(The following article by Shella Jacobs appeared on the Arizona Daily Star website on September 1.)
TUCSON, Ariz. — If Tucson were a union town, more of its workers might enjoy low-cost health insurance, retirement packages and guaranteed raises.
Many workers in the retail sector, which makes up about 12 percent of Tucson’s economy, might bargain for higher salaries than the $18,800 average many of them now make – roughly matching the U.S. Census’ poverty threshold for a family of four.
Labor Day, a holiday created by unions more than 100 years ago to honor their contributions to the nation, might be a cause for communitywide celebration – a reminder of the days when workers had little recourse for mistreatment by employers and when just asking about a union could cost you your job.
“Union contracts directly impact the quality of life of workers,” said Joe Bernick, director of the Salt of the Earth Labor College, a school on Tucson’s South Side that offers classes on workers’ rights to anyone interested. “It’s a fact that union workers are paid better; they get more vacation time. It’s a fact that they get better pensions.”
But that’s not to say a stronger union presence would transform Tucson into a proletarian paradise.
Powerful unions could scare off companies unwilling to pay union wages and ultimately drive up the local unemployment rate – now hovering at 4.8 percent, below the national average of 6.2 percent.
If higher wages cut company profits, the businesses might raise costs for consumers, move out of town or go out of business.
“Employers would not be as attracted to the Tucson area,” said Paul Kersey, labor research associate at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan. “You would have a higher-paid work force, but at the same time, a work force that faces a higher rate of unemployment.”
Membership has fallen
But Tucson is not a union town. Aside from the unions that covered the once-thriving mining industry in Arizona, organized labor has never had a strong presence anywhere in the state.
In the last five years, local membership has declined sharply, especially in the private sector.
The union membership rate nationwide stood at 13 percent last year, versus about 14 percent in 1997, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In Tucson, the rate last year was just 4 percent – 10,500 people, according to research compiled by Trinity University in San Antonio. That’s down from the 1997 figure of 7 percent, or 20,700 people.
In the public sector, local membership was 17 percent of the work force, or 12,600 people, versus 22 percent, or 13,400 people, in 1997.
Those numbers don’t include several thousand nonunion workers covered by labor contracts but who are not dues-paying members. They work in industries including manufacturing, telecommunications, teaching and firefighting.
Membership is low for several reasons:
* Tucson has a limited manufacturing sector, in which unions traditionally have sprouted. As of March, 29,000 Tucson jobs were in the sector, down from 34,000 about two years ago, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security.
* It’s more cost-effective to organize in large companies, where unions can sign up plenty of employees. But the economic landscape here is dotted with small businesses, not big corporations.
* In 1946, Arizona passed a right-to-work law, which allows unions but frees employees who don’t want to be members from having to pay union dues.
Still, supporters insist unions play an important role in today’s workplace. Even now, some sectors are ripe for unionization, said George Bohlander, management professor at Arizona State University.
But high employee turnover, as well as the large number of part-timers and illegal immigrants, makes it difficult to organize in tourism, restaurant and retail jobs. The three sectors combined now account for nearly 23 percent of Tucson’s economy, according to the Department of Economic Security.
Paul Rubin, Southern Arizona director of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said he occasionally fields calls from resort workers asking how to unionize. But not enough support has materialized.
“I suspect part of the problem is that a lot of them are not here legally,” Rubin said.
Employers are willing to give them work. But “whenever they start grumbling, all they have to do is make a phone call” to immigration authorities, Rubin said.
Need for unions questioned
With more employers willing to offer competitive salaries and benefits, many workers question the need for unions.
“My biggest question is: How can the union here help me? And I’ve never gotten an answer,” said Curtis Scarlett, food service manager at Pueblo Magnet High School.
He used to be a union member in San Francisco but has refused to join here. Unions in Tucson can’t offer him better insurance or retirement plans than he already has, he said.
And if he has a beef with his boss?
“I have a legal department that I can go to if I need to deal with a grievance,” Scarlett said.
Poor working conditions in industries such as auto and steel spurred the growth of unions nationwide in the 1930s and 1940s. There had been no comprehensive federal laws covering health and safety, ASU’s Bohlander said. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission wasn’t created until the 1960s.
“Now that we have a lot of protection, unions have kind of worked themselves out of a job,” Bohlander said.
It’s difficult to persuade people to join the union, said Debra Raether, a cafeteria manager at Cragin Elementary School who recently joined Communications Workers of America Local 7026 via the Tucson Unified School District’s supervisor professional unit.
“They think that because they’re college-educated or they have a really good job that they don’t need the union,” Raether said.
But even among employees who see value in a union, Raether said, “there’s a lot of fear of retaliation – that bad things can happen, that your boss will think you’re disloyal because you joined.”
Law is a stumbling block
The right-to-work law makes recruiting new members an uphill climb, Tucson union organizers said.
The law limits the amount of dues they can collect, squeezing budgets for launching more aggressive organizing efforts.
“What it basically is, is the right to work for less. That’s how it’s sold to corporations,” said Robert Martinez, chairman of the Pima Area Labor Federation, which was created earlier this year to bring together local affiliates of the AFL-CIO.
Martinez also is a business manager for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Lodge 933, one of the largest unions in Tucson, with members at Raytheon Missile Systems, Boeing Aerospace Operations and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
“There’s a mind-set that if you come to Arizona, you can pay low wages without union involvement,” Martinez said.
Union members do earn more than those who aren’t included in collective bargaining contracts.
Nationwide and across all industries, wages are 16 percent higher for union employees compared with nonunion workers, according to a recent survey by the Employment Policy Foundation, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C.
Full-time union members earned a median weekly salary of $740 last year, compared with $587 for those not represented by unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And higher pay boosts the economy overall, said Bernick, of the Salt of the Earth Labor College.
“When workers get more money, it gets spent,” he said. “That money has a multiplier effect when it enters the economy and creates more jobs.”
Other labor researchers dispute that. Union demands for higher wages, they said, can push down profits, reduce productivity and raise consumer prices.
“That has an impact on how much a hotel room costs, how much a burger costs,” said Ed Potter, president of the Employment Policy Foundation in Washington, D.C. “There’s no free lunch.”
Still, local union leaders – including those with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Communications Workers of America – are working to make their organizations more of an economic force through focused education and recruiting efforts.
Their effort can take on a religious fervor. Martinez, of the Pima Area Labor Federation, quotes from Ecclesiastes to explain: “Two are better than one: They get a good wage for their labor. If the one falls, the other will lift up his companion.”