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Good evening and welcome to GBH Journal. I'm Greg Fitzgerald and tonight we'll look at the rocky road that labor unions have traveled in recent months. A look at the recent unsuccessful attempt to unionize hospital workers at St. Elizabeths in Brighton investigate the impact of automation on the typical apical Union. And later in the program we'll monitor the progress of women and blue collar jobs. And a former regional attorney for the National Labor Relations Board blasts the board for inefficiency and complicity with management. All that coming up on tonight's TV Extra. Early last June after a two year struggle to get a free election that St. Elizabeth's Hospital service and technical workers voted on the question of union participation at the hospital. Last year a similar election was held but was in dispute after the regional National Labor Relations Board charged the hospital with 39 unfair labor practices
some of which organizers feel stemmed from the use of a well financed Labor consulting firm. Modern management methods. The hospital appealed the charges and began a challenge process which could have stalled a new election for years. But after public pressure the hospital called for a new election and dismissed the three M's. The new election was held on June 6 with dismal results for union organizers. The support from service workers was less than in the original election and technical workers deadlocked in a tie. The recounting process did not push the Thai in their direction. Nancy Mills is an organizer for local eight eighty of the hospital workers union. After the election in June she reviewed with me some of the reasons for the union drives failure. If you recall the election was six months. After previous election where the hospital had been charged with 39 unfair labor practices and. There was a lot of publicity about the illegal and immoral. I would say unethical tactics of the campaign. We thought
that by exposing the illegality of those campaigns and by exposing the misleading nature of those campaigns and then most importantly by having the firm. No longer present at the hospital that conditions would exist for a free and open. Election. We now think that in fact the fear element lasts quite a long time despite the fact that the atmosphere in the hospital is nowhere near as tense. This time around. As it had been before October 4th. That people still remembered and recall the power of the hospital to make life miserable for them. And that was something which we we just basically were not able to turn around. Do you see anything in the nature of hospital workers that makes this particular group difficult to organize.
The tough question. I think it's hard to organize anybody in the 1700s. I think the main reason that it's difficult is well it's a combination I think it's a combination of the strength of the employers offensive against unions. They're incredibly more sophisticated more armed more financed better financed than they have been in quite a long time so I think the combination of that strength of the offensive against unions on the part of employers in general and that weakness or. Mistakes of the union movement itself that the labor movement. Weaknesses in the movement about how aggressively they have organized what sectors they've chosen to organize how they've in certain sectors of the labor movement been perceived and I think sometimes correctly is simply another. Arm of business as opposed to real workers organizations. And I think that's in fact changing. I think. That.
Primarily as a result of getting clobbered over the head enough times the labor movement is beginning to look inwards and say hey you know I think we're doing something wrong and people are beginning to change their. Their ideas about how to organize and the necessity of organizing I think you'll see a new offensive on the part of unions. Toward organizing workers. What have you learned personally. I mean 10 or 15 years from now when maybe you're trying to break into a new organizer What are you going to tell that person about your experience that same list because. I've been thinking about a lot lately. I think the major thing. That I've learned the most important thing that I've done that in fact I think the unions learned is that. We have to learn from the three. They have a lot to teach us. Unfortunately about how to organize. The major thing they've taught me is that you need. Two things to organize successfully and particularly in the union movement you need two things. One is that you need skilled organizers
people who have professional skills at organizing and you need enough of them. To do the job well. I think the other thing you need is. An implanted but technical term but a code or an organizing committee of hospital workers in my case who are true is truly representative of the hospital and who really must carry on the bulk of the work when. Up against skilled. Organizers you've got to put in enough backup in terms of skilled organizers and then that the union has to commit a great deal more resources. To an organizing drive than we were able. While willing I think able to do the same is campaign. It's unfortunate that we had to learn that lesson at the expense of. Two union elections at St. Elizabeths but I think it's not a lesson that we'll forget. Soon. Nancy Mills an organizer for local 80 of the hospital workers
meanwhile printers in Boston a talking about revolution. Within the last 10 years automation has changed typesetting and printing more than it has in the previous century. This technological revolution has had mixed results. Higher productivity and profitability and more flexibility for employers but for workers it meant lower pay less skilled jobs and for some the elimination of their trade. Paul grace from the Boston typographical Union recently discussed those effects with reporter Pat Bodner major effects on the industry I think are very great change in the kind of job that is being done by the play I mean. In typesetting most of the workers that a few years ago were very skilled workers. Having gone through an extensive apprentice program run by a union or employer but they were really familiar with all aspects of printing a lot of the new equipment and technology did that have been introduced and now you find it pretty common that companies will. Only hire one or two people who are very skilled in all of.
