus of organized labor.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, the union movement largely focused on protecting the pay and perks of labor’s brahmins, like the workers in the steel, auto and construction industries.

But now labor has shifted its attention to lifting up those at the bottom of the heap, like janitors, supermarket clerks, hotel maids, farm workers and even workfare participants.

This new focus is in part a natural response to underlying changes in the work force: The number of manufacturing jobs is stagnant, and the number of service-sector jobs, especially low-wage ones, has mushroomed. Just as Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that was where the money was, organized labor is concentrating on the low-wage sector because that is where so many workers are.

The shift in focus also reflects the vision of AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, who brings to his job deeply held Roman Catholic beliefs about the importance of helping the humble and meek. He climbed to the top of the labor movement after heading the service employees’ union, which used strikes, sit-ins and slogans like “Justice for Janitors” to win higher pay for low-wage workers.

Sweeney, to be sure, recognizes that helping those on the bottom rungs makes not just moral sense but strategic sense in his crusade to reverse labor’s decades-long slide. Those at the bottom are, understandably, often the most receptive audience to labor’s appeals.

And unions stand a better chance of winning public sympathy and of becoming a broad social movement, one of Sweeney’s goals, if they focus on assisting low-paid nurses’ aides or truck loaders instead of labor’s elite.

Organized labor no doubt lost a lot of sympathy when 24-year-old baseball players making $2 million a year paralyzed America’s pastime and broke children’s hearts while uttering Samuel Gompers’ famous motto: More.

The UPS strike is not about winning $50,000 more a year for pampered workers, but about giving full-time jobs and better wages to the $9-an-hour part-timers who sort 2,000 parcels an hour or load several tons of goods into a truck each three-hour shift.

“Most of the big strikes have taken on obscure issues on behalf of high-wage workers asking for more,” said Richard Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University. “The UPS strike is different. It demonstrates that the labor movement is standing up for low-wage, part-time workers who want to work full time.

“That resonates with a large segment of our society that is concerned that corporations have reduced their commitment to their workers, that they’re doing too much downsizing and using too much contingent labor and temp agencies.”

The UPS showdown dovetails neatly with Sweeney’s vision and strategy, and it is no coincidence that he pledged as much of labor’s energy and resources as it takes to make sure the Teamsters win. This strike also points to profound changes in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters by showing that it no longer focuses as overwhelmingly as it once did on the group that made it famous: well-paid, long-haul freight drivers.

“The driving issues behind this strike reach directly into the living rooms and the pocketbooks of every working family,” Sweeney said at a Teamsters’ rally on Wednesday. “Working families all across the country are being squeezed because companies are replacing good-paying, full-benefit, full-time jobs with low-paying, no-benefit, no-security part-time jobs.”

UPS argues that it makes sense to hire so many part-timers - four-fifths of the 46,000 unionized workers it has added recently are part-timers - because it needs flexibility and because much of its work comes in three-hour bursts. Company officials argue that because their full-time drivers are the best paid in the industry, it needs lower-wage part-timers to compete with nonunion shippers like Federal Express.

At UPS, full-time drivers earn $19.95 an hour after two years, while part-time sorters earn $10 an hour and part-time loaders, $9 an hour. Labor’s hope is that a Teamsters’ victory will send all the messages a union public relations agent could dream of: that labor is moving and muscular again, that unions are going to bat for those at the bottom and that those on the lower rungs should embrace unions as their protector.

“If the Teamsters win,” said Stanley Aronowitz, a sociology professor at the City University of New York, “it’s going to send a signal to the rest of the labor movement that you can succeed in fighting for low-wage and part-time workers. It will fulfill John Sweeney’s commitment that ‘America needs a raise’ in a way that any salary increase for pilots or auto workers cannot.”

In many ways, organized labor’s focus on low-paid employees is a big gamble. Employers often find these workers easy to intimidate. Many are immigrants who are scared to stick their necks out and support a union. And many do not have the financial wherewithal to weather a strike.

But Cornell’s Hurd said labor’s new focus made sense. “There is a recognition in the AFL-CIO,” he said, “that if you want to change the image and the appeal of labor, it’s necessary to change what it’s fighting for. Working on behalf of low-wage workers certainly fits into that.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: A CALCULATED SHIFT This new focus by AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney is in part a natural response to underlying changes in the work force … Just as Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that was where the money was, organized labor is concentrating on the low-wage sector because that is where so many workers are.