Coming of age?: Union tries to make mark in wireless industry

For humans, there are many symbols of maturity: a driver's license, moving out of the house or the first gray hairs. For industries,one notable sign of maturation occurs when unions want to organize employees.

With this in mind, consider the wireless and cable industries as maturing - unions definitely are interested in organizing workers in these high-growth sectors. However, industry observers question whether the feeling is mutual.

The result of the Verizon strike - in which the unionization of the company's wireless arm is a major negotiating point - could provide a major portion of the answer, said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst.

"This is a pivotal year for the unions - it's all or nothing," Kagan said. "The question is: Are they going to be part of the new economy or not?

"[The Verizon labor dispute] is a big one. How this Verizon deal is worked out could be an indicator."

Ron Westfall, senior analyst at Current Analysis, agrees. "However the strike is resolved will be a harbinger... of things to come," he said. "If they do [unionize Verizon Wireless], it's a sign that unions still have a place in the new economy. If they don't, it's another sign that the new economy doesn't have a mandate for unionized labor."

For Verizon employees who are members of the Communications Workers of America or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the key issues revolve around working conditions such as forced overtime (see story on page 8). One of the CWA's goals is to expand its membership base by unionizing Verizon Wireless employees who worked for Bell Atlantic prior to its merger with GTE.

To this end, CWA seeks neutrality from Verizon - assurances that the company will not be anti-union - and the ability to organize through a "card check," said a CWA spokesman. A card check agreement allows a union to form automatically upon conducting an election in which a majority of the workers at a site vote to be unionized. Such an agreement makes it significantly easier for unions to organize.

"The debate here is... how much the company will help the union organize," said Scott Cleland, an analyst at The Precursor Group.

Verizon says unionizing wireless workers is not part of the contract that initiated the strike, according to a company spokesman. "The wireless [issue] has nothing to do with the 85,000 workers who walked out," the spokesman said. "The only reason it's important is because the CWA has said it's important to them."

But companies have never had more incentive to fight unions - especially in the wireless market, in which most companies' work forces are non-union, Kagan said. "Those [companies] that have unionized have a higher cost structure, which means higher rates, and that's a competitive disadvantage," he said.

But a union is not as much of a problem for a company the size of Verizon Wireless - the largest mobile operator in the U.S - according to Cleland.

"It is so huge it can get some economies of scale," Cleland said. "For a smaller company, it could be a problem."

CWA has union agreements with most of the large wireless carriers - most notably, SBC Communications/Cellular One, AT&T Wireless and the portion of Verizon formerly known as GTE - and it recently resolved a dispute that allows the CWA to try to organize AT&T Broadband workers.

"Despite what the press says, we didn't just discover there is a new economy last week," the CWA spokesman said. "This has been a focus of ours for years. It's our intent to unionize every aspect of new technologies."

But there are some indications that workers in many emerging industries may not want to be unionized under current circumstances, said Naqi Jaffery, mobile communications industry analyst for Dataquest.

"There's tremendous growth, and the job market is quite good," Jaffery said. "Given those conditions, unions may be irrelevant."

The CWA disagrees and notes that SBC has more than 5000 unionized wireless workers, a figure expected to at least double during the next year.

However, other than at SBC, CWA has no more than a few hundred wireless members from any one company. Given the strength of the economy, that trend likely will continue, Cleland said.

"With the economy screaming and unemployment at historic lows, companies are having to treat workers better to attract and retain them," he said. "These... conditions are not especially helpful to growing unions. Today, the economy is doing what collective bargaining once did."