Unions and Automation

...More of the new automated plants are being located in areas of the country where unions are relatively weak than in their traditional centers of strength...

...white collar workers now outnumber blue collar workers...

...When the union workers walk out of an automated plant in the oil or telephone industry, they know they leave behind them not a skeleton labor force, but one large enough to operate the plant...

...Improvements in SUB in subsequent negotiations took care of this difference...

...However, despite the urging of unions and other groups, Congress took no action on these problems in 1966...

...In the past four years the improving employment situation in the economy has meant less reliance and strain on these plans...

...The increased ratio of technicians and supervisors to production workers has reduced the proportion of the work force in the usual collective bargaining unit...

...By means of attrition, retraining, transfer, and relocation of workers, the size of layoffs can be reduced...

...Formerly each part of the subdivided job was done by many people...

...In the steel industry in 1959, for example, despite a two and a half month strike, total output exceeded the full-year output of 1958, a recession year...

...Government training and retraining programs, improvement in the public and private employment agencies serving our labor markets, and above all, the creation of enough jobs through government fiscal and monetary policies ¦—all these have contributed to an atmosphere in which there is more confidence now than there was five years ago in our ability to minimize the adverse effects of automation...

...Fear of job losses through new machinery may lead workers to seek protection through collective bargaining...

...Unions, through their collective bargaining programs and through their support for legislation in the manpower field, have made an important contribution to programs designed to harness automation...

...Many semi-skilled machine operators are eliminated and are only partially replaced by machine controllers and attendants who make the occasional routine repairs and adjustments which are not accomplished automatically...

...Clearly, the effectiveness of strikes is decreased by automation...

...Some unions have persuaded management to give advance notice of technological change so that adequate time is available to adjust to it...

...In Washington and in state capitols, unions sought legislation to increase employment opportunities generally, and to decrease the loss of income suffered by the unemployed...

...The first SUB plan, negotiated in 1955, was a direct response by the Ford Motor Company to the UAW demand for a guaranteed annual wage...

...Worker solidarity has been reduced...

...However, they have received few rewards for these efforts in terms of a revitalized and rapidly growing labor movement...

...Just as a variety of substitute income plans have flourished, so also have there been many different approaches to the question of shorter hours...

...Automation changes the nature of work...

...Unions affirmed their agreement with the claim of the National Association of Manufacturers that "We stand on the threshold of a golden tomorrow...

...in some industries this union weapon is rendered obsolete...

...Today a worker with a few years of service may receive two weeks paid vaccation, and workers with longer service receive three or four weeks paid vacation...

...Despite these adverse factors, unions continue to win more than half of the elections in which they seek to become the collective bargaining agents...

...Per capita payments to the AFL-CIO indicated that it had 12.9 million members in September, 1965, the highest level attained since several unions were expelled in 1957...

...Some observers quipped that the Ford response, which provided unemployment compensation supplements for twenty-six weeks, was the "semi-annual" guaranteed wage rather than the "annual" wage...

...As the name implies, these weekly payments of about $25 were supplemental to regular unemployment compensation benefits...

...At the lower end of the age range we also find labor force participation rates dropping...

...Although about ten per cent of the workers have obtained a work-week under forty hours, and although the AFL-CIO periodically promotes the idea of a thirty-five hour week, no great emphasis on this program is expected in the near future unless the economy suffers a major depression...

...Although major corporations dealing with industrial unions have negotiated such plans, many of the smaller firms where the need is greater have not done so...

...In 1965, a Presidential committee report on private pension plans suggested that consideration be given to a system of insuring pension funds that would protect an individual's pension if his plant went out of business...

...A subcommittee of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress held hearings on private pensions in 1966 and gave further consideration to this problem...

...Formerly, each machining operation was done semi-automatically on a far smaller standard machine tool by an operator, and groups of operators running similar tools performed the work now done by an integrated machine under the control of a single operator...

...Across the bargaining table, unions cited the increased wealth generated by the use of automation as the means of paying for new types of benefits to workers who might lose their jobs...

...There is less opportunity for conversation and companionship because more people now work alone...

...Industry has expanded rapidly in parts of the country where unions were relatively weak...

...The new, clean, and sometimes air-conditioned factories which house the advanced technology provide better working conditions than were found in the older factories...

...many of the job-oriented factors that formerly stimulated unionization...

...The operator sits at a many-dialed console which tells him whether any tool or transfer switch is malfunctioning...

...The United Automobile Workers Union and the automobile industry managements developed a network of employment guarantees under the name of "SUB", supplemental unemployment compensation benefits...

