GOVERNMENT & POLICY RALLY Union chemical workers demonstrate at DuPont's Deepwater, Ν J . , plant.
UNION BLUES Chemical worker unions struggle with plant shutdowns, layoffs, and antiunion climate JEFF JOHNSON, C&EN WASHINGTON
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HESE ARE TOUGH TIMES FOR
chemical workers and unions. Jobs and union membership are in decline, reduced by a combi nation of automation, job out sourcing, plant shutdowns, corporate merg ers, and offshore relocations. U.S. workers and unions face a national climate that en courages capital flight to the less developed world and discourages union organizing. Roger Bradley, organizing director for the United Steelworkers (USW), estimates there are about 48,000 chemical union members in his union. And Jack Graczyk, director of research, communications, and education for the International Chemical Workers Union Council (ICWUC), says his union has another 23,000 chemical union workers. These 71,000 chemical workers make up the bulk of the industry's union members. The history ofthe chemical sector is one ofmergers, declining jobs, and falling union membership. Unions ofchemical workers gp back to before the Second World War and reached a high in the late 1960s and early 1970s of about 180,000 members, says Les Leopold, director of the Labor Institute in Newark City Union membership was flat during the 70s and then began a slow re treat, which continues today. However,
unions have played a leadership role in improving working conditions and pay in this key industrial sector, Leopold adds. The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) characterizes the sec tor as one ofhigher pay and longer working hours than other rnanufactxiring industries. Larger chemical companies, it says, have the hallmark of continuous production, rotat ing shifts, and large capital expenditures. Most chemical industry jobs, except in pharmaceuticals, are in larger companies, BLS says. The largest 20% of factories that employed more than 50 workers in 2002 had more than 80% of the industry's jobs. The plants are mostly clean, but loud and hot, and dangerous working conditions pervade the industry, BLS continues. Looking at the period to 2012, BLS pre dicts that U.S. chemical industry output will grow, but employment in the chemi cal sector, excluding pharmaceuticals, will decline by 16%. It cites the causes as au tomation, production efficiency, mergers, foreign production and competition, and relocating U.S. production to other coun tries, particularly Asia and Latin America, to lower production costs and place plants nearer to expanding overseas markets. The numbers are far from exact, how ever, and understanding the chemical sec-
tor is difficult. Questions loom as to who is a chemical worker today and who is a production worker. It is unclear, exactly how many workers are in the broad swath of chemically relat ed jobs. USW, for instance, says it repre sents another 70,000 workers at plastics and rubber plants, as well as some 26,000 who work in refineries and petrochemical production. The chemical sector appears more union ized than manufacturing overall, in which about 8% of the workforce is unionized. Several government and private labor econ omists estimate that about 14% of the ba sic chemical workforce is unionized and about 22% ofrefineryworkers are inunions. Nationally, USW represents about 850,000 union manufacturing workers in a wide range of industrial jobs. Until last April, it had about 20,000 chemical work er members, drawn into USW through past mergers of small chemically related unions. In April, USW formally merged again, this time with the Paper, Allied In dustrial, Chemical & Energy Workers In ternational Union (PACE). PACE had a few more chemical workers than did USW, but they were only a small component of its 300,000 total members. For its part, PACE had gained its chemi cal membership in 1999 when the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union merged with the paper workers. Looking at ICWUC, Graczyk explains that it was an independent union from the 1940s until 1996 when it merged with the 1.4 million-member United Food & Com mercial Workers Union. He says there were some 100,000 chemical workers in his union in the 1960s. The unions have members at many chemically related manufacturers, both large and small, includinghundreds ofplants and many, many companies. Historically, USW has represented workers at Dow fa cilities, and PACE, even before it merged with USW, had begun an organizing cam paign at DuPont. The DuPont campaign has grown as the union began a national or ganizing effort aimed at a half-dozen plants and DuPont fought back. The effort is be ing closely watched by many in labor.
