Taming of the Beast
Deborah May’s daytime job in Connecticut offers no pension and limited benefits, so she has to work another job at night to get health benefits, disability and life insurance. When her father suffered a heart attack last year, May took time off both jobs to be with him. Neither employer paid her while she was away.
“If I wanted to work part time 10 hours a week, that’d be fine. But I work 35 to 40 hours a week and I have nothing to show for it,” May fumes.
May is one of a growing number of public employees who are involuntarily pushed into part-time work.
Efforts by public and private employers to cut labor costs have resulted in a steady growth in the contingent workforce — part-timers, temporary workers and independent contractors — over the last 30 years.
This trend is reflected in AFSCME’s membership. The number of part-time workers protected by AFSCME has swelled to more than 100,000 today.
The contingent workforce beast is devouring full-time jobs with an insatiable appetite. AFSCME’s arsenal for slaying the beast includes organizing to bring more contingent workers into the fold, bargaining to ensure that part-time members earn fair wages and benefits and lobbying to reverse the loss of full-time jobs.
THE TREND. “Since 1969, part-time jobs have expanded primarily because more employers view them as a means to cut labor costs, and not because workers want them,” according to a report released by The Bureau of National Affairs. “Involuntary part-time workers ... account for most of the growth in part-time employment’s share of the workforce.”
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 30 percent of all jobs in the nation are contingent, and are filled primarily by women, minorities, immigrants, teens and retirees.
Government budget cuts, hiring freezes and the explosive rise in health care costs have encouraged employers to avoid hiring full-time, permanent workers. Employers cut costs by paying part-time and temporary workers less than full-time workers and offering them few benefits.
AFSCME has found that the best way to prevent the replacement of full-time employees with an involuntary contingent workforce is by aggressively representing part-time workers to make sure they are fairly compensated. This also can give full-time workers the option of moving into a part-time or temporary position without losing job security, contract benefits or union status.
In addition to improving the wages and benefits of contingent workers through collective bargaining, AFSCME councils and locals continue to counter the trend by lobbying for legislation that protects all workers and by supporting labor-friendly political candidates.
A LOOK AT THE NUMBERS. In 1975, the number of part-timers protected by AFSCME was 16,027 — 2.4 percent — of the union’s total membership. By 1985 the number increased to 56,820 (6 percent). AFSCME’s part-time membership surged to 101,133 (9 percent) in 1998. The numbers reflect the organizing of many bargaining units with part-timers in schools, hospitals and social services. AFSCME has gotten some jobs converted to full-time at the bargaining table, but employers have been replacing some full-time jobs with part-time ones.
Most council and local presidents, organizers and contingent workers agree on one thing: Most of the part-timers and temps they know don’t want part-time work; they want to work full time. Clarke King, president of Local 1716 in Hartford, Conn., notes, “My main issue is to make part-time workers full-time workers; but, if we’re going to have part-time workers, we need to give them [better] benefits.”
In Connecticut, Wisconsin and Nebraska, where AFSCME has a strong presence, part-timers and temps work in a wide array of public-service jobs ranging from teachers’ aides, school crossing guards and food service workers to recreation specialists, sanitation engineers and health and human services specialists.
WAR OF ATTRITION. In Connecticut, public managers are using attrition to feed the contingent workforce beast a steady diet of full-time jobs. Bill Meyerson, director of communications for Council 4 in New Britain, says many of the part-time workers are protected by collective bargaining but still don’t receive the same wages and benefits as full-time employees.
King says the trend began when Connecticut’s economy took a hit in the mid 1980s. “Government laid off workers, doubled up workers’ responsibilities, brought in more part-timers and they also brought in temps.”
Deborah May and Daria Arace, Local 1716 (Council 4) members, are part-time recreation specialists in Hartford and are responsible for running the city’s arts and crafts program. May says they each work 35 to 40 hours a week. She says that if they work 750 hours in one year they get a 60-hour, lump-sum check paid annually in lieu of five sick days and five vacation days. They receive an additional 25 cents per hour in their checks if they work 1,000 hours annually. May, who moonlights at a casino, says the extra 25 cents is “quote unquote in lieu of health insurance.
“The city is being hard-nosed. They have no respect for their part-time workers. I’m 48 and I’m really getting tired of working two jobs,” says May.
Arace says they’re being exploited because Hartford officials are “making a whole lot of money off all of us with no benefits and no pensions. It seems like dirty politics is going on with the animal we call the city. It’s not just our shop,” she insists, “it’s all over the place.
“I’ve been living without benefits for a long time ... but it’s my own fault,” Arace laments, her voice beginning to crack. “But I love my job and I love what I do.”
POLITICAL REVOLT. Dennis O’Neil, Council 4’s director of politics and legislation, says AFSCME has helped in forming Connecticut’s Citizens for Economic Opportunity — a coalition of community, labor and religious activists — to pressure the legislature for worker protection laws.
