Home > Labor movement gets a face-lift
Un/Employment Trade unions Movement Economy-budget USA
By Jane M. Von Bergen
"Awesome night," said Stephani Passaro, 21, shivering as she ducked into a minivan after a cold night knocking on doors this week in Bensalem’s suburban cul-de-sacs to talk about issues affecting working families.
It was awesome. No dogs chased Passaro and her nine fellow canvassers. Hardly anyone slammed doors on them, and they signed up 275 members to Working America, a 1.2-million-member grassroots affiliate of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions.
Passaro had never been in a labor union and neither has the van’s driver, canvass leader Chris West, 25. Nor has Donna Covely, 44, a Bensalem nurse, one of 275 who joined Thursday.
But they are the new face of the American labor movement - as opposed to the American union movement.
"This is kind of an unofficial union," Covely said.
Exactly.
Even as unions lose clout at the bargaining table and as the percentage of workers represented on the job by unions falls yearly, unions are reaching beyond the bargaining table for the strength in numbers needed to advocate for pro-worker public and business policy.
This week, Working America officially opened an office in Philadelphia with a goal of recruiting 100,000 members in Philadelphia’s suburbs by the end of the year. Important issues? Health care and an increase in the minimum wage.
This month, SinceSlicedBread.com, a project of the Service Employees International Union, announced winners in its contest for ideas to improve the economy. In two months, 22,801 ideas were submitted.
In 2004, the SEIU started its online advocacy group, Purple Ocean, and now has 100,000 members, said Gina Glantz, the SEIU senior adviser who coordinated both projects.
Critics say such programs divert attention from representing current union members or attracting new ones.
"Traditionalists didn’t see any reason for it and saw it as a challenge to real collective bargaining," said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester. "Over the years, there has been a rethinking of this idea."
Karen Nussbaum, director of Working America, agrees.
"A collective bargaining agreement is not the only way a labor movement can represent workers," she said in an interview this week.
Last year, she said, Working America marshaled 65,000 letters to Congress opposing Social Security privatization.
Purple Ocean members sent striking hospital workers in California 4,500 e-mails and letters of encouragement, Glantz said.
Nussbaum said Working America’s purpose is to provide a forum for economic issues for working people who might otherwise be divided along social and cultural lines.
The majority of members, the group says, identify themselves as conservatives or moderates. One-third are "born-again" Christians, and one-third belong to the National Rifle Association. None are AFL-CIO members, but 42 percent come from union families.
"In 2004, our members who are largely moderates and conservative voted overwhelmingly for Kerry over Bush," proof of the value of "information about economic issues in relation to the elections," Nussbaum said.
Working America’s Web site advises on overtime, health care and Social Security while telling workers how to take action. It features "Job Tracker," a list of firms that it says have exported jobs or that have health, safety and workers’-rights violations.
Driving both Purple Ocean and Working America is an increased understanding of the use of the Web as an organizing tool for labor, said sociologist Arthur Shostak, a Drexel University professor emeritus who wrote The CyberUnion Handbook: Transforming Labor Through Computer Technology.
Glantz said she witnessed how 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean’s use of the Internet broke new ground in political campaigning when she worked as a Dean volunteer.
She hired Dean’s Internet gurus as consultants to create SEIU’s Purple Ocean.
"The motivation," she said, "was to experiment with and figure out how to attract the Internet activist community to work on behalf of low-wage workers - to reach out to people who would not be union members, but who would advocate on behalf of the union members and their counterparts in the public at large."
Best Ideas
The Service Employees International Union solicited "the best ideas since sliced bread" to strengthen the U.S. economy and improve workers’ lives. These were voted the best.
Grand prize winner
Peter Skidmore, 41
Project manager, Seattle, Wash.
Idea: Impose a "resource tax" on pollution, fossil fuel and development to fund renewable-energy research and environmental restoration.
Prize:$100,000
Semi-finalists
Leslie Hester, 26
Graduate student, Raleigh, N.C.
Idea: Restructure property taxes to provide equitable funding to all schools. Control tuition at public universities. Increase teacher salaries to attract talent.
Prize: $50,000
Filippo Menczer, 40
Associate professor, Bloomington, Ind.
Idea:Tie minimum wage to the Cost-of-Living Index
Prize:$50,000
SOURCE: Service Employees International Union
ONLINE EXTRA
Learn more about Working America and its focus via http://go.philly.com/WorkingFeb11
Contact staff writer Jane M. Von Bergen at 215-854-2769 or jvonbergen@phillynews.com.