QUESTIONS & ANSWERS AND GENERAL DISCUSSION
INDUSTRY RESTRUCTURING
The general discussion after the presentations by Newman & Sánchez Daza revolved around the impact restructuring is having on workers and their unions, as the telcos are making record profits and workers are losing jobs in a parallel proportion.
A logic difficult to relate to from the workers' perspective.
It was observed that there are two points to understand; the competition for market share of investment dollars and the sale of stock shares. From 1982 to 1992 for instance, revenues grew more rapidly than investment, The amount of dollars invested has now more than doubled, but the amount of profit has more than
tripled. On the other hand, the number of workers is falling, not only in telecommunications but in the economy as a whole.
In telecommunications, in manufacturing, in services, the number of jobs is declining. Furthermore, the unemployment rates of the United States are much greater than in the sixties and are not expected to return to earlier levels. And when telcos shed workers, they shed the unionized workers. AT&T, NCR for instance they shed unionized workers and kept the others.
In summation, the driving force of capitalism is not profit alone, but the rate of profit. They keep trying to drive up the rate of profit.
The other thing to understand is how technology has an impact on business practices. It is possible now to have directory assistance reach from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world. At the same time AT&T now wants to provide Velcro badges. For instance, when the customer requests AT&T, but AT&T has no lines, AT&T rents the line from the local company, serviced by local company reps, who temporarily put on an AT&T badge.
However, according to Juliett Schorr in "The Overworked American", the productivity increase since the 1950s is so much, that the workweek should be much lower. We should be working less instead, and stay all employed with such higher productivity rates. This is one solution which has been proposed in Europe.
In Mexico for instance, there are 47,000 unionized workers in the STRM, but the company claims there is a surplus of personnel as high as 9,800. Fortunately, the STRM has a policy to prevent layoffs at least until 1997. However, Telmex is trying to use competition as a means of getting workers to increase their productivity and act in accord with what the company wants. Observers claim that Telmex will lose business unless it interconnects with AT&T. Workers pointed out that mergers never create jobs. One example is Time Warner, who took on $17billion in debt to buy Turner. Now, there is a wave of fear through the whole corporation, where workers are rushing to organize now.
HEALTH AND SAFETY
The discussion generated by the presentations by Morris and Sanchez focused mostly on stress as a health related issue in the work place: Historically, in the U.S., a key to the development of occupational health and safety law was the 1911 Triangle Shirt factory fire where nearly 100 people died.
In the 1980s, in Japan, the stress was increased to its peak. Stress is part of this stage of capitalism. It comes from the competition: First, at the immediate level of the business, there is competition among the workers Stress is designed by employers to separate workers this can be avoided; and, second, the relationship with the business brings heavy workloads, etc. The latter requires tactics of confrontation and resistance.
A second kind of stress is social: In this regard, capital is in the lead at the international level. Furthermore, in the United States and the European Union, social security is under attack.
There is a need for a working class political program.
In the United States, the corporate drive is to say that stress does not exist. It is hardtoimpossible to collect on stress. In Mexico too, it has been difficult to secure financing for occupationalrelated maladies. Also, in the Unites States, the tracking of injuries is done by industry, not job function. Hence, in the telephone industry, incidence is low because it's underreported.
In Canada, National Health Care added harassment as a health and safety problem. However, those who are mostly affected are women and people of color. Comparatively, nothing's done in the United States, until it occurs to the white man.
Another problem is violence in the work place, where workers get frustrated and commit suicide or turn against coworkers. For instance, a customer attacks an installation and repair person.
It should be noted that about 5% of stress is workeronworker, 95% is outside person on worker.
We need to make clear to the employer that we just come to work here, we don't come to die. By the same token, if the system is broke, the customer won't get service. Workers should let the system fail under its own weight.
What CEP in Canada did regarding stress and RSI was to get the company to do a health audit. We created a Human Factors Committee. Made a business case for it. Ergonomics is key to changing the job design. At NYNEX, cable volt inspection (for toxics, explosive gas, etc.) had not been done in a number of years. The district has a good healthandsafety program, but not the local. We sought to make the company understand that they have to do it for their own selfinterest or else.
One problem was that the company healthandsafety representative is not given a sufficient budget. Unofficially, the rep. worked with the union. The strategy worked. We got a program controlled by the union. The stewards make the inspection program work. You have to get your grip on the problem where you can get it.
US West has the best healthandsafety program in the U.S. But it only got that way through confrontation.
New Technology and Reengineering
During the presentation of New Technology and Reengineering, Young and Carlson used an interactive format allowing the participants to make recommendations for a union strategy plan.
In the end, a total of 18 recommendations were listed as a result of the group discussion:
In response to a question regarding the impact reengineering has had on the STRM in Mexico it was commented that the application of reengineering has implied the restructuring of the business at a national level.