Unions have increased productivity and have made managers manage better/' WWW.CEN-0NLINE.ORG
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GOVERNMENT & POLICY Both Graczyk and Bradley want to see their numbers grow, and Bradley holds up the model of refining. He says USW repre sents workers in 76% of petroleum indus try output, giving USWpower in the sector. At refineries, USW uses "pattern bar gaining" in which the union focuses its re sources in contract negotiations with a sin gle company—Shell for the last two four-year negotiating cycles—and that con tract becomes the template for the rest of the industry. It saves the union time and
money, and it produces an industrywide contract. Although basic chemical production has its share of large companies and plants, the union has never had the density in mem bers or power to bargain as it does at re fineries, Bradley notes. Bradley and Graczyk both hope that the most recent mergers will give them more strength. "The only way to fight is big," Graczyk puts it. USW announced it will devote some $30 million to organizing,
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[email protected] which will include the chemical sector (C&ENJan.l7,pagel3). Neither Bradley nor Graczyk are will ing to share organizing plans. As Bradley states: "Why should I lay my cards on the table?" One former PACE official, however, notes that the union must develop a new and better organizing strategyforthe sec tor in the wake of the new power, resources, and hope that came with the merger. How to increase membership is not just the chemical sector's problem, the official not ed. The leadership of the AFL-CIO is deeply embroiled in a divisive debate over organizing resources and membership dis appointment over the failure of top lead ers to expand the federation. Graczyk predicts the union will in creasingly broaden its view of membership and expand into chemical service sectors such as chemical cleanup activities. He notes that health and safety are key to the industry, and more organizing campaigns will relate to safer working conditions. He stresses, however, that organizing is getting much harder, management more aggressive, and government less helpful to unions. "For instance, in the past, we used to be able to get more than 50% of work ers in an unorganized plant to sign up with the union, and the company would recognize their right to bargain with out an election. But no more," he says. Now the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that the employer can chal lenge the signatures and force an election. Graczyk charges that management, in opposition to the union, has increased ef forts to intimidate workers and to present more thinly veiled threats to shut down plants if workers vote the union in. He al so complains of union resources being spent inright-to-workstates to aid work ers represented by the union who do not pay union dues. "This is a tough industry," says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor educa tion research at Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations. "It is mo bile with some of the biggest multinational companies in the world." Between 1999 and 2001, she estimates, 144,000 chemical and petrochemical workers lost jobs in the U.S., and 28,000 of them were union workers. "When man agement threatens to shut down a plant," she adds, "it has to be seen as real by chem ical workers who have watched plants close and jobs go." DuPont is frequently cited by unions as a key to organizing chemical workers.
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Over the past half-dozen years, DuPont has announced new plant consolidations, layoffs, and a global shift ofproduction to mostly Asian markets (C&EN, Dec. 8, 2003, page 7). USW's Rick Massengill and Shawn Gilchrist are responsible for organizing at DuPont. Gilchrist, who focuses solely on DuPont, says he wasfirstapproached by a DuPont worker who wanted to join PACE in 1998. DuPont has several independent unions that are not part of the AFL-CIO and were organized by the company a half-century ago. So far, USWhas won bargaining rights at five DuPont plants—it was six plants, until DuPont shut one down. Massengill runs the USW organizing program for "affiliates," defined as nonunion plant organizations. He estimates some 200,000 potential USW members are in affiliate organizations throughout manufacturing. HOWEVER, Massengill says, "people are afraid, especially now with plants shutting down and jobs being scarce." He says plant officials at several DuPont sites have warned that if the union comes in, they will have to shut down the plant. "Now, that is illegal," he says. "So we took our charges to the National Labor Relations Board, and theyfinallyruled and required DuPont to post a sign saying they won't do it again. But they still do it, and the appeal process wound up just stalling the election." "We are not nonunion," DuPont corporate spokeswoman Leslie Beckhoff counters. "We already have unions." Workers at the plants are paid well, she says, making $20 or more an hour and sometimes more than $100,000 ayearwith overtime. The union is pushing for pattern bargaining throughout the corporation, she says, and DuPont strongly opposes this. "Each DuPont site bargains separately, and that's the way we want to keep it," says Beckhoff "Each site has specific problems that must be addressed there." Of the five DuPont sites where USW has won therightto bargain, only two have negotiated a contract, she says. The union represents about 1,900 DuPont workers, she says, and about 70% of DuPont's 35,000 U.S. workers are not in any union. Repeatedly, U.S. union officials warn of the impact of outsourcing of U.S. jobs, and Bradley and others worry that for chemical companies the tempo is likely to increase sharply But Beckhoff counters, "We are a global company and we have to be competitive and
operate in a global environment, locating our plants near where our customers are." She adds that expanding global production is an industry initiative.
