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Utility Workers ‘Changing to Organize’ |
The highest priority of the union movement is help more workers join unions and, in doing so, to open the doors for millions of Americans to enjoy the benefits of union membership. But helping workers form unions takes time and requires a strong commitment of union members and resources to succeed.
Many AFL-CIO unions have made the commitment to change to organize. The Utility Workers (UWUA) union is the latest in a growing number of AFL-CIO unions to begin an internal change process with the help of our Organizing Department to organize more effectively, win bigger campaigns outside the broken National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) system and increase density in their core industry.
In a message on organizing in the union’s newsletter, UWUA President Michael Langford explains why the union has formed a partnership with the AFL-CIO to increase the utility union’s organizing capacity and success.
It’s no secret that organizing is hard work and not just big talk. Everybody has to be on board, and we have to mean what we say. And it’s no secret that successful organizing unions dedicate a significant portion of their time, energy, personnel and resources to organizing. UWUA is going to be a successful organizing union.
Langford says 30 percent of workers in the utility industry are union members, a lot better than the unionization rate of most industries, but
it’s not good enough to preserve and enhance the security and quality of our jobs.
The great majority of utility workers, like all other workers, want to join unions, Langford says. In fact, some 57 million working people say they would join a union if they had a chance, according to a survey from Peter D. Hart Research Associates.
But the lengthy NLRB election process makes it easy for employers to routinely harass, intimidate and coerce workers who try to exercise their freedom to form a union at work. Studies show 78 percent of private-sector employers require supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee. And although it’s illegal, 25 percent of private-sector employers fire workers who try to form a union.
Langford adds that deregulation, corporate spin-offs and outsourcing also have played a role in decreasing the ranks of union members in the utility industry.
The AFL-CIO and its affiliates are working hard to change to organize and train a new generation of organizers—and those efforts are paying off. In fact, workers are choosing to join unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO at the highest rate in two generations. The Organizing Department is working with more than a dozen affiliated unions to assist them in their “change to organize” programs, and our Center for Strategic Research is assisting in several major organizing campaigns.
Over the past two years, six AFL-CIO unions voted to move more than $150 million in new money for organizing at their conventions. Combined, this is the largest investment in organizing in the history of the American union movement.
AFSCME members voted to increase dues to create a $60 million war chest to expand workers’ power and reclaim workers’ rights under assault by President Bush and the NLRB. Delegates to the UAW Convention designated $60 million for strategic organizing and mobilizing campaigns for national health care, fair trade and other key working family priorities. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) members voted to establish a strategic industry fund that could raise as much as $25 million per year for campaigns in strategic sectors. AFT approved their largest dues increase ever for organizing, and Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Iron Workers all voted to put more resources toward organizing.
And last year, we reported that Charles Lester, the first-ever organizing director for the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), vowed to put the model for organizing presented at the 2006 AFL-CIO Organizing Summit to work in his union. Now that model has paid off as dozens of rank-and-file members have become involved in organizing and hundreds of new drivers have joined the union. Langford says the UWUA’s new strategic effort, like the commitments by other unions, is designed to help workers gain a better life.
We will not reverse industry trends in weeks or months. Change is a long-term project. But the process of change takes place each and every day as we assemble all the pieces of a dynamic organizing program.
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