Automation: a Challenge to the American Labor Movement
Kassalow, Everett M.
Basic changes are taking place in the American economy and the American labor movement. They signify a crisis of historic proportions. Among these changes I would include automation, the wider...
...All of this may sound a bit philosophical and abstract...
...I would lean over backwards to reserve places for these groups even though we may not have many of them in our bargaining units as yet...
...Just a couple of years ago, U. S. Steel opened its giant new Fairless works near Philadelphia...
...It may well be that some of the industrial unions will have to move more clearly in the direction of using amalgamated locals or some sort of a joint board set-up instead of the classic big plant local structure, which is still so typical in heavy manufacturing industry today...
...What you do determines how the pipe goes, you're on top of the machines...
...Secondly, for the large industrial unions, they may well become numerically more important than the readily "organizable" home office white-collar force...
...The plant employed 200 workers...
...The effects of these superior physical conditions upon the workers in these new plants are sometimes startling, at least for union organizers who are trying to spread the gospel to them...
...By helping workers and communities adjust to technological change through collective bargaining, American unions will help to spark another major social advance in American life...
...The representative of the second union interjected, "let's not hold this election up...
...In the future it would ship the steel to the wire plant from the Fairless works...
...the relative figures stood at about 25.5 million and 25 million...
...it is the technical-professional group that has been mounting in importance in manufacturing...
...So long as the blue-collar force was clearly predominant in the American economy, the failure of the trade union movement to achieve more success in organizing the white-collar force did not seem too important...
...A Yale professor, Charles R. Walker, spent several years there studying the effects of the introduction of these great new machines which were making a veritable revolution in the manufacturing of seamless pipe...
...When asked to give his reaction to the new and old jobs, one worker expressed a preference for the old mill...
...The sheer physical necessity to counter the huge factory image of a River Rouge with a powerful workers' organization is not so immediately evident to workers in the smaller, new plants...
...It will call for a greater sense of flexibility and a broader vision than ever before...
...For the labor movement in the United States must move forward and become more fully and more completely representative of the entire Iabor force, or it may be driven back and rendered quite ineffective in American life...
...The None: The above article is based upon a speech delivered before the Professional, Technical & Salary Conference Board of the International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, AFL-CIO, Boston, Mass., June 27, 1958...
...Organized labor will need these groups in its ranks not just for "numbers" reasons, but for leadership value as well...
...The European trade union movement has been reasonably successful, for a long time now, in organizing white-collar professional and technical workers...
...Rise of the White-Collar Worker It might be well to start with just a few figures on what has been happening in the work force...
...Today, the respective figures are 1,850, 600, and 1,300...
...I think we have a good deal to learn from our European brother unions so far as this question is concerned...
...First, I think that they are going to be even more difficult to organize than clerical and administrative white-collar groups...
...It had long bargained with two unions in the North, and when approached for recognition by these same unions in the South, con trary to usual southern employer practices, it agreed to a consent elec tion—under certain conditions...
...Besides we wouldn't know what to do with those types of workers, anyway...
...But these are problems which must be solved if the labor movement is to continue to progress socially in the United States...
...At the best, companies will have to install group in centive systems if incentives are to apply at all...
...Work and life in one of these clean, modern well-run factories do not strike with the same force that hit the young farmer who came up to dirty tire plants of Akron or the hot, badly-ventilated assembly lines of Detroit 15, 20 or 25 years ago...
...Legal Obstacles in Organizing Non-Blue-Collar Workers As we come to organizing these growing white-collar professional and technical workers, we often find that there are legal obstacles before us...
...The labor movement would, for example, become increasingly vulnerable to the charge that it was a limited monopolistic force...
...Six or seven years ago, one of these plants had 5,000 production workers, 300 clerks and 500 engineers, scientists and technicians...
...It seems clear from Walker's study that the basic tasks steel workers engaged in the production of this pipe were performing had been radically transformed by this new process...
...Most of these industries still show a strong numerical edge for the blue-collar worker, but the rate of change is so rapid in favor of the white-collar worker, that in many of them we can almost predict the point at which the white-collar force will reach equality with the blue-collar force and then go on rapidly to exceed it...