The decision making has occurred in central management and 7 regions were created that function autonomously. They include three geographic regions, one that focuses on long distance, one that focuses on overall corporate decisions.
Up until now, management has agreed that there will not be layoffs. The work conditions are changing, though. Gradually, because of the opening of competition and internally too, there is a marked change because of reengineering.
Operator services were modernized through the installation of digital technology. There were a great many who had to transfer to outside plants or clerical positions. They managed to ensure that these people were not laid off.
Right now, they are completing a detailed analysis of the work place. 4,000 administrative workers are going to be transferred to be under the direction of the same areas where they presently work.
1 Education
At US West, we had Canadian workers from AGT, BC Tel, Edmonton Tel technicians working on site.
SaskTel workers can be voluntarily subcontracted for international work. There are a few in the US. and a few in Mexico, 8 in Africa, 4 in the Philippines. About a dozen worked on the Chunnel project.
The TWU has a similar agreement to the CEP in Saskatchewan, but it is not yet formalized.
Pac Bell has approved BCTel workers coming down. It won't begin until early 1997. The project got the San Francisco local's support.
The Bell Canada people at USWest aren't union; they are people who took the voluntary separation agreement.
In Manitoba and Alberta, it works like BCTel. They're union. We have people in the U.S., China, Caribbean, and Mexico.
It's the same as BCtel. We have members in the US. and Bermuda. Only surplus people at contract rates.
2 Union Agenda Up front
I was president on a committee for nine months. We were able to save 1,000 jobs across 14 states because we participated. But it meant that 1 of our 2 fulltime officers in the local wasn't available to service members.
The key is to have your own agenda up front: universal service, quality of service, jobs, etc.
At Nynex, reengineering has been entirely unilateral. Reengineering has affected, or will affect, everyone. There are no exceptions. Unions should do the reengineering ourselves. We need to redesign our own jobs and make them bargaining points.
A key to the union's approach has to be to have an equal role in determining job design and "competitiveness" within the rights and rules of the collective agreement.
3 Preempt Bargaining
At PacBell in 1981, they didn't lay people off. They moved people around. At one of the garages, people refused to drive. They held a strike vote. The next day, we negotiated a no layoff clause. Now people are upset when there isn't a surplus, because they want a buyout.
At AT&T, workers have become so desensitized. The people want to get their separation payment. It's been so long and people are so used to it. It's, "I want to go now." We have almost a split depending on your years of service.
4 Structure Union/Management Relations
we have a situation that is quite critical in Mexico, there is the intent of the union leadership and management to establish an alliance to face the competition. This has accelerated even more the process of reengineering, which leads one to ask, "What will happen once competition begins?" It's going to be a contradictory reality for us.
This unionmanagement alliance brings us problems. Not only the normal anguish, but there is an additional ideological component. They say, "One has to wear the company badge [hay que poner la camiseta], that one has to assume the challenges put forth by management, in order to preserve jobs.
In Europe, cooperation takes a whole different limelight.
5 Collective Bargaining Agreement
The company said the program was not meant to eliminate employees. My job is to protect the membership the best I can, not to make the business better. What we did do was negotiate a no layoff clause. In 1992, we negotiated a no layoff clause in the collective bargaining agreement. In 1994, the contract expired. Through their process reengineering, the company determined there were many surplus employees. A month ago, we ended an 8week strike to protect our people. The company agreed to "no permanent layoffs."
Question: How many of the findings of the group are now in the contract?
Answer: No. It's all dead at the end, the union ultimately took over control and had our agenda running for six months. We were fixing things, we were making the jobs better, we were protecting the jobs. That's when they started putting up the roadblocks.
6 More Militant Education
One thing we have to do is become more militant about what's going on. The company's agenda is bucks, not to create jobs. I realize that our members are asked to participate and a lot of them want to participate. We need to ensure they are secure in that participation, in terms of benefits and conditions of employment. Reengineering means the elimination of jobs, the degradation of jobs. We're saying there's a price to doing that.
7 No involvement in Running Business
Question: What did CEP do during the 18months the reengineering program was in force?
Answer: Yes, we actually went through the mapping process. It was smoke and mirrors. They were playing mental gymnastics with us.
In the STRM, we have a training course. Some union members are very uncritical of management. The ideological force of the business is quite strong with respect to this reengineering. We were going to try to revert the methodology in order to apply it to the problems that we have within the union. But from what we could see, while some groups of workers had a critical attitude, others were accepting everything. In these work places, work schedules simply were not honored. You could be working from 9 to 8. Even at 5 or 6 o'clock at night you could be working. They were leaving until 8 o'clock.
It didn't work this way with more critical union members. We said, "We'll see you tomorrow." The most uncritical, however, remained at work. They aren't taking into account the human factor that in reality exists within any business. In applying reengineering, one must consider the workerbusiness dynamics instead of relying only on cold data.