Aspects of printing in the rest of the people who set the type or do paste up or whatever have no knowledge at all at all of printing so that I think the main change that's come about in jobs there really is a DC Skilling. How does this situation the. New technology affecting your members. I think there's a there's a real desire now among members of our local to upgrade the skills that they have to try to get some hold of the technology. There are proposals to do this through training programs automation funds and the like. And this provides the employer with Can the kind of skilled help that they need on new equipment and it also provides the union members with upgrading of their skills so that they can keep going keep their jobs in the industry. So a lot of people in Boston would like to see something like this established. Has it been an issue in recent contract negotiations with the Boston newspapers. The Globe and The Herald the whole area of new equipment certainly was.
What happened there is that this particular new equipment the front end system or the video display terminals have basically what they do as a whole is the limit a process in the production of the newspaper. That is the typesetting the typesetting is now done by the reporter or the editor not by a typesetter unit in the production department. So there was a great conflict over who should do that work whose right it was to do that work. This automation process was hitting our members particularly hard. One area is the whole area of word processing and typesetting that is done in another city and transmitted via. Transmitted electronically giving an example. One of our shops for years has typeset the time all the time like books. Well now they dont set any of that type anymore in the shop its all set by office workers at the Time-Life headquarters office workers who are paid maybe a half to
say 30 to 50 percent of what the skilled workers in Boston would get. However printing unions objecting to the few care. Not as well as they should have must admit. As far as long range planning for you know what what are what's going to be what are the where the jobs are going to be what kind of skills are going to be needed in five or ten years. Not too much of this has been done. And it's not just unions. It's not just the typographical union in the typesetting field primarily automation and computerization is really now beginning to hit the press work camerawork plate making areas like this very very hard and you'll find other unions the graphic arts union the International printing press men's union. And the Newspaper Guild are all probably lacking in their ability to confront new technology as it comes into a newspaper or commercial plant. So I think that we're going to see in the next five or 10 years the unions are going to have to
take a sort of hit be aware of what's going to happen in their industry and you know with the technology and have a plan developed before the equipment or the new processes that are introduced so that they can assure jobs for their members can assure the proper training and can assure that their members will work in a helpful and safe working environment. Paul grace of the Boston typographical Union speaking with reporter Tad Butler. Right right. But I want to be looking more and more of. A blue collar job is becoming more and more attractive to women who are looking for work according to
author Muriel letter. Women who have held blue collar jobs in the past but the pay is often low when the work is not always demanding and has been limited primarily to factory work. But in the past few years there's been more interest among women in pursuing nontraditional blue collar jobs. Lederer feels that the trend is due in part to the changing role of women in society she explained her theory and her book Blue Collar jobs for women to reporter Shelley ruff. What do you think spurred on this trend towards nontraditional jobs. I think that in the case of women going into blue collar jobs very often they're motivated by necessity. Many of them are the single heads of households they have children to support. And you can there's no question but that you can make more money in a blue collar job than you can in many white collar jobs that are not management jobs. And then of course the government has forced many jobs to open up through affirmative action so that a lot of fields which women might maybe we had lot wanted to get into before they just simply were not the opportunities that they were now.
And do you think it was the women's movement that spritely helped. There's no question about it because the need for women to be able to earn more money was certainly there before. But there just was seemed to be no way to satisfy that need or for women who wanted to try these jobs maybe a woman really wanted to be a welder or a carpenter or a plumber before. But I think that the whole women's movement have made it somehow more acceptable and not seem like such a strange thing to want to do. Have women had these jobs before. Well during the Second World War there was Rosie the Riveter and when the war was over Rosie went home. But some of those Rosie stayed on the job and I really believe that a lot of those women who have gone back and gone into blue collar jobs now are here to stay. Women are going into the armed forces for example doing all kinds of things and I think when Betty for Dan wrote The Feminine Mystique she really never dreamt that there were going to be women in the military academies
and women sailing in with the Navy and you know doing all the different things that women are doing. How difficult is it for for women to get these blue collar jobs. My suggestion to women is to go to fields which are growing in a need of all kinds of people and your chances of landing a job are much greater. Well if a woman isn't sure what her interests are exactly how can she find out about the different fields. I think you can talk to guidance counselors if you have. It were someone who were still in school either in high school or in community college or even in college. Talk to placement counselors talk try to talk to somebody who is working at the particular job. Are there certain industries that are encouraging women more than others or any that are discouraging women more than I think that there are some industries where there's a great need for women and where women seem to fit in quite well.
