While organized labor may be declining across the country, it is growing in Rhode Island — at least slightly.
A survey released last week by the federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics found union membership declined nationally by nearly 200,000 members last year, while in Rhode Island membership increased by nearly 3,000.
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This year’s national figures starkly contrast figures from 1999, when membership in labor unions climbed by almost 250,000 — its largest increase in more than a decade. But despite the one-year jump, overall membership in unions has continued to decline since it hit an all-time high in the late 1940s when 35 percent of the country’s workforce was part of a union, according to BLS.
According to one local labor expert, the change in labor is indicative of changes in both the local and national economies. For example, a recent Gallup poll paralleled the decline of organized labor with increased automation and technological displacement of workers, the exodus of manufacturing jobs, and the shift from a blue collar, goods-producing economy to one dominated by white-collar and front-line manufacturing jobs.
Unions are changing just as the economy is changing, said Scott J. Molloy, Jr., an associate professor at the University of Rhode Island’s Labor Research Center. “The old ways don’t work anymore.”
The relationship between unions and the economy is especially evident in Rhode Island, Molloy said.
“We have seen national trends in effect here with the demise of industrialization,” Molloy said. He said the loss of machine jobs to the south and overseas, crippled what was once a very powerful union. “Obviously some unions lost power when the jobs and the people that represented them were no longer in Rhode Island.”
Still, Molloy said Rhode Island has been fortunate in that where one industry has lost, another has been able to gain.
“Labor is holding its own here,” Molloy said. “We have seen a lot of growth in health care and transportation continues to organize.”
Alisa Gallo, Rhode Island director of Local 217, the Hotel, Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Union said her organization has benefited from changes in the local economy, in particular the revitalization of downtown Providence.
“Our industry is doing fairly well,” she said. “Our membership has been generally stable and growing. We have people in the Rhode Island Convention Center and that has been successful.”
For Gallo maintaining growth in the organization is dependent upon the municipalities where new hotel and restaurant construction is under way.
“It’s very important that if people want to build a new hotel in Providence, it be a unionized hotel,” she said. “In most cases these construction projects include tax stabilization and that usually means a public investment. It’s a form of principal. We need to be sure that people working in that hotel have a job they can grow in. We also want to ensure an equal playing field so we don’t have hotels undercutting each other.”
Ironically, Molloy said what usually brings workers together are the companies themselves. In addition, he said slow economic times can add to increased interest in organized labor.
“The greatest union organizer is the employer,” he said. “Poor conditions, stagnant pay, and promises not kept by management, and cutbacks can also trigger unionization. Usually if people are used to a steady diet of increases and better working conditions, the minute it begins to dry up a certain animosity surfaces, especially if the employees feel they are carrying the burden for management.”
According to Molloy one area that is slow to embrace unionization is the high technology field.
“The people that work in this industry tend to be very idealistic,” he said. “More of their interaction is done with machines and not other people, so it’s sometimes difficult to get them together.”
As for the future of unions both in Rhode Island and across the county, Molloy said it’s hard to predict — but he said the movement will include a wide variety of industries.
“Unions are trying to make things better with a public relations mission that
dispels the idea that unions are all rough talking as opposed to professional
associations,” he said. “I would say right now we are in a transitional phase
— waiting for something to happen.”