The union completely agrees that these costs must be borne, even when the substance of these changes attacks the very existence of the union, which to us seems quite backward. It is very difficult to change the union leadership's position. In our section, we have tried to build a plan, above all with respect to technological change. We have begun to pull together a program. We are inviting our union brothers and sisters to join this. This is the most we have been able to do, given that the union had agreed to follow the program.
8 No Union Label/Agenda
9 Seek Alternatives
You have to stay in there. You do need alternatives. Some are oldfashioned ones. The company said the payphone division should be sold off. If the company is supposed to do things in the best interests of the business, they shouldn't be doing this. When we got a rumor, we asked for a temporary restraining order. The act of walking into federal Court made it a bigger story. To the man who was running the division, we argued that it was a breach of the public trust. The judge is looking at the evidence. Meanwhile, it stalls the company's business plan.
10 Stock/Leverage
You need to know where you want to end up. Unions enter into programs with a defensive posture. The key problem is that companies earn record profits and record returnoninvestment. We need to be more offensive, rather than defensive. We need to identify where we can make gains: higher pay, job descriptions, shorter work week, etc.
Another key thing is to understand that amount of resources the union would have to put out to deal with this. Unions work in confrontational mode. This is a completely different way of working and thinking. You better have that done up front. The amount of time and energy to prevent them from going down a rat hole _ it's a lot.
At SW Bell, many of our members are stockholders. If we combine all of our stock and send somebody to the meeting, we can achieve things. Let's hit them where it hurts.
11 Community Involvement
Our brothers and sisters at Pac Bell in San Diego put up a picket. As well as hitting the stockholders, we need to get our communities involved. Now through their protest action, the workers managed to keep the San Diego office open and they have had some success in Orange and LA counties as well. If we get the community involved and let them know what their power is, I'm sure we'd get some support.
12 Control Training Programs
There are two processes that STRM worker members face: the control over work and the loss of employment. The responsibility of retraining has generated fear with respect to changes in the business. We have to go, as Dave Newman sets forth, giving responses to the changes that management imposes. We can't not sit waiting. We have to be studying them systematically so that we can avoid being controlled. We workers have to accept the risk of giving a response.
Another important aspect is the ideological. In 1990, a contract was established whose administrative and labor relations changes totally transformed the dynamic. The ideological campaign was very strong. The role of the union has been reduced. It has been reducing the participation of workers in union life. The problem is the need to create confidence towards the union in a situation where the loss of employment is almost inevitable.
Although we have an agreement which says there will be no layoffs, this does not mean that we may not have to soon negotiate early retirement agreements. We feel that our union brothers and sisters are very fearful and paralyzed. It is very important to create policies that confront the changes that the industry faces.
Maybe one step we can take is to take control of training for our membership.
13 No Damage Control Mode
Reengineering is not working at Ameritech. I'll give two examples. There is the assumed response, more commonly known as the front room and back room. They merge marketing and technical people in commercial service. They spent millions of dollars to move people physically. It lasted 18 months. It's going back to where we started.
The other one was the realignment of the business into what they call "business units." They did the first part of it which was to realign the technicians, customer service people along the lines of the size of the customers. For two years they did this and it's not working. We went from having the best service record in the US. for speed and quality of service to now having customers wait a week for service, which is unheard of. The company has paid millions in fines. Last week, they announced they're going to redesign the jobs. Off the record, what they're doing is going back to the old system. In the meantime, the customer suffers.
You're right, we need to be there with job security. We damn well better have a strategy. We must think strategically. There is no employee involvement language in our contract, once we set our agenda and used their language against them. We need to say, "These are our union values. We'll do this stuff, but we want something in return." We mirror their behaviors and they no longer want to do anything with us. The company walked away. Now they're doing reengineering. We are not involved, but our members know we are willing and the company won't play ball along union values.
One thing we need to oppose is the consolidation of centers.
14 Communication with Membership
The other piece of this are things like process mapping. Our own members can deskill their own jobs. It can not only be used to say that someone isn't needed, it can also be used to build scab handbooks, so the boss can bring anybody in. The other thing is you'll see the results of process mapping at the bargaining table.
15 Strong Union People
You need to have your best and strongest people involved. You need to have people who understand collective bargaining thoroughly. You need people who understand how the company works. You need people who understand union principles and who aren't going to budge. I can't overestimate how much they push you to bend your principles. If you don't have your strongest, best people in the committee, you're in trouble.
We have two union members on the Board of Directors. We need to have a committee equal in members and decisionmaking authority. We needed to have a crossfunctional team. And then we needed to have everybody involved and people had to be accountable.
16 Structure
At SaskTel, there are two worker representatives, one male and one female. Elections are every other year. The positions are twoyears, with overlapping terms so that one person is always experienced.