For example the graphic arts and history anything to do with printing with graffiti following graving bookbinding. There are many apprenticeships for women. That's the sort of thing to look for you say where they were you know where they have a program set up and they are trying to help you get him. Has there been wage discrimination between men and women of equal jobs and equal skill in the blue collar jobs. If it's a union scale you know you chances are you're getting the same pay the question is whether you're getting the same opportunities. And it's you know it goes back to the same same situation. To be sure that you're not being discriminated against. Yuri aletter author of blue collar jobs for women. She spoke with Journal reporter Shelly rock. One of those blue collar fields in which women have been conspicuously absent is the construction industry whether it is because of a former lack of interest in construction jobs among women or the closed shop attitude in construction unions. The number of women active in the industry has been small but in Massachusetts the women in construction project is
beginning to challenge the existing order. Becky ror has more. The women in construction project is a pre apprenticeship training program designed to teach women to become successful apprentices in the construction trades. The mass project is Siedah funded and is supported by the Massachusetts Building Trades Association which is a part of the AFL CIO. It offers classroom and shop instruction daily physical fitness and individual and group counseling sessions. This instruction is geared to help women in the program deal effectively with the problems they will face on the work site. Susan Troy is the original director of the women in construction project and she describes some of these problems that the male dominated industry it's the most male. I mean it's not just populated by men. There is a whole attitudinal thing that. It should remain a male dominated field. Women are not able to do it physically. It's just not women's work any way you look at it. There
are we are in a hot time of high unemployment in the construction industry is on a strong upswing but right now we're dealing with some very emotional issues and very real issues. There's never a good time for affirmative action is a particularly bad time there are people that have been as a trade union term loafing for a long time and went with that added issue. People are very much less likely to be responsive to the to women's needs for work. The women in construction project covers six trades painting plumbing carpentry brick laying sheet metal work and electrical work. Some of these trades were chosen because they are home related skills and women are often familiar with them. It is an irony however that most of the women in the program do not equate their home related skills with the same skills used in construction work. This lack of confidence in their abilities may be due to a subtle discrimination which the women in construction project is trying to alleviate.
Women do need a little extra. Because they're going to nontraditional area and they're going to handle a lot more than a young male and going into an apprenticeship program. And because of the discrimination against them all these subtle kinds of discrimination along the line. So as Where's Daddy was helping you know was asking Bobby to come and help him change a light switch or fix the car. Sister was never asked so these informal ways of getting skills and feeling confident doing skilled things were never hers. Not only is the women in construction project offering women the opportunity to become involved in a field virtually close to them. It also allows them to escape dead end jobs as sales women and waitresses 40 of the 240 Massachusetts women in the program are being trained at a Brighton training center. When I visited the center they expressed some of their reasons for pursuing construction work getting into this program sort of fill the gap that was there before. But I knew that like to do physical things but it wasn't until really recently that I thought that I wanted to do something that was really physical because it was never suggested to me really. I mean it sounds
like a truism but it is true. What faces these women after they have finished the preprinted SCHIP program and are employed at their first work site. It is clear that their newly acquired shop skills are not going to be enough. They will have to face resentment and uncertainty from men on the work site. Understanding these emotions and knowing how to deal with them is a part of the program's curriculum. One of the issues that's dealt with a great deal is assertiveness training. The difference between being assertive and acting on your own behalf for yourself and be aggressive and hostile and then how to handle those other people and there's going to be someone a job size can tell you every day you don't belong there. There's a situation where people will ignore. Women are ignored on the work site. People say well you're just here as a number and you really can't do the job. And they have the women had the skills they want to learn and they're denied that opportunity. And the other thing is that they're challenged something will never happen to a man they're asked to carry
things and no man can carry or perform tasks that will make them they are doomed to fail at many different ways to harass. Perhaps this feeling of not being wanted out there has drawn the women closer together. Or maybe it's working and learning together. Whatever the reasons a feeling of community and group identity has grown among the women involved in the women in construction project for GBH Journal. I'm Becky Roth. When. You. Watch.
