By Stephanie Basalyga
The Daily Record Newswire
PORTLAND, OR — Organizing a union in the workplace? There may not be app for that right now, but employment lawyers think it’s just a matter of time before one pops up.
The call for an app or platform to help workers organize with just the swipe of a smartphone or tablet screen was issued recently by a pro-labor think-tank called The Century Foundation.
In their 19-page paper, think-tank president Mark Zuckerman, senior Fellow Richard Kahlenberg, and Fellow Moshe Z. Marvit outline the benefits that unions would reap by moving their recruiting efforts out of the past and into the modern-day world of technology. The most obvious benefit, according to the three authors, would be a boost in union membership numbers that have been sagging for decades.
In 2014, the number of union members increased from 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the percent of American workers in unions dropped slightly from the previous year, representing a loss of market share for organized labor. The situation is a far cry from decades ago, when unions were at the height of their power.
“The (decline) has pretty much been ongoing since the 1970s, from a high point in the 1950s, when about 40 percent of the private-sector workforce was unionized,” said Jose Klein, an employment lawyer in the Portland office of Fisher & Phillips. “Now, it’s about six percent.
“It’s been a long, steady decline, and there are a lot of reasons why. Some of it has to do with jobs being shipped away to other countries. Some of it has to do with just changes in attitudes of the American worker.”
In their paper, Zuckerman, Kahlenberg and Marvit also attribute the decline in the popularity of unions among workers to a general reluctance by organized labor to embrace technology, which has hampered the ability to connect with new generations entering the workforce.
Doug Tathwell, the IT administrator for the International Brother Hood of Electrical Workers Local 48, admits his group was slow to tap into technology. But the union now is working to make up for lost time.
In addition to using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, the group uses text messaging to communicate. Its members can jump on the Local 48 website for dispatch services and to pay dues.
Ben Basom, communications director for the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, said his group also was slow to adopt technology, but the situation now is changing quickly. The carpenters’ group has an active social media presence, taps into text messaging mobilization and has even held remote town halls, according to Basom. The group’s website is undergoing a major update.
While the northwest regional council sees a big benefit in using technology to connect with existing members, it would be less likely to tap into an app – or any other high-tech approach — to recruit new
members, according to Basom.
“I think apps and Facebook and Twitter feeds and websites are great tools to use as resources for information,” Basom said, “but when you’re trying to recruit new members, our best tool is what our union was founded on 134 years ago – person to person.
Tathwell agrees.
“If an iPhone app would bring in electricians, we would have it already,” Tathwell said. “(In recruiting), you’ve got to earn trust, and you don’t earn trust through an app.”
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