Question: Were the six committee members the same the whole time? Answer: There were shifts. Gord was involved the entire two years.
17 Extensive Training/Before Union
We should go through the tools you might need. One is to be sure to have a policy or agree not to have a policy regarding participation. And you should have a debate on that.
The "what ifs" become very critical. We were prepared for this. The debate allowed us to set out the absolute principles that we won't give an inch on. The IBEW local in Saskatchewan got killed on this because they didn't have that debate.
There were six union members, you need to prepare the union members of the committee.
18 Share Information on Consultants
Another thing is regarding tours, you need to find a way to talk to people in the work place regarding the program. Is it really working?
Tours ought to be paid for by the employer. But it's important to do regardless. People on the teams need training about how to work with managers and communicate to the union.
Regarding consultants, I think these people are very dangerous people. They had no understanding of Canadian culture. They had no understanding of Saskatchewan culture. They had no understanding of a union culture. Nor did they care. They had a kickass mentality. If anyone goes in their way, you got your ass kicked.
In the US, we need to have a union database on consultants. We all keep making the same mistakes and trade unionists know. We need to share more information and names.
Consultants will stay as long as they can. That's how they get their money. The Symmetric group charged $1,000 a day plus expenses and a trip home every weekend to Boston.
It would be nice if we could identify unionfriendly consultants. We all need to find a way to collect information on good consultants, such as Jerry Tucker of New Directions.
Health and safety is very important. It's an understatement to say reengineering is very stressful. You need to monitor this and you need to communicate to the local, the national union, and the membership.
Another issue is things to avoid. Some of the pitfalls of reengineering include poor team members, coaptation, lack of communication, hidden agendas by the company, a lack of commitment by management, and antiunion consultants.
We close with two questions: "Will you become involved in reengineering and will you participate? Do you see any value to participating in reengineering?
Does reengineering work? My response to this is, "For whom?" It's easy to step back and laugh at the company. It's kind of a joke in a way. But it's not a joke. The companies make a lot of money over it, by downsizing. They gain control over the work process. And that's what reengineering's goal is.
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Organizing
After hearing the presentations by RodriguezJones, Madsen and Jimenez, conference participants compared some of the characteristics and activities between unions in different countries.
It was discussed for instance that prior to 1950, there were two separate telephone companies in Mexico. El Sindicato de Telefonistas de la Republica Mexicana (STRM), was formed by the merger of the Ericson workers' union with that of Mexicana workers and in 1976, Francisco Hernández Juárez became Secretary General (president) of the union as a result of a movement that paralyzed telephone service throughout the nation.
The reason organizing in Mexico is different from the other two North American countries is because unions are organized differently in Mexico. In Mexico for instance, union membership is obligatory. This means that you don't have to work as hard for member support, and to that extent, STRM does not allocate a specific amount of its budget to an organizing program so the organizing efforts and initiatives rest on a number of union activists.
On the other hand, the decision of which union gets to represent the workers is basically a decision that is made by the government. This provides a great opportunity for corruption. Thus, to get your union recognized, requires a very hard struggle.
Union recognition is granted by the government throughout the country. However, in order to gain official recognition, the union has to demonstrate that it has the majority of workers on its side. Otherwise often there is a preagreement between the owner and a specific union since the law says that when a new business is established, it has to establish a collective bargaining agreement. This practice however, sometimes leads to "Ghost" contracts which only guarantee what Federal Labor Law demands from the employer and sometimes not even that. These type of contracts create working conditions which are very low regarding health and safety and salary.
Despite the corruption, one has to keep in mind that unions in Mexico are born originally out of worker struggle and that although the government has been able to coopt the leadership to a certain point, not all Mexican labor history consists of the selling of protection contracts.
The new developing conditions require that we come to understand the U.S. and Canadian experience. This opens an opportunity to change some of the union culture where they have to become more representative unions. Each time, we get closer. We need to, for survival's sake.
It was also observed that many of the same things occur in the United States and Mexico, especially fear.
In the United States, it was observed that there is a new AFLCIO, but there are still old problems. One of the issues that came up was the Associate Members program for the purpose of bringing in nonunion people.
Accordingly, this program was developed by the AFLCIO and gives out credit cards in the union to people who are members at large and can only pay a nominal fee of $1$3 a month in order to access a packet of benefits that are available only for unions
It is reported to be a gateway to try to bring in workers who you've targeted but can't organize yet.
One of the criticisms that came up was that the company that administers the Associate Membership program had just contracted with Household Credit Services, a very large nonunion outfit. Reportedly, they got a $30 million contract, between $15 and $30 million on a $3 billion volume of business. The fee structure is much more favorable than the Union Bank of New York.
You have to ask how the unionprivilege company would give its business to a nonunion company.
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