In My Opinion: "New Economy," New Approaches to Age-Old Issues

Many observers found a broad, even historic, significance for society in the recent Verizon strike.It was widely noted that the strike defined workplace issues for the "new economy" with its focus on high-tech Internet access jobs, organizing rights for wireless workers, electronic monitoring and work/family pressures.

Here is a sampling of comments by journalists and university professors:

• "The biggest workers' strike of the new century may well be its most important." - The Boston Herald.
  
• "This (the card-check organizing rights agreement) could open the door for unions to move not only into wireless but into other high-tech parts of the economy as well." - Paul Osterman, MIT
  
• "This strike is pivotal because the unions are confronting changes produced by rapid technological advance." - Richard Hurd, Cornell University
  
• "Mandatory overtime is one of the most important issues in American workplaces today, especially among professional or skilled workers." - Tom Juravich, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  
• "Because it's such a visible campaign in an industry that touches the lives of millions of people, any kind of success is bound to spill over to unionizing campaigns in other sectors of the economy." - Dan Cornfield, Vanderbilt University.
  

There is much truth behind these observations, but at the same time the media and academic community are just catching on to some issues and trends that, for CWA, aren't all that new.

For example, winning card check organizing rights and neutrality at Verizon was an important breakthrough, however it actually was a completion of business left over from CWA's last round of Bell regional talks. We won card check rights in 1997 at SBC after an intense mobilizing effort in Texas, and then in 1998 we gained neutrality and some form of expedited organizing at every major company, including AT&T, except Bell Atlantic/Verizon.

While not new to us, the drama of a big strike did put a spotlight on an issue that is important to all of labor. Simply, unions must use collective bargaining and community and political action to win the organizing rights and worker protections that federal labor laws fail to guarantee. Enforcement provisions in the laws aren't sufficient to stop an employer who is determined to coerce and even fire workers who try to unionize.

The card-check procedure for determining representation isn't a radical concept either - it has been extended by law to Canadian workers for years and recently went into effect in Great Britain as well.

Excessive forced overtime with last-minute notification is indeed a major workplace issue, one that disrupts people's lives and family relationships. It was a key issue in the Verizon strike, just as it was at US West two years ago.

This "new economy" issue actually is as old as the struggle for the 8-hour day that took place around the turn of the last century. And the hard-won concept of overtime pay after 40-hours, mandated by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, has been under attack by corporate lobbyists and the Republican congressional leadership for years.

Job threats and job pressures related to new technology and more sophisticated forms of electronic monitoring clearly are growing concerns in the 21st century work environment with the proliferation of computers and information technology. But these are issues that CWA members have dealt with for more than 60 years in telecommunications as well as the publishing and broadcast industries. The introduction of new technology is constant.

The fact that the strike was not about money but over jobs and job conditions struck many in the media as unique. But the truth is, wage issues seldom are the main focus of organizing campaigns or bargaining disputes. The problems that drive most working people to organize and take concerted action are abusive job conditions, unfair work rules and harsh supervision and discipline.

The strike at Verizon is viewed by many as a breakthrough, not only because workers will be able to better balance their work and family lives, or that new protections against "electronic sweatshop" working conditions have been won, but because CWA showed that technology could be a tool to secure and improve workers' future, not a means to displace them.

This isn't new to us, but it has lots of people talking.

It's a boost for all of organized labor because it proves that unions have a real role not only in today's "new economy" jobs, but also in all the jobs of the future that will be created by technological change.

In CWA, we've always known this. But it's good to hear so many others agreeing with us.