...In some ways we shall have to innovate major changes in the scope and nature of collective bargaining to come to grips with these issues...
...Today the same union finds it has only 14 such locals...
...This assumes that the rate of change of the past 10 years will be continued in the years ahead—an assump tion which the Chemical Union thinks is a valid one...
...So long as business remained at a high point, these new plants were merely adding to the general flow of production so that the displacement of workers at older plants in the same companies was often not too serious...
...How are we going to meet this special legal and administrative problem...
...New, More Efficient Plants Threaten Old Jobs We are only now feeling some of the real sharp employment effects of the introduction of automation and related changes by many key corporations...
...From these categories all farm workers are excluded...
...Offhand, however, I do not think that in the United States it will be possible to choose the road of building separate professional and technical unions for many of these workers...
...In fact, since 1952 or so, it has not been white-collar worker employment as a whole that has been increasing significantly in manufacturing...
...They maintain close relationships with production worker unions, but they have their own charters and officers...
...In the new mill the machines are on top of you...
...This permitted them, in turn, to shut down permanently many of the older plants...
...Where these new processes and production techniques take over, the individual worker's responsibility for the rate of output so far as it relates to his own effort become in consequential...
...By the same token, it may be necessary to organize special divisions or conferences within the big industrial unions so as to provide the white-collar workers with effective representation on policy matters at the international level...
...Between 1952-1957, for example, the clerical, administrative and sales force in manufacturing rose only 7 per cent...
...The desire to take advantage of new, expanding markets also plays a role here...
...Among these changes I would include automation, the wider application of electronics to industry, the use of computers for programming, the development of new power sources, etc...
...The very change in size, the trend towards smaller plants, complicates the task of reorganization...
...If white-collar professional and technical workers are to be effectively organized, they must somehow be grouped together in the great institution which industrial workers have already established to offset the great centers of corporate power—namely the powerful industrial unions in the steel, auto, rubber, oil, textile and other fields.* This only means that from the point of view of structure our task is probably even more difficult than that of the Europeans...
...There are also important lessons in those few companies where even the large industrial unions have succeeded in organizing non-bluecollar groups...
...As demand fell, many companies found they could take care of all or nearly all of their markets merely by running their plants at or near full capacity...
...Under these improved conditions the need for unionization, so far as the workers just entering industry today are concerned, is often less compelling and less immediate...
...By 1957 more than one out of every three workers (36 per cent) was classified as non-production worker...
...It is true that this is a plant almost completely committed to military production, in the missile field, but similar trends almost everywhere in the metal working industries are striking...
...Engineers have been a growing factor in industry...
...Special Importance of Engineers & Technicians I stress this problem of organizing engineers and technicians for several reasons...
...For years the U. S. Steel Company operated a blast furnace and a wire mill up in Worcester, Mass...
...The significant trend in the American economy in the past decade or so has been the great increase in the proportion of white-collar workers...
...On the practical side the changing nature of work is going to make many incentive and piece-rate plans obsolete...
...For over 20 years now they have been operating under an agreement which enables workers to move to new jobs as old ones are shut down...
...The labor movement must therefore break out of its blue-collar shell and succeed in organizing the mass of white-collar workers...
...We ought to be able to pool the experience of these unions so that the entire labor movement can draw upon it in the years ahead...
...Technological Change Leads to Plant Shutdowns and Relocations The great technological and social changes which we have been discussing here are complicating union life and union organization in other ways...
...If you set them against the background of organized labor's traditional concentration on the blue-collar work force, however, you begin to see the dangers for the American labor movement...
...As the recession moved in, U. S. Steel announced that although it was continuing to operate the Worcester wire plant, it was shutting down the blast furnace in that same location...
...While it is not always possible to define neatly the white-collar and non-white-collar worker in the labor force, for our purposes I am going to use the broad definition currently employed by Government census-takers...
...I am sure they might have much to tell us of value as to what kinds of appeals should be made, what special problems they have encountered, etc...
...Lest this seem an exaggeration, consider a few facts...
...Will it be management or the union...
...One large industrial union not long ago had more than two dozen locals with at least 10,000 members each...
...More generally I think that as a result of the shift in the nature of work many workers caught up in this new job environment may begin to take more of an interest in the production process as a whole...
