While many local unions are using that newfound clout to push for higher wages and health-care insurance, they are also struggling to convince the newest generation of workers that organized labor is necessary.
In Missoula, there are unions for teachers, plumbers, carpenters, musicians, electricians, housekeepers, restaurant staff and nursing home workers. Their enrollment numbers reflect a gradual shift away from an economy firmly based in the natural resources industry toward one rooted in a variety of services.
“In Missoula, in our great heyday, there were several sawmills in this immediate area and they were all represented by three different locals,” said union representative Michael Woodworth.
Those groups gradually merged into a local organization that currently counts only 117 members, he said. Back in the 1970s, that membership totaled 1,100.
In fact, without enough members to support a full-time representative, Woodworth may soon lose his job. If that happens, members will have to rely on local officers and part-time stewards.
“The local will be here as long as we have members,” said Woodworth, who has been a member for 35 years and worked at the union for about 20 years. “The problem is keeping the local staffed full-time.”
His group received its charter from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America on June 17, 1942. It celebrated its 65th anniversary this summer with a barbecue that drew both current workers and retirees.
They aren't required to maintain their membership, he said.
“They do it because they take great pride in the union,” he said. “Most of them have been union members all their working lives.”
While the local chapter is undoubtedly in decline, the Carpenters Industrial Council, which is affiliated with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, is growing by “leaps and bounds,” Woodworth said. It has more than 500,000 members nationwide, the majority of which are involved in the construction industry.
“There's a great need, we feel, across this whole country to organize industrial labor,” he said.
In the United States, more than 15 million people belong to a labor union of some kind, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The percentage of workers represented by unions, however, has continued to fall. In the 1960s and early '70s, 24 percent of the nation's work force belonged to a union. Today, only about 12 percent do.
The United Steelworkers of America Local 885 includes about 400 workers at Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., plus an additional 50 members at two local trucking companies.
“In recent years, we took a big reduction in members,” said local union member and committee chairman Bob Johnson.
The entire wood products industry is scaling down its work force in a bid to remain competitive, he said.
Smurfit-Stone is reportedly working on a reorganization plan that may require some job cuts. Meanwhile, the union is trying to negotiate a new contract with the company without much success.
The former six-year contract expired May 21, and workers will continue to operate under the terms of the old agreement until a new one is forged, Johnson said.
The company's administrators have been occupied with the impending sale of a mill in Alabama to Georgia-Pacific for about $335 million, and the union's international representative has been busy trying to hash out a new contract at a mill owned by another company.
Twice, local union members have voted to strike if an agreement isn't reached soon.
The industry is a volatile one, Johnson said, but in general, workers at Smurfit-Stone feel their jobs are stable. The company has shown a willingness to work with its employees for the benefit of all.
“People have an impression that unions are strictly to get the most out of the employers for the employees,” Johnson said. “That's not true. In fact, I think the unions are working more with employers to figure out how to keep the company afloat.”
That's especially true in the industrial trades as managers realize the limits of new technology, he said.
“We can't defeat technology, and there's a point where technology can't replace workers,” he said.
While declining employment at the state's largest companies has made Montana's unions weaker than they once were, Johnson has noticed a growing interest among workers at smaller businesses.
“There's a lot of people interested statewide in getting unions because people feel if they have a standard set of rules within their workplace, it makes it a more stable place to work. Unions in the state are growing.”
In fact, Montana has more than 30,000 union members - a per-capita density that's higher than the national average.
The United Association of Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Local No. 459 is one of the few unions in Missoula that doesn't occupy a tiny suite at the union hall on Main Street.
It is located, instead, inside a large facility on South Fifth Street West, where it can offer training labs.
“Commercial plumbing has been strong for a number of years now,” said business manager Steve Carey. “We've grown about 16 percent in the last five years. Western Montana is in need of skilled craftsmen. Whether union or non-union, there's a real lack of skilled professional craftsmen.”
The local now has nearly 200 active members - and is growing, he said. But not growing nearly fast enough.
It takes at least five years to train a journeyman, Carey noted, and western Montana's economy is growing faster and demanding more journeymen than are currently available. Fewer young people are being trained, and the average age within the industry is increasing.
“These guys are retiring right and left right now,” he said.
At the moment, the local has 16 apprentices in its program and is accepting applications for more. Members are encouraged to spread the word that they work in a respectable field looking forward to long-term demand and high wages.
“My guys right now are making $25 plus benefits on their checks right now, so they're doing pretty good,” Carey said.
Wages are rising for some of the state's lowest-paid workers, thanks to the recent minimum wage increase and to the efforts of unions like the Unite Here Local 427, said representative Mark Anderlik.
His union, which represents restaurant, hotel and nursing home workers, is also seeing rapid growth, despite a sizable loss in members because of the closure of a half-dozen 4Bs restaurants.
“I'm sometimes surprised more people aren't banging down our door,” added Anderlik, president of the state's Central Labor Council, which has more than 20 affiliated unions.
A tight labor market has given workers an edge, he said, but it hasn't stopped some unscrupulous employers from trying to exploit the lowest-paid Montana workers.
Some people are still being swindled out of overtime pay, subjected to unsafe working conditions and intimidated into silence, Anderlik said.
“This kind of stuff goes on all the time all over the place,” he said.
While union membership is no guarantee of success, he added, it does give workers a more powerful voice and a group to stand with so they don't feel so alone.
Across the country, unions are returning to their roots and becoming more involved in social justice issues, such as affordable health care, he said. At the same time, they are abandoning some outdated views and embracing new populations. Undocumented workers and illegal aliens, for instance, are joining unions in increasing numbers, Anderlik noted.
“It totally turned around 180 degrees,” he said.
Still, unions must constantly work to remain relevant in the eyes of laborers. Most people, Anderlik said, tend to think of unions as part of Montana's history. They assume new laws have left workers with little to complain about.
In fact, unions still have a lot to fight for, said International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 768 business manager Larry Langley.
“I think that organized labor faces many of the same challenges today as it has for many decades,” said Langley, whose union is based in Kalispell. “Labor has had a lot of success in some of the more serious and dramatic issues that used to face labor. In some ways, unions are a victim of their own success.”
He sometimes hears that unions aren't needed anymore, that labor laws have fixed what was broken.
“I tell them labor law is very limited,” he said.
There are now minimum wage laws, safety regulations and ongoing legislative support for some of the more important benefits, such as health care. But workers still experience problems with fairness and consistency, and unions give them a means of redress that would overwhelm the system if it were brought to the courts.
The IBEW is growing in western Montana, Langley said. The local currently has 650 members and is in the process of completing a contract that will bring it to about 760 members.
Those members, he said, represent an array of workers from power company employees to construction electricians.
“We have a very diverse crowd,” he said.
It recently organized Frontier Telephone in Libby, and held an election with a little more than 100 Blackfoot Telephone employees.
It used to be that members all worked together at a single major employer, usually a big industrial facility, Langley said. Now, members are organized at a number of smaller companies in several industries, and cover a larger geographical area.
The IBEW, for one, continues to reach out to more workers - and it continues to meet with staunch opposition from some major employers, he said: “That's one of those things that is no different in 2007 than it was in 1907.”
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