PACIFIC BASIN ECONOMIC COUNCIL
MAIN PAGE | SPEECHES & EDITORIALS | 1999 | TECHNOLOGY VS. LABOR

Technology vs. Labor Mr. Morton Bahr President, Communications Workers of America Vice President, American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) May 18, 1999 I am honored to be here and to represent AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. American labor is proud of the role it plays in a world that is growing more competitive as it simultaneously grows smaller due to rapidly escalating technology. The topic we are discussing — Technology versus Labor — is provocative. It assumes that labor unions resist technological change. While there are still some in labor and management who have not yet learned how to work together to introduce technological change into the workplace, the vast majority have come to understand that the future of the enterprise depends on how well they work together. As we enter the 21st Century, it is interesting to note that it was just about five years ago that the last ship-to-shore radio station was shut down. Based on every measurement known, we know that over the next ten years the world will experience an unprecedented technological revolution where more knowledge and information will be created than in all of previous recorded time. The challenge facing each of us is whether we have the wisdom and vision to make the technology work for us in the best ways possible. As a union that has been on the cutting edge of technological change for more than fifty years, I want to share our vision of the future with you. And I believe that vision is reflective of organized labor, in general. This technology has the power to change the way we live, the way we work, the way we learn and the way we receive medical care. It has the power to raise people and entire nations from poverty. The Communications Workers of America, and indeed, most of American labor, fully understand that to successfully compete in the global economy, our members must be skilled and continually trained on new technologies. Today, American unions add substantial value to their employers because of our ability to help them introduce and implement technological improvements more efficiently in the workplace. How can I make that claim in the face of the prevailing myths about restrictive union work rules or our resistance to change? We have, for the first time, qualitative evidence that a union workplace is more productive in every respect compared to a nonunion workplace. The National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, recently commissioned two researchers to analyze the impact of workplace practices on productivity. They released their study last fall. It is called: “How to Compete: The Impact of Workplace Practices and Information Technology on Productivity.” One of the researchers, Sandra Black, works for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She and Lisa M. Lynch of Tufts University found that union workplaces which promote joint decision-making and reward workers for improvements experience productivity increases of up to twenty percent. Even union workplaces with traditional adversarial labor relations outperform nonunion companies that have adopted so-called high performance workplace practices. The researchers also found that the higher the average educational level of frontline workers, the higher the productivity gains. This is what they said: “The presence of a union can have a positive effect on labor productivity because they lower costs of introducing new workplace practices.” Why? Workers are more secure about improving productivity because they know the union will protect their employment security. Agreements between the union and management are legally enforceable, which gives workers greater confidence in making changes. The union negotiates appropriate compensation incentives for productivity improvements. The company saves money when it institutes new workplace practices because they deal with union specialists who help to implement the plan, rather than expensive outside consultants. The union assures a smooth transition. These productivity gains are not limited to the private sector. CWA represents printers at the U.S. Government Printing Office. GPO is responsible for printing the daily Congressional Record and other documents for the U.S. government. In March, PC Week magazine cited the GPO as one of the leading public sector technology innovators in the nation. CEO’s and analysts who think that unions somehow impede technological progress are old-fashioned and out-of-step with what is really happening in today’s workplaces. CWA’s experiences are a good example of the labor movement’s modern approach to technology. CWA today represents some 630,000 workers, most of whom work in the converging information industries of telecommunications, broadcasting, computers, publishing, cable TV and other information media. They work on the cutting edge of the digital revolution. I believe our experiences and solutions offer a blueprint for the entire information technology industry, as well as for other industries. We believe the objective of technological change should be to create high performance workplaces. High performance workplaces require frontline workers who are continuously trained, skilled, educated and empowered to make their own decisions on the job. When AT&T was divested in 1984, domestic and foreign competition moved into the U.S. telecommunications industry virtually overnight. No longer could we guarantee job security so that an eighteen year old could join the telephone company and retire thirty or thirty-five years later, often from the same work location. In the decade following the breakup, between 125,000 and 150,000 jobs were lost in what used to be the Bell System. We were being impacted simultaneously by deregulation, competition and rapidly escalating technology. No longer could the telephone company introduce technology into the workplace at what we referred to as a humane pace - allowing the workforce to adjust. We carefully charted a new course that was to work to provide our members with employment security. That simply meant that we would give them the opportunity to make themselves more employable through education and training programs. We negotiated groundbreaking education benefits with our employers. Our members would have the chance to utilize the opportunities to prepare themselves for promotion, train for new technology, for a new career or education for self-improvement. We believed that no matter the technology, economic pressures, political environment or other structural change in their lives, employable workers will always have a competitive edge to get meaningful, good paying jobs. And this proved to be true. The first breakthrough came in 1986 with AT&T. We established the Alliance for Employee Growth and Development, the first non-profit, jointly owned education and training corporation in the telecommunications industry. The Alliance’s sole purpose is to provide broad educational opportunities for the employees of AT&T. In its first ten years of operation, the Alliance served more than 100,000 employees. A similar non-profit, jointly owned corporation was also negotiated with US West. It is called Pathways to the Future. At