TV in the 30s United States Congress saw fit to pass the Wagner Act a major attempt to protect workers rights and their attempts to organize unions. The Wagner Act was a bold attempt by the US government that legitimatize the basic right of collective bargaining the number of American political and labor historians say the Wagner Act is one of the most radical ideas the U.S. government ever embraced as he began to take effect. The percentage of unionized workers in America climbed from 10 percent to about 30 percent in the 1950s. Since then union representation of American workers has shrunk to about 15 percent and is still decreasing. The labor movement places much of the blame for the declining numbers on the ineffectiveness of the legal powers that protect American workers who want to organize the National Labor Relations Board created by the Wagner Act is on the front line of labor management battles and it's the NLRB which is supposed to go to bat to protect workers from illegal firings for union organizing duty which some say it now fails to do. One of those people who claims the
NLRB has reversed its role over the years from protecting the workers to protecting the employer comes in the ranks of the board itself. Harold Cole retired as the regional attorney for the NLRB recently and is now writing a book on how the board could effectively protect American workers. He discussed recently his approach to labor law and how the board has fumbled in its duties to protect American workers. Let's zoom in on this. Before I was a child I was a 30 day time limit investigating the judge and by the way they meet the time with me because they never investigated. Let me give you an illustration. Let's assume you were you know it was the nation and you were fired. And you go up and say hey what's the reason for disguise it well you were too absent in the past year absenteeism is that it's hurting us. Well insubordination or whatever that is the only way I can as a team and every employer has a system of dealing with absenteeism. One of the things that we introduced in this region the New England region was to begin these aid three cases with a cross examination. Why
was Fitzgerald absenteeism. Well come on you would say to the president. People are always absent in you know five people because I don't know you must have a system is not right. Yes. Well what is it. Well then he begins to describe it. Somebody has an absence is permitted. That doesn't count against inference and he has a system of dealing with it. You can very quickly ascertain the norms of excellence by which a worker is judge however they want to be never used as an investigative subpoena greatest contribution you could make that enforcement of the Wagner Act is the routine use of the investigative subpoena we are now engaged in the sale of reinstatement rights went out in force in this large facet. Well how is this going to be resistance they said well I don't cross that got to be resisted. We're going to be in a war for two years at least. That's why we're here I understand. That's the last answer to that question. There are other issues such as animists that is that. Besides proving the truth or falsehood of the reason for firing Fitzgerald I have to show that the
employer has an animist against you know Adam is not only means that an employer is opposed to you I can bring that out very swiftly in a cross-examination I've done it for years Mr. President. You hate unions. That's normally followed by the public. Mr. President you have a perfect legal right to detest unions do you by the way the answer used to be does the co-op. Well I've trained a lot of attorneys most of them if not all of them work from blood. So now when I ask that question I very often get the you know I like you. Are you in business. No answer to make as much money as you can isn't that right. Yeah unions cause money to them. Yes you must be opposed. You can reverse a witness in 30 seconds. Analysts have defined his opposition to a union his institution. There are many definitions of animus. Some judges says it means nothing. Some judges say it must be evidence pointing the finger at the Fitzgerald the union activist saying I'm going to fire that son of a bitch. And by the way if you introduce that kind of evidence at a
trial that I fired Fitzgerald because he was you know it was it's not only disbelieve the judge says My God no president of a radio company would say to a worker that I fired Fitzgerald because he lied that you know that's minute confessional evidence is possible. It's only when that credibility contest if you prove the reason namely absenteeism is false. But as I won more and more cases the fact that they were not wins became rather. You want to trial involving the you know my God by the time you got through he had made economic accommodations. He had moved to California for instance. He didn't want the job. There was no way of repairing the torn fabric of the collective activity at that point it was dead forever. You either had to do it by reinstatement reinstatement is the key thing you have to get France they want to give up. I understand that the law is just an exchange of money. As I won more and more cases the the faucet became more.
Harold Cole a veteran regional attorney with the National Labor Relations Board here in Boston. And that's GBH journal for TONIGHT producer and director was Marshall Hertz with assistance tonight from Steven Dyson engineer Margo Garrison. I'm Greg sterile. Work together to get your work together with a deacon in a green. Whether with Google in a goggle in a jigger in a Jagger and a giggle and a green and my mama say. I'm a teacher to all kinds of work that I can sweep my floor but if you all work together well it won't take long. So we all work together with a wooden and a giggle. You all work together with me. This is WGBH Boston.
Series
WGBH Journal
Episode
Labor Show
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-19f4r17w
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Description
Series Description
WGBH Journal is a magazine featuring segments on local news and current events.
Created Date
1979-07-05
Genres
News
Magazine
Topics
News
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:28:15
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 79-0160-07-05-001 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
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Citations
Chicago: “WGBH Journal; Labor Show,” 1979-07-05, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-19f4r17w.
MLA: “WGBH Journal; Labor Show.” 1979-07-05. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-19f4r17w>.
APA: WGBH Journal; Labor Show. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-19f4r17w