...While these overall gains by the white-collar force are striking, closer examination of the rates of change of some of the groups within the two broad categories is even more instructive...
...By 1957 the number of white-collar workers actually surpassed the blue-collar force...
...We have to be rethinking our structures in other ways...
...The telephone union, the Communication Workers of America, has been plagued for years by the fact that Bell Telephone has been successful in applying the classification "supervisory" to an unreasonably large number of work ers, thereby reducing the economic strength of the CWA...
...I hasten to say that these new processes, of course, are not going forward in all industries, but the trend is there in the great basic sectors of the American economy...
...It has gotten so today that the very problem of communicating with and understanding the new world of technology is beyond an ordinary layman...
...The Nature of Work Itself Is Changing The new factories, the application of electronics, the spread of automation—all of these are bringing about profound changes in the very nature of work itself in many industries...
...For example, between 1947 and 1957 professional and technical workers increased at a rate of 60.6 per cent and the clerical workers increased by 22.8 per cent...
...If we don't succeed in this task of adaptation and modification, we may well find that some of the very industrial unions that were born out of the structural crisis of the thirties may be refusing to yield paper jurisdictional claims to still unorganized millions of non-blue-collar workers, 10 or 15 years from now...
...A large firm opened a new plant in the South...
...This shift from manual to mental tasks will inevitably lead to changes in workers' interests, needs and capabilities...
...Obsolete two and three-story structures are liquidated in favor of new one-level plants built in locations where real estate is cheaper...
...Perhaps observational would be a better term to describe the shift in some industries...
...Invariably too, it would also be a diminishing social force in American life...
...Yet I do not underestimate what we can probably learn from them...
...Surely we have a great deal to learn from the Communication Workers of America who have made such notable progress in the telephone field...
...By that time it would then be clear that organized labor had become a very diminished minority in the United States...
...As you know, under the terms of the Taft-Hartley Act and even more under the interpretations given to it, professional, technical and white-collar workers have been given a clearcut right to except themselves from inclusion in a bargaining unit which includes production and maintenance workers...
...As you organize new plants and ask for an election, under most circumstances the National Labor Relations Board will refuse to set up over-all bargaining units which take in blue and non-blue-collar workers together...
...The location of such new plants, generally away from the older, unionized areas, is posing serious problems...
...He checks gauges, may have some responsibility for maintenance, etc...
...In case anyone thinks this job of organization will take care of itself, let me remind you that the last great civil war in the American labor movement occurred because the movement itself was unable to adapt its structure sufficiently to meet the industrial workers in the great mass-production industries...
...In many situations retraining will be necessary and we have not even begun to define the role of the union in this area...
...In 1947, for example, blue-collar workers numbered about 23.5 million as compared to approximately 20 million white-collar workers...
...But it has generally been by changing the very nature of bargaining on social issues that the industrial unions have made their greatest contributions in American economic life...
...But even more important is the fact that in many ways this is a kind of newly emerging elite in American society...
...And it is not merely a question of numbers, for involved too is the social and political role of the trade union movement in American life...
...Again, it must do this if it is to be genuinely protective of the basic needs and interests of the blue-collar workers...
...The company pays their moving expenses, makes up the difference between a fair price and a forced sale price on homes which workers may own, etc...
...Let me repeat, however, the great overriding problem is that of union organization of the white-collar and professional workers...
...It almost seemed as though everyone was working on a drawing board...
...Often the workers in these establishments are recruited from the surrounding rural areas...
...One modification of this rule might be to see to it that some of our current organizers get special training on the needs and aspirations of white-collar and technical workers...
...How Are We Going to Do the Job It is of course easier to see this problem than to prescribe for it...
...It must do this to provide the kind of social and economic protection which white-collar workers along with all other workers in modern industrial society need...
...More and more engineers, technicians, or computer clerks are being employed in American industry, and fewer and fewer production and maintenance workers are required...
...Those who weren't were sitting around smoking pipes in small discussion groups...
...I think the relationship between this increasing number of whitecollar technical and professional workers and the trade union movement as it exists today, goes to the very heart of the future of organized labor in the United States...
...The sense of mass which characterized a River Rouge or an Akron Goodyear is no longer operating...
