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Are the unions marching along?

The brotherhood of techies

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By Larry Keller
CNN.com/career Senior Writer

(CNN) -- The value of their stock options plummeting, the security of their jobs in question, some high-tech workers have turned an attentive ear to an institution considered by some to be anathema to entrepreneurs: labor unions.

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Do you think dot-com workers can become a powerful organized player in U.S. labor?
Yes. With every report about what a CEO is making, organization among the cyber sisters and brothers gets easier.
Depends. If techies believe that organization won't damage their free agency, they'll join hands.
No. Tech-heads are adamant mavericks. A union of them would be an anarchists' convention: chaos.
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"I don't think it's an anomaly," says Peter Conrad, a partner at Proskauer Rose, a New York-based law firm that represents management in labor issues. "Too many dot-coms have perhaps thought for too long that they could just throw things like stock options at people and they'd be docile and do their work and not create problems."

Thirty-six customer-service employees at San Francisco's etown.com and ShopAudioVideo.com have decided to vote on January 12 on whether to join an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America. They're thought to be the first employees of a dot-com company to schedule a vote on union representation.

Meanwhile, at Amazon.com, The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers has launched an effort to organize about 400 workers at Amazon headquarters, while the Prewitt Organizing Fund is backing an attempt to unionize some 5,000 Amazon distribution workers in the United States, France and Germany.

These actions come at a time when many dot-com stocks are flailing on what investors can only hope is the floor of a long decline. The consulting firm Challenger Gray and Christmas reports a record 55-percent monthly jump in dot-com layoffs for November. Those 8,789 job cuts have brought the year's total to 31,056 in 383 companies -- one-fifth of those firms having gone belly up completely.

Unionized workers in high-tech careers might have portable benefits that would be linked to their skill sets -- rather than to individual companies -- to reflect the job hopping within the industry. Similarly, job placement for displaced workers may be an especially important benefit.

"We think you'll see more and more (organizing) efforts as time goes on because this relatively new industry will mature," says Jeff Miller, communications director for the Communications Workers of America.

"The promise of getting rich overnight and big stock options is not going to be out there for everybody."

Are the unions marching along?

For some unions, however, trying to organize high-tech workers may not be a high priority, Conrad says.

"I don't know that unions are that interested in this part of the economy because there are these overnight successes and overnight failures -- it's kind of a here-today-gone-tomorrow situation. It takes time and money to organize a group of employees. A union is a business like any other. They project revenues from representing employees for a good number of years into the future.

"I don't know that they can have those kinds of assumptions in this industry. They don't know if those people are going to be there from one day to the next, much less one year to the next."

That's wishful thinking, says Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of Keystone Research Center, a think tank in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "Unions have been trying to organize these workers for some time. These campaigns are signs of that bearing fruit."

Conrad also says he thinks it's significant that the high-tech workers considering a union are those who handle customer orders and complaints on the telephone. "They're not the skilled techies, so to speak," he says

Organizing technical personnel in dot-com companies is more difficult for unions, Conrad says, because many skilled jobs in the industry go unfilled -- there aren't enough qualified people to fill them.

"As you get older, your view changes a little bit. You're not, perhaps, as willing to work 80 and 90 hours a week, every week. Benefits start looking more important to you when you raise a family. Most people start thinking more about job security. And job hopping seems less attractive."

— Jeff Miller, Communications Workers of America

"If one company's failing, it seems like there's a new one coming in behind it to take its place," Conrad says.

"If people do have mobility and can move somewhere else, they're more likely to do so than to stay and fight. Since the demand for their services is high, they've got the leverage, the bargaining power on many issues without a union. The pure economics of it gives them the power."

The brotherhood of techies

The typical tech worker isn't the prototypical union member, either, Conrad says.

"I don't think they see themselves as quickly as might a group of customer service representatives or distribution center employees being a part of a unionized work force. I believe they probably have greater bonds with management."

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Union organizers are hoping that will change as both the high-tech industry and its workers age a bit.

"A lot of people who have gone into this field are bright, young kids right out of school," says Miller. "As you get older, your view changes a little bit.

"You're not, perhaps, as willing to work 80 and 90 hours a week, every week. Benefits start looking more important to you when you raise a family. Most people start thinking more about job security. And job hopping seems less attractive."

And Keystone's Herzenberg says the trick for unions will be bargaining for benefits that reflect the nature of the dot-com industry. "Without unions," he says, "I think you'll get a growing set of unmet needs: For decent pensions, health insurance, for the sorts of skills that enable one to do well in the new economy."

"Unions are trying to figure out how to appeal to more privileged workers" in the dot-com industry. "If I were a betting man, I'd bet they'll figure that out."

— Stephen Herzenberg, Keystone Research Center

For example, unionized workers in high-tech careers might have portable benefits that would be linked to their skill sets -- rather than to individual companies -- to reflect the job hopping within the industry.

Similarly, job placement for displaced workers may be an especially important benefit.

"Unions are trying to figure out how to appeal to more privileged workers" in the dot-com industry, Herzenberg says.

"If I were a betting man, I'd bet they'll figure that out."