...The decline in the percentage of teen-agers entering the labor force is caused primarily by the greater number of youths finishing high school and going on to college rather than by union-management bargaining programs...

...They provided significant protection for workers in durable goods manufacturing industries in the recessions of 1956, 1958, and 1960...

...Although these specific goals have not been reached generally, a wide variety of programs and policies has been adopted that go far in this direction...

...In the last fifteen years private pensions for hourly workers were inaugurated, improved, and extended widely through industry...

...White collar workers, who are traditionally less likely to join unions, are increasing in number far faster than blue collar workers...

...Proposed revisions in our laws governing weekly hours are aimed at reducing overtime hours after forty rather than reducing the normal workweek below that figure...

...In 1947, non-production workers made up sixteen per cent of the manufacturing labor force...

...Also, paid vacations are longer...

...Instead, working hours per year and over a worker's lifetime have been reduced by other methods...

...Automatic technology greatly reduces the effectiveness of the strike...

...Despite the great publicity given the New York electricians' demand for a twenty-five hour week, reductions in the standard work-week in the past two decades have played a relatively unimportant part in the overall decline of the average employe's working time...

...now the tendency is to reintegrate the job and perform it automatically...

...A guaranteed annual wage and the shorter work week were the banners raised in the search for steady work and reduced hours...

...Factory jobs that were machine-or manually-paced are turned into automatically controlled operations...

...At General Motors, for example, when the new supplement became available toward the end of 1965, one of every three eligible production workers between sixty-two and sixty-five retired...

...on the West Coast, they have equivalent guarantees...

...Along with the guaranteed income, shorter hours, and pension aspects of their program, unions have developed a variety of other measures to cushion the adjustment to automation...

...Large work groups are less common...

...UNIONS and AUTOMATION by JAMES L. STERN T^he introduction of new technology in the two decades since the end of World War II and the low growth rate of the economy between 1953 and 1962 imparted a sense of urgency to union efforts to' gain greater job security for their members...

...Experimental plans have emerged that provide extended vacations of a quarter or a half year every five years, or when a worker is approaching retirement...

...since 1961 they have averaged twenty-six per cent, and in a technologically advanced industry such as oil refining the proportion has risen to forty per cent...

...The UAW negotiated a special supplement that, with the pension, provides up to $400 a month for long-service workers retiring at age sixty or later...

...However, shifts in the occupational distribution and geographical location of the labor force, and the increasing importance of the service industries relative to the goods-producing industries make union efforts more difficult, even when these changes are attributable to causes other than automation...

...Automation makes union organizing attempts easier in some respects and harder in others...

...The concept of guaranteed income per day, per week, and per year has gained widespread acceptance in our society as a means of providing security for hourly paid workers...

...These income guarantee programs have worked well where they have been tried...

...An illustration of this change is seen when one tours a modern automobile engine plant...

...SUB, for example, covers fewer than three million of the fourteen million production workers in manufacturing, and about half of these are employed by the basic steel producers and large automobile companies...

...The service industries (transportation, wholesale and retail trade, finance, insurance and real estate, miscellaneous services, and government) grew by 37.7 per cent, more than twice as much, from 25.4 million to 38.6 million workers...

...When layoffs take place, income guarantee plans and improved retirement programs reduce the income loss of the displaced workers...

...In addition, the usual excess capacity associated with normal operations—whether they are automated or not—can be put to use before and after strikes to minimize output losses...

...Today, unemployment supplements for experienced workers in the automobile and some other industries are provided for one year and in some pioneering situations for even longer periods...

...Old plants in the central city have been replaced by modern ones located in rural and suburban areas...

...Although automation may intensify the problems that unions face in the future, the insecurity or fear of insecurity associated with automation will tend to increase reliance on the union as an institutional protection against adverse effects of technological change...

...union membership has declined as a percentage of the non-agricultural labor force from the 1954 peak of thirty-five per cent to just under twenty-nine per cent...

...The supplements and wage offsets typically give an average worker a weekly income equal to three-quarters of the after-tax income he would have received if working...

...Short work week guarantees in the automobile industry provide for half or three-quarter pay for each hour of the normal forty-hour work week for which work is not offered...

...The worker at the console has no other workers near him doing the same job...

...The manpower impact of automation must be understood if union programs to cope with it are to be evaluated properly...

...Fewer people do the same job and consequently common job gripes become less important...

...In the eighteen year span the number of white collar workers had increased by fifty-nine per cent while the blue collar worker population had increased by only twelve per cent...