one time, more than 27 percent of the employee body was enrolled in college level courses. We are proud of our program with Bell Atlantic. It is called Next Step. Employees in New York and New England who qualify are enrolled in a community college. The coursework is designed to provide an Associate Degree in Telecommunications Technology. Students work four days a week, and go to school on the fifth day, for which the company pays them. This may very well be the only such program in America with a major corporation. Similar joint programs exist with all the telephone companies and Lucent Technologies. Through these efforts, we have forged new programs in adult learning. One such program is the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. When completed, the student receives a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certificate, which leads to higher wage jobs and additional employment security. In the past, AT&T hired expensive outside contractors with MCSE certification. As a result of the Alliance’s MCSE program, AT&T is saving hundreds of thousands of dollars annually because they can use their own MCSE certified network professionals. So, investing in your workforce really does pay off. Many industry leaders predict a shortage of 2 million skilled techs in the next four years. We have joined hands with many of our employers, nonunion companies and the U.S. Department of Labor to address this serious problem. CWA, GTE, Bell Atlantic, SBC, U S WEST and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers have formed the National Advisory Coalition for Telecommunications Education and Learning. It is the first industry wide, union-management training coalition of its kind in the U.S. Our goal is to train thousands of new technicians for jobs in the industry. The Coalition received initial financial support of $500,000 from the Sloan Foundation and the first students were enrolled last February. One of the more exciting partnerships is the one we have with Cisco Systems to certify technicians on Cisco manufactured equipment. Cisco is the largest maker of routers and servers for the Internet. It is also a nonunion company, one of the most well known Silicon Valley firms. What attracted Cisco to CWA was the work we were doing with a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to train outgoing military personnel on information technology. In his announcement, John Morgridge, Cisco Chairman, said he wanted to partner with CWA because of our outstanding record in employee education and our reputation as a labor union. In recognition of the importance of skills training and lifelong learning, the key industry-union funds joined together to form the Association of Union-Management Joint education Programs. The Association is an umbrella organization through which we will have the ability to coordinate activities. While the charter members of the Association were the joint union-management entities in auto, steel, telecommunications, airlines, garment and the Ohio State government, we soon discovered that there are at least thirty other joint union-management educational programs that commit at least one million dollars annually to frontline worker education. Technological change is forcing us to rethink our attitudes toward education in the United States. An estimated 75 percent of the current U. S. workforce will need significant retraining over the next decade. Led by American labor and other concerned political, academic, and business leaders, there is a national movement building to make education a lifelong pursuit. We see the workplaces of the 21st Century as the new classrooms for the future. A high performance workplace requires workers who can think for themselves, adapt to change quickly, work in teams and make decisions. The Tayloristic method of management that existed for so many years in the Untied States is no longer appropriate. Under the Taylor approach, workers were expected to leave their brains at home and simply perform the tasks that were assigned to them by their supervisor. CWA has negotiated several different approaches to employee empowerment and decision making. One of the more advanced is Workplace of the Future at AT&T. WPOF involves the employee and the union in all phases of the business. It requires a great deal of trust between the parties and the willingness on the part of the company to share information. It provides for a mechanism to amend the labor agreement during its term in order to accommodate changes in the marketplace. In WPOF, the union is considered a valued strategic partner in the success of the business. Out of these experiences, our employers have learned that cooperation must be a two-way street. Management must recognize the institutional needs of the union and the ability of the union to grow with the company. Throughout the industry, we have fought for and won the right to organize the new lines of business or acquisitions free of management interference. We have won the right to represent the workers doing the new jobs created by changing technology. We cannot view technological change in a vacuum. Technology issues must be seen from the context of the global economy. The fundamental question for workers in the 21st Century is whether in the new competitive global environment, will employers take a low road strategy of creating jobs that pay low wages and provide few benefits, or will they go the high road of high-wage, high-skilled jobs in high performance workplaces? We are concerned about conditions that we see in many parts of the world: child labor; exploited labor; prison labor; unsafe, dangerous workplaces; and union leaders who are jailed, threatened, intimidated, shot and even killed for trying to make life better for their people. If technology is used for low road gains, to enslave, harass, speed up, spy on or exploit workers, the worldwide labor movement will resist with all of its power. Technology must be used to improve the lives of all people. But this is not yet happening. There currently exists an economic divide in the world that is so great that public support, which an open trading system must rely upon, is deeply threatened, particularly in the United States. The United Nations recently reported, for example, that some 25 percent of the world’s population of 5.9 billion does not have access to even basic telecommunications services, a huge disparity that is almost hard to believe in this day and age. American labor accepts the technology challenge to make a better life for our members and for all working families. Our blueprint calls for: Protections for workers affected by technological change. Extensive employee education and training. Worker empowerment to make decisions on the job. Union involvement in strategic decision making. Union access to the new jobs created by technology. We will use our voice and our influence to demand that technology work for us, not against us, and that technological change improves our standard of living and the quality of our work lives, our family lives, and the communities where we live. We encourage all employers and policymakers who share our values to join with us to utilize technology in a way such that it serves as the great equalizing economic and social force of the next century.