Vt. labor hopes to capitalize on issues Group cites growing income gap
Group cites growing income gap
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FILE / TIMES ARGUS Union nurses at Copley Hospital in Morrisville stage an informational picket in 1998 as they negotiated their first contract with management. A spokesman for the Vermont Labor Council says with more workers struggling to make ends meet, union organizing efforts are meeting with greater success. |
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By Bruce Edwards Staff Writer - Published: September 5, 2004
The head of the state's largest labor union umbrella organization says Bush administration policies and the growing income in the country have helped big labor's union-organizing activities in the state.
"There is a growing disparity between the haves and the have nots in this country," said Dan Brush, president of the Vermont Labor Council, an AFL-CIO affiliated group. "People are starting to realize we're really having a decline in our standard of living."
The result, Brush said, has been increased interest among workers to unionize as a way to protect their jobs.
Currently, efforts are under way to organize various workers employed in downtown Montpelier. Brush said that those workers, numbering about 200, run the gamut from clerical to restaurant workers.
Brush also said efforts are under way at Fletcher Allen Health Care, the state's largest hospital, to organize approximately 1,400 service workers and support staff. At the University of Vermont, he said part-time faculty members have been approached about joining a collective-bargaining unit.
In recent years, there have been successful drives to organize nurses at Fletcher Allen and at Rutland Regional Medical Center.
On the flip side, Brush said plant closings and other layoffs have subtracted somewhat from the gains unions have made in the state.
Overall, Brush said the 60 labor unions in the state are "holding their own."
According to the national AFL-CIO, unions represented 16.1 million workers, or 13.2 percent of the national work force, in 2002. In that same year, the most recent year data was available, 27,000 workers, or 9.5 percent of Vermont's work force, were unionized. New Hampshire was slightly more unionized at 9.7 percent. The most unionized state was New York at 25.3 percent. The state with the lowest percentage of union workers was South Carolina at 3.2 percent.
Brush added that there are significant numbers of union workers in Vermont not associated with the AFL-CIO. Those unions include the National Education Association and the Vermont State Employees Association.
Although Vermont's unionized work force is lower than the national average of 13.2 percent, the labor movement in the state — that is, efforts to improve the lot of workers in the state — has been more successful, according to Peter Matthews, an associate professor of economics at Middlebury College.
The below average number of union workers in the state, Matthews said, can be traced at least in part to the state's historic hostility to trade unions.
"Vermont was historically hostile to trade union organizing, and in some ways part of the rich texture of Vermont history involves the struggles of unions here especially in the '30s and '40s," Matthews said.
He said efforts such as promoting a livable wage, raising the minimum wage and child health insurance have proved more successful. A case in point, he said, is Vermont's minimum wage, which is among the highest in the country.
"I think those issues are really salient to Vermonters," he said.
Nationally, organized labor has had a more difficult time in recent years in getting its agenda heard in Washington.
"I think it's fair to say that organized labor sees the Bush administration as hostile to its interests," Matthews said.
As an example, he said organized labor's frustration with the new overtime rules that recently took effect as well as labor's frustration with improving safety in the workplace. Adding to the problem, he said, is that in the post-9/11 environment organized labor's issues have taken a back seat to the war on terror.
Matthews said that if organized labor wants to succeed in expanding its base, it needs to be more aggressive in reaching out to worker constituencies that traditionally have been ignored such as service workers and occupations that are predominately held by women. While organized labor has made recent gains in those areas, he said that given the current political environment the road ahead won't get any easier.
"There is a sense out there that firms like Wal-Mart are able to be more aggressive in their anti-union organizing activities than they ever have been," he said.
Contact Bruce Edwards at bruce.edwards@rutlandherald.com.
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