Unions want new role in world of high technology

Press, 16 July 1987, Page 13

Unions want new role in world of high technology

NZPA-Reuter Geneva Western trade union movements, weakened by economic recession and wounded by hostile Governments, are groping for a footing in a bewildering new world of high-techno-logy and robot workers. As smoke stacks give way to computer terminals, and jobs disappear, union bosses have seen the power they wielded at the head of armies of organised industrial workers crumble also. Their organisations, founded in the nineteenth century to protect workers against exploitation during the industrial revolution, are running up against increasingly tough management policies at the same time as they try to cope with today’s revolutionary transformation of work patterns and lifestyles. Officials of international labour bodies with headquarters in Geneva acknowledge that union leaders are divided at national and international levels on how to respond to the growing strength and aggressiveness of Right-wing governments and employers.

Some old-school union bosses still advocate militant strategies of class struggle and disruptive strikes. But moderates favour co-operative deals with management that give workers a bigger stake in running their en-

terprises and more opportunity for self-advance-ment, these officials say. Union membership in many countries has slumped in the 1980 s under the combined impact of labour-saving technology, declining manufacturing industries and extensive unemployment Worst hit have been the United States, where only 15 to 17 per cent of the labour force are union members compared with 35 per cent in the 19505, and Britain, whose large labour federation, the Trades Union Congress (T.U.C.), lost nearly three million members, almost a quarter of its former strength, in seven years, according to union statistics.

Unions have turned to rapidly growing service industries — where hitherto they were relatively weakly represented —- to try to recruit new members amongst white collar workers, officials at the Geneva headquarters of the International Labour Organisation (1.L.0.) said. They are also wooing part-time workers and women engaged in shops, office and catering trades. But they have run into problems here too. Some technicians and high-level experts skilled in the workings of the new hightechnology and electronic branches have been reluctant to join unions, Wouter

Van Ginneken, editor of the 1.L.0.’s biennial World Labour Report said. Those who do enlist, as well as recruits from other service industries, have far different and often more sophisticated jobs and demands than those of the skilled craftsmen, factory hands, steelmen, miners and building and transport workers who used to make up the bulk of union ranks, union officials said.

To help labour movements adapt to the transformation wrought by the technological revolution, the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (1.C.F.T.U.), which links 145 organisations with 85 million members in 97 countries, will hold a world congress on “the challenge of change” in Melbourne, next March. Proposals and documents are still being drafted at a series of preliminary meetings, but there is no shortage of ideas on how unions need to change. “Reproaches that unions refuse to recognise reality and go on complacently as before are not true. They are fully aware of the problems and they will discuss them very openly at the congress,” I.C.F.T.U. General Secretary, John Vanderveken, said.

Future union roles and action that have been sug-

gested include amalgamations between industrial and white collar unions, helping train workers for new jobs and skills, greater co-operation with work councils, assisting in management of social security programmes and pension and housing schemes, participating in enterprise management, and share ownership for workers. Not all union chiefs are enthusiastic about the prospect of closer cooperation with managements. Some have suggested that this trend encourages workers to vote for Right-wing governments. Another reproach is that nowadays employers often enter negotiations with the sole aim of squeezing concessions from workers. Vanderveken said he was worried about Rightwing Government pressures on trade unions, and cited specifically the United States and Britain.

“In this period of tremendous change, governments are trying to manage the changes against the trade unions instead of with them,” he said. “Governments like Britain and the United States are conducting deliberate attacks on trade unions, although in order to maintain political stability and democracy they need the full co-operation of the unions in managing the huge changes in in-

dustry and economy and international economic co-operation.” President Reagan stunned United States labour- leaders when he crushed the air traffic controllers’ union in 1981 by sacking 11,400 workers for participating in what he said was an illegal strike against the Government. The controllers had been demanding more pay and a shorter working week. It was not until last month that United States controllers set up a successor union. The British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, has made strong curbs on what she regards as union extremism, a main plank of her Conservative administration. She passed legislation making strike action subject to secret ballot open to all union members, and forbidding secondary picketing by workers not directly involved in an industrial dispute. Union ranks and power have declined in varying degrees in France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and West Germany. But membership has remained stable in Belgium and Austria, and even increased during the recession years in Norway and Denmark. It is rising again in Sweden after turning down in the early 1980 s.