The state senate is considering a bill that will force employers to pay part-timers and temps the same hourly wages and benefits as regular full-timers. A bill on the house floor requires corporations receiving at least $100 million in state grants to create jobs that pay workers prevailing wages and provide benefits to all part-time and full-time workers.
King cautions that even if state legislators pass laws to improve pay and benefits for contingent workers, “it would be a good gesture by the state, but it can’t dictate to the city what to do with its employees.”
King states, “If the political climate of our city changed, then the philosophy would change.” Labor made great strides in the nation’s November 1998 elections; 2000 looks just as promising and AFSCME is playing a key role in campaigning. King says his staff informs Local 1716 members that “AFSCME is the largest union and they act like it. [AFSCME is] more aggressive in the political arena, especially in the municipal area.”
FENDING OFF THE BEAST. AFSCME’s councils and locals in Wisconsin spend much of their time protecting full-time and part-time workers through collective bargaining.
A possible draw for the wayward creature to Wisconsin is the two-tier wage system, a tool employers use to limit wages for newer or non-traditional hires and offer them lower benefits. Bob Chybowski, associate director of Council 40 in Madison, says, “We don’t want a two-tiered system where a full-time worker is making $12 an hour and a part-time worker is making $8 an hour. We fight that as best we can.”
Chybowski says that full-time and part-time employees usually have a harmonious relationship in Council 40, which has more than 500 bargaining units in Wisconsin. He says they understand that if there’s any friction among the ranks, “they’re inviting management to introduce a two-tier package that undercuts wages and benefits” through collective bargaining by pitting one group against the other.
Mike Hendrickson, Local 2485 president, defiantly speaks out against the two-tier wage system when he bellows, “We will not open the door.”
The benefits of part-time workers in Council 40 are often pro-rated equivalents to those received by full-timers. Both categories are protected by the same bargaining units. In wall-to-wall units, all job classifications are brought in under the same contract.
In certain instances, though, part-time and full-time workers are organized in separate bargaining units. For example, part-time food service workers and teachers’ aides and full-time clerical staff and maintenance personnel in the Waukesha school district were organized at different times, explains Chybowski.
“We would like to accrete them to a present bargaining unit,” he adds. “It would be easier to have all members under wall-to-wall units. But we endeavor to represent part-time employees as vigorously as full-time employees. The leadership is very much aware that everyone benefits when the part-timers are treated fairly.”
TREKKING THROUGH THE PLAINS. The beast is bearing down on Nebraska, a right-to-work state.
All state government full-time and part-time workers — except state troopers and teachers — are represented by Local 61, the Nebraska Association of Public Employees (NAPE), and they get the same pay and health insurance, with part-timers receiving pro-rated benefits, just like in Wisconsin.
“We have part-time and full-time nurses,” says Hazel Burgess, a registered nurse who works full time at the Thomas Fitzgerald Veterans’ Home in Omaha. “If [nurses] hire into a part-time position, it’s because they want to, usually.”
She says that the pay for the center’s workers needs to improve, but “we have very good benefits.”
A WORD WITH THE GOVERNOR. Don Cassiday, the Local 61 organizer from Omaha, feels the challenge in Nebraska is to convince the governor and the state legislature to increase funding for more full-timers and permanent part-timers, which the local is currently lobbying for.
Dave Fields, Local 61 organizer in Lincoln, says that when the state’s new governor came on board he decreased the salaries of his top government aides. “He says he doesn’t believe in the ‘market’ system” whereby public employees are paid wages comparable to their private counterparts, explains Fields of the governor’s position. This may hurt NAPE’s chances of getting increased funding for public jobs in Nebraska.
Fields also states that since Nebraska has such a low unemployment rate — 1 to 2 percent — there aren’t enough union members to fill jobs because of competition from the private sector. The state uses a pool of non-union temporary employees to carry out its functions.
The state’s four veterans’ homes are hard hit, being understaffed and underbudgeted. Burgess estimates that most of the temps who augment the staff at Thomas Fitzgerald are nursing assistants and licensed practical nurses. She says temp agencies pay their workers more than public managers pay public employees, but temps don’t get the same benefits.
NAPE has gone on the offensive by organizing more workers to strengthen its voice and oppose contingent employment. “NAPE is working to increase the membership across the state, which should help our bargaining position,” says Burgess.
Recently, NAPE’s internal organizing picked up 382 new full- and part-time members in existing bargaining units, reports Bill Arfmann, NAPE’s executive director.
The new members didn’t join by happenstance, though. Arfmann says the new members — who include social workers, corrections officers, health care workers and transportation employees — “were part of a fight” against a constitutional amendment to cap state spending on public services. They teamed with existing members to defeat the proposal.
Last year NAPE successfully petitioned the state to provide health insurance for temps. This will improve the relationship among temps and permanent part- and full-timers, which Arfmann says should handcuff the state when it “tries to divide and conquer” public employees and undermine their collective bargaining rights.
By Jimmie Turner
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