...In a vague kind of way some of management's so-called human relations programs in industry may be directed at some of these new needs and interests...
...I have recently had the opportunity to meet with some im portant locals in the electrical machinery and equipment industry, and I have been struck with the fact that at a number of plants the pro duction and maintenance workers are actually outnumbered by the non-production force...
...As they go into this new era the big industrial unions must make every effort to fit out their staffs with more organizers drawn from the professional and technical ranks...
...The Chemical Workers Union has noted that in 1947 less than one worker in four (24 per cent) in their industry was a non-production worker...
...Organizers from these new ranks will better under stand and be able to approach the groups whom we must reach...
...Moreover, as technological changes take place at older bargaining sites where our unions are already established, employers are frequently maneuvering to reduce the size of existing units by claiming that many of the new jobs resulting from the technological changes are outside the definition of the old bargaining unit...
...The Challenge of Organization Curiously enough then, not only is the number of whitecollar professional and technical workers rising sharply, but even many of the blue-collar workers who are left are being transformed into a type of technician...
...In some instances employers claim that the new technical jobs carry with them supervisory responsibility which would also tear them out of the old bargaining unit...
...Assume that, by and large, the American trade union movement will continue to be confined to the blue-collar force...
...Moreover, we find that often these new plants tend to be smaller than plants built before or during World War II and this too has serious consequences for the industrial unions...
...My friend, research director for one of two cooperating unions, objected on the ground that the 30 workers in question were not "technicians," that they barely needed a high school education, at most, that they were not more skilled than the production workers, etc...
...We have much to learn from the experience of the railway unions...
...A colleague recently told me a story which vividly illustrates the lack of experience, for these new tasks, on the part of most of the cur rent union organizing force...
...I like the jobs of the old mill better than the jobs of the new because you're in control...
...So efficient is that new operation, that in spite of the tremendous costs of shipping the steel from Pennsylvania to Worcester, it was still more economical to do this than to continue the old furnaces in operation...
...I had occasion to visit a couple of metal working plants in Long Island recently...
...In manufacturing it is more convenient to pose this same problem in terms of the production worker (and this includes production and maintenance in the usually accepted sense) as against the nonproduction worker (included in the latter are clerical, professional and technical workers...
...New plants in the electrical industry, the chemical industry, the paper industry, the automobile industry and many others are going up everywhere—often in areas where important industrial plants were hitherto unknown...
...The UAW has been going through the same experience, as Chrysler, Ford and General Motors are all announcing the permanent shutdowns of many older and less efficient plants...
...I had occasion recently to review a study of a new seamless steel pipe mill that has been in production for a few years in Lorrain, Ohio...
...during the same period the number of factory operatives increased 4.4 per cent, while the number of laborers went up only 4.1 per cent...
...latter includes clerical, professional and technical workers...
...Economic power in America to a considerable extent flows along corporate and industrial lines...
...But given the trends of recent years and projections of the future composition of the labor force, the organization of the non-blue-collar worker takes on an almost life and death character for the American labor movement...
...Finally, I also want to mention that we must draw upon the experience of our own labor movement...
...Here is a good case in point...
...Who will reach out to meet these new interests of workers...
...It has been estimated that about 85 per cent of the 17 or 18 million American trade unionists are in the blue-collar ranks...
...In manufacturing alone, non-production workers as a proportion of the total employed went from 16 per cent in 1947 to 25 per cent in 1957...
...These trends have direct significance for our great industrial unions in many of the basic industries...
...For the labor movement perhaps the most significant result of these developments has been its by-product effect on the labor force...
...In the new mill he is a kind of watcher and maintenance man...
...It seems more likely that these changes may lay the foundation for a shift from piece and hourly wages over to weekly and monthly pay scales...
...while the professional technical and managerial group increased 60 per cent...
...Unless we make a bold step we simply won't have the personnel to do the job in the next decade...
...The latter group in most cases is, of course, still unorganized...
...By 1968 the Chemical Workers Union estimates that the ratio will be one to one, and by 1980 the proportion will be three to one in favor of the non-production worker...
...This is largely a result of the great increase in the number of laboratory specialists, technicians, etc...
