Organized Labor's New Recruits

White collars start to join the blue ones in union ranks 11 my life I've been antiunion. I always felt professionals could look after themselves. But with today's economic and social problems, organizing is the best way to protect what we have." So says Joe Williford, 43, a senior contract administrator with the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARIA). Williford became a union man this summer after MARIA asked its employees to surrender part of their scheduled cost-of-living raises because a delay in fare increases had led to a budget squeeze. Bus drivers and clerical workers, who are represented by the Amalgamated Transit Union, bluntly refused a pay cut. The professional employees, though, had no choice. When they looked at their paychecks in July, they found only 3.5% of an expected 13% inflation cushion. In less than a month half of the 440 professionals had signed cards calling for a union election. The professional workers will probably vote in October on whether or not to have their own union.

White collar unions are not a new phenomenon. The American Federation of Teachers is 64 years old, and the Newspaper Guild was founded in 1933. But office workers have usually thought of themselves as "employees with a difference," says Simon Alpert of the United Auto Workers. They feel closer to management than to hourly production workers.

Now, that psychology is changing. As inflation reduces real incomes and recession erodes job security, office employees are starting to look for a union label. Says Teamster Organizer Regina Polk: "The white collar worker is coming around to realizing that while he is enjoying titles and so-called professionalism, the guy in the warehouse is earning more."

For years, most of the unions belonging to the AFL-CIO regarded white collar people as marginal sources of new members. But labor leaders recognize that this group is the fastest growing segment in society. Between 1970 and 1980, the number of white collar employees increased by 12.5 million, to 50.5 million workers, while blue collar laborers grew by only 2.7 million, to 30.5 million. Says William

Taylor, an official of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU): "Everyone sees the future of the trade union movement in white collar workers."

Unions are now aggressively going after office workers. The OPEIU is mounting a major drive to organize 3,100 engineers, computer programmers and draftsmen at Lockheed's huge Marietta, Ga., aircraft plant; it is also lining up 5,000 employees nationwide at Government Employees Insurance Co. The 1.2 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the most aggressive recruiter in the AFL-CIO. One of AFSCME'S newest targets: engineers and programmers in Boston's booming high-technology firms. Meanwhile, the Teamsters won an election last October to represent 2,000 members of the University of Chicago's nonteaching staff. In quest of new members, the industrial unions are straying from their traditional turf, and this poaching is sparking resentment among the clerical unions. Says an angry OPEIU official: "I wish the Teamsters would get the hell out of here."

In addition, new groups are being formed to organize office employees. Working Women, a Cleveland-based national organization, now has 10,000 clerical workers as members. One of its affiliates in Boston, called simply 9 to 5, has become a clearinghouse and defense group for about 1,000 employees with complaints concerning wage scales, job advancement or age discrimination.

Trying to organize clerical and professional workers involves some difficult adjustments for labor leaders. One of them is dispelling the image that many women have of unions as exclusively and aggressively male dominated. Last month the AFL-CIO elected the first woman to its governing executive council; she is Joyce Miller, a vice president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers.

Another problem is that office employees are usually found in small groups all across the nation. This has, for example, stymied efforts by the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks (BRAC) to represent clerical workers at such airlines as Eastern, TWA and United. "There must be 100,000 of them," says Union Executive Jim Kennedy. "You have to organize the entire airline at once, even though the people are spread all over the country."

For some office workers, unions have a ring around the blue collar. Says Frank Matthews, who helped form the Professional and Technical Employees Association at Lockheed's Georgia plant: "We'd like to stay away from what you might normally think about a union--sticks and clubs and walking the picket line." And traditional organizing techniques often reinforce this picture. Although organizers no longer fit what BRAC President Fred Kroll describes as the "beer belly, T shirt and tattoo" mold, many are still not prepared to talk to an office where there are many middle-aged women.

Labor leaders, however, are willing to learn new techniques because those millions of workers offer a tempting pool. The OPEIU, for example, gives its locals far more autonomy in setting dues and initiation fees than do most unions. It also allows organizations like the Professional and Technical Association to retain their group names instead of becoming Local 400 of the OPEIU. This is an important concession to office workers who often shudder at the term union. Concludes Karen Nussbaum, president of Working Women: "The '80s will be for clerical workers what the '30s were for industrial workers."

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