...By 1965 the relative size of these groups had changed and there were 32.1 million white collar workers and 26.5 million blue collar workers...

...Even in those instances where continued operation of a facility is not feasible, the effectiveness of a strike is reduced because lost output can be made up more quickly with automation than was the case previously...

...The increase between 1963 and 1965 reversed the 1957-62 trends...

...On the East Coast docks, experienced longshoremen are guaranteed 1600 hours of work a year...

...Against this backdrop of vast changes in our industrial society, unions have vigorously pursued policies to provide security for their members...

...All of these changes tend to reduce group solidarity and to diminish the importance of JAMES L. STERN is a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin who specializes in the teaching of collective bargaining...

...Now, seven to nine paid holidays are quite common...

...Perhaps the major deficiency in these income guarantee programs is that their coverage is limited...

...Among unorganized white collar GM workers to whom the corporation extended the program, the new benefits caused a three-fold increase in early retirement...

...Paid holidays for production workers were rather rare until the late 1940's...

...Union success with teachers in large cities, and with government employes where governmental policy permits collective bargaining, demonstrates that a breakthrough is possible...

...An important feature of these private pension plans is the recent emphasis on early retirement...

...For example, between 1947 and 1965, employment in the southwestern and southeastern regions of the United States grew by 57.4 per cent, from 10.5 to 16.5 million, while employment in the middle Atlantic and east northcentral regions grew by only 20.5 per cent, from 20.9 million to 25.2 million...

...In 1947 there were 20.2 million white collar workers and 23.6 million blue collar workers...

...Plans such as these contribute to a change in the composition of a company's labor force, whether or not the employment rolls shrink...

...It is impossible to predict the size and timing of a breakthrough with any degree of confidence...

...Service industries, where union membership is relatively low, are growing at faster rates than the highly organized goods-producing industries...

...Supplements to unemployment compensation, offsets to wage losses for weeks when there is no work at all, and yearly income guarantees provide the essential ingredients of security on an annual basis...

...This decline reflects the fact that the labor force growth has been primarily in the occupations, industries, and geographic areas of the country where unions are relatively weak...

...This may not seem important to the salaried white collar worker who is less exposed to fluctuating pay checks and periodic layoffs, but it has been the basic building block in the union program to provide security for hourly workers...

...Automation and the general manpower trends that accompany it, as well as other changes in the distribution of the work force, do not limit union growth to a third of the non-agricultural labor force, but suggest that if unions are to spurt ahead they must successfully organize formerly hostile areas such as white collar occupations and service industries...

...Not only was automation a problem, but the word itself became the symbol of the problem...

...Nowadays, the engine block is machined on a gigantic transfer machine which moves the block through a succession of drilling, milling, boring, and chamfering operations which are performed automatically...

...The steel workers union negotiated a minimum pension of $150 per month for the person with thirty years service without regard to age...

...A major depression might threaten their solvency, but protection against such a contingency is considered to lie primarily within the sphere of government action shoring up the economy or insuring the plans, rather than further funding of these private plans...

...Repairs and indirect labor needs can be put off while supervisors and technicians keep the operation running...

...In the past, however, groups of men operating the same kind of standard machine tools worked in close physical proximity to each other...

...Summing up the general trends before turning to the question of present-day union programs, it is clear that job content has changed dramatically in many cases...

...The output of services has increased significantly relative to the output of goods...

...But, despite the problems they face, unions are holding their own numerically and making some progress in the heretofore unorganized areas of the economy...

...Guarantees of full or almost full daily and weekly paychecks take much of the sting out of short work weeks...

...Although there are still many factory jobs, the density has decreased...

...Automation is the magical key . . ." but disagreed most emphatically with the NAM contention that these developments required no action through bargaining or legislation...

...In the meat-packing industry the employment guarantee provides for a minimum of thirty-six hours pay for any week in which an employe works...

...Possibly the most important effect of automation on unions has been the nature of programs generated by unions in response to its anticipated impact...

...The goods-producing industries (mining, construction, and manufacturing) grew by 18.1 per cent, from 18.5 million to 21.8 million workers from 1947 to 1965...

...These gains, however, were insufficient to keep up with the growing labor force...

...But to hazard a guess, in the next decade small breakthroughs will occur in sufficient number to offset the unfavorable factors, and between one-fourth and one-third of the non-agricultural labor force will be members of unions...

...A new occupational distribution has emerged...

...The UAW suggested the possible use of an investment tax credit for the employer which would apply if he helps meet the costs suffered by workers who lose their jobs when plants close...