USA : AFL-CIO sees shift toward unions
Virginia's one of the toughest states in which to organize a union – but union organizers from Newport News to the western reaches of the state feel they're on a roll
these days.
"Sometimes, in the day to day, you don't see it, but from the 20,000-foot view, Virginia's looking good," said AFL-CIO national president Richard Trumka, after speaking to the state labor federation's biennial convention on Friday.
In the past year, union organizers won the right to represent shipyard engineers at Newport News Shipbuilding, and 470 workers at Nestle's cookie dough and pasta plant in Danville, he said.
When workers at Kroger stores satirized the 25-cent-a-hour raise the company proposed in recent contract talks by taping quarters to their name badges, and pointed out the 17 percent the chief executive won, they found sympathetic customers – and won better contract terms, he said.
Workers at Nabisco's bakery plant outside Richmond find people are listening as they push for a boycott of that company's made-in-Mexico cookies, he added. And though it took a hard-fought six-week strike, Verizon workers won a four-year contract that will increase pay by 11 percent by the time it expires.
"People would walk up to picket lines, saying they supported us. They brought water … some would grab a sign and walk the picket line with us," said Ricard Hatch, president of Local 2201 of the Communications Workers of America.
When Verizon workers said they were striking to protect their jobs, that resonated with people who aren't in unions, Hatch said.
"I think everyone is worried about that," he said.
A total of 23,000 Virginians, include 460 at the Alcoa Howmet plant in Hampton, joined unions last year, bringing membership to 202,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means a bit more than one in 20 Virginia workers pay dues to a union, or slightly less than half the national average.
Another 56,000 Virginians get union benefits without paying dues. They can do that because back in 1947 Virginia became one of the first states to say you didn't have to be a union member to get the wages and job protections set out in union contracts.
But even though that much-resented-by-unions law makes it hard to convince people to pay union dues, many like the idea of union benefits, said Matt Yonka, president of the AFL-CIO'sVirginia State Building and Construction Trades Council.
"I think people are getting fed up with being beaten up," he said. "Just this morning, I was talking to a guy at a nonunion shop about pay and benefits and he said if he'd known that, he'd have signed up 20 years ago."
Arnold Outlaw, president of United Steelworkers local 8888, which represents shipyard workers, thinks the union's 2013 contract, with its average 14.2 percent over 52 months pay increase, cuts in health insurance premiums and boost for retiree pay, had a big role in convincing 200 specialized workers to vote to be represented by the International Association of Machinists.
"We won the best contract in the country," Outlaw said. "I've got to believe that had an impact."
Brett Vassey, president of the Virginia Manufacturers Association, said union organizing efforts in Virginia have stepped up in the past several years.
"They're much more aggressive," he said.
But unions are still a small presence in Virginia. Union activity has focused mostly on a few key areas.
One is the factories that supply automakers, where the United Auto Workers union is making a concerted push.
Union organizers are also focusing on foreign firms that have large union workforces in their home countries, as when the roughly 300 workers at IKEA's Danville furniture plant voted to unionize in 2011. Union organizers' arguments that what's good in one place ought to be good in another has been effective, Vassey said.
In the past few years, the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees votes on union representation and that steps in to settle disputes between unions and employers, has made rules that make it easier to win representation votes, he said.
"It feels like the balance has been tipped," he said.
Ress can be reached by telephone at 757-247-4535.