...Such was the case, for example, with the pioneering efforts on private pensions and supplementary unemployment insurance...
...They distinguish between the blue-collar workers (and this includes what are called "operatives," laborers and craftsmen) and white-collar workers...
...This is only one industry, but there is similar evidence in other industries...
...I think we are now confronted once again with the job of adapting our organizations and our structures sufficiently and with enough imagination so that we can bring the white-collar and professional workers into the fold...
...It is only as we go through the wringer of a recession that the real employment effects of technological change are felt...
...Many of these new plants are smaller than the older manufacturing plants...
...To date, however, these programs have not been a serious challenge to labor and they haven't really been geared to the basic problems of workers in industry...
...The Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO has just organized a Permanent Conference on the Problem of Professional and Technical Workers...
...We shall have to find some means of answering these professional interests...
...All of these problems, the changing nature of industry, work and the labor forces will tax to the utmost the abilities and capacities of the American trade union movement in the next decade and more...
...While this is perhaps an extreme example, it has its parallels in many other factories...
...Not only is it harder to organize smaller units but the task of servicing them becomes complicated...
...Some organizers have found that the professional workers accept seniority on questions of layoff and recall, but seem to prefer a larger role for purely professional qualifications on matters of advancement...
...The same is true of the American Radio Association, the Airline Pilots, the Office and Professional Workers and others...
...Right now we ought to be finding ways and means of giving white-collar technical and professional workers more direct representation on the bargaining committees in big industrial plants...
...The shift away from the old type of machine operations to automatic flows and processes has a profound effect on the demand for labor...
...Seniority systems may be in for overhaul, too, at least as far as we draw in engineers and other professionals...
...To help workers meet these changes as well as others of a similar nature which will take place in the future, we shall have to improve our severance pay plans and gain travel allowance funds from the big companies so that workers can move themselves and their families to new jobs...
...This latter point can be extremely difficult...
...While it is hard to lay down rigid rules, if I were a president of an industrial union I would establish it as a general practice that all future additions to the organizing staff should come from the white collar professional and technical ranks...
...The Challenge to Organized Labor These striking changes in the labor force in and of them selves might not represent anything more than interesting economic data...
...They are undergoing their first industrial experience...
...For although the great majority of AFL-CIO members are to be found in the blue-collar field, some of our affiliates have succeeded in organizing numbers of white-collar and professional types of workers...
...Of course we shall also face the task of strengthening the whitecollar and professional unions who will represent these groups of workers who are employed outside the basic industries and large corporations...
...I am exaggerating a bit here, of course, but the general point holds...
...Over this same period, however, the labor force itself would be expanding by 9 or 10 million...
...Under these circumstances, as the blue-collar force actually declines in the great industries, organized labor would be lucky to maintain its present membership level of 17 or 18 million over the next decade...
...I wish I had the answer, but it may well be that nothing short of some reasonable amendment to the National Labor Relations Act is going to help us in this respect...
...To take full advantage of these changes, many large companies have undertaken the construction of new plants...
...The application of electronics and electrical devices, the introduction of automation, these and other developments are resulting in a rash of new plants all over the United States...
...We have already remarked that as the recent boom swept along, scores of new plants were opened in different parts of the country...
...With the coming of the downturn, the real shakeout began...
...Management agreed to an elec tion for 170 production and maintenance workers, but insisted that the other 30 workers were technicians who could not be included in the regular bargaining unit...
...These new plants are generally much cleaner, better ventilated and better organized than are plants built 20 or 30 years ago...
...We have found in the past in the industrial field that generally it was easier to organize larger units, but these units seem to be disappearing...
...There are some things, however, that seem obvious...
...In Europe to some extent, the professional needs of these groups, especially of the engineers and technicians, are more easily met because they are organized in separate engineering and technical unions...
...Company after company has decided that the older plants are not suited for the new processes and new machinery...
...His work, once basically manual, has now become basically mental...
...In the old pipe mill at Lorrain the worker actively controlled and operated the machines producing the pipe...
...It will try, by this device, to give professional and technical workers "a kind of professional identification and service which outruns the capacity of a single union to provide," in some cases, at least...
Vol. 6 • September 1959 • No. 4
