The Good Life

Economists say AFSCME members have it better than non-unionized workers.

The choice is simple.

From a pocketbook perspective, American workers absolutely are better off belonging to a union.

So say economists from across the political spectrum. They believe that turning a non-union job into a union job is the single most important economic factor in a worker’s life — the difference between adequate earnings and a lifetime of financial need.

In the long run, according to these experts, a union job is more important than any advice employees will ever get about investing their 401(k) retirement plans. More important than buying a home. More important than making extra money through part-time jobs and other schemes.

"It makes sense to belong to a union," says Donald Deere, a politically conservative economist at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

Deere should know. He studied the wage differences for comparable union and non-union workers between 1974 and 1996, a period when union membership nationwide fell from 22 percent to just 15 percent of the American workforce.

He hit every educational, age and job description button, discovering that union members actually increased their wage advantage over non-unionized employees from top to bottom during those years.

How big an advantage?

Last year, unionized workers with less than a high school education earned 22 percent more than their non-union brothers and sisters. High school grads made about 20 percent more, while unionized college graduates earned 10 percent more than their non-union college graduate counterparts.

In addition to the wage advantage, however, government statistics also show that unionized employees’ fringe benefits typically are worth two to four times more than those received by non-union employees. And 85 percent of union members have health insurance, compared to just 57 percent of the non-union workforce.

The big winners in all this, according to Prof. Richard Freeman of Harvard University, are workers with little formal education and training, as well as women, African Americans and Latino workers.

"As a worker," says Freeman, "it’s awfully hard to see why you wouldn’t want a union."

GOOD HOMES. "When I first started working here 20 years ago," says Jim Bestpitch, president of Maryland Local 582 (Council 67), "every one of us in the shop were apartment renters.

"Now all 18 of us own our own homes," explains the Sewage Pump Station Operator. "It’s something I’m real proud of. You can’t imagine what it means for working people like us to have a home to call our own."

The 46-year-old works at one of the 250 pumping stations dotting the rolling hills and shorelines of the Chesapeake Bay and Patuxent River running through Anne Arundel County.

Midway between Annapolis and Washington, D.C., the Maryland jurisdiction has grown from tobacco-producing farmland to a network of bedroom communities spilling over from nearby Baltimore and Washington.

"We have our homes because of our union," he says. "AFSCME got us a fair contract, and it means protection for my family, an education for my two kids, and assures us a good quality of life."

In fact, following the local’s recently negotiated two-year 5.5 percent pay raise package for the 800-member unit of county public employees, Bestpitch was able to buy a new van for his wife.

The former Marine’s pay grade is L9, which tops out at $35,000 base pay annually, not including overtime or other benefits. Just across the border in St. Mary’s County, wastewater workers like Bestpitch are not unionized. There, he says, workers doing the same job are lucky to make half Bestpitch’s $16-an-hour base pay scale.

"We work hard," he says, "and by gosh we should be paid fair."

GOOD BET. "You bet," pipes up Marian Terry, president of Local 3890 (Council 7) and a correctional officer at the Garza West Transfer Diagnostic Unit near Beeville, Texas.

Before Garza, she worked for three years as a CO at a private prison near Groesbeck, just outside of Waco. "I started at $6.49 an hour for an eight-hour shift and no benefits," she remembers.

Then the private firm changed the workday to 12-hour shifts and cut pay to $6 an hour. "And they told us to ‘take it or leave it — we have people waiting in line to take your job.’"

"I had to take it," recalls the 52-year-old, "I was a widow and I had to feed myself and keep working."

Four years ago the picture got brighter after she was hired at Garza, where COs are represented by Local 3890.

"Shoot," says the Texas-born Terry, "now I’ve got medical coverage and sick leave and vacation time. We work eight-hour shifts, and working conditions are a lot better. I feel safer and I know if things go wrong, I can turn to AFSCME for help."

It didn’t hurt that this year AFSCME and other members of the state labor coalition wrung from the Texas legislature a $100-a-month pay raise for every one of Texas’ 300,000 state employees, including 35,000 COs.

"I went out and bought a new pickup truck," explains the proud Texan, happy with the $12.75-an-hour base pay she now receives.

"My union is making my life a little better," says Terry.

GOOD VIBRATIONS. "Grrrracacacacghph!" roar the motorcycles of Mike and Christina Ellis, as they slice through clouds of dust around hairpin turns and fly over ragged jumps.

It’s a Sunday motocross deep in the desert hills outside of Reno, Nev., where Mike works as a Highway Maintenance Worker and Christina works in the AFSCME business office.

"Yeah, I care about my salary," says Mike of the State of Nevada Employees Association (SNEA)/AFSCME Local 4041, "but it’s real important that the union sticks up for members like me."

While Mike and Chris enjoy weekends in the company of hearty outdoor types, as an 11-year highway maintenance worker with a base pay around $36,000, Mike has seen the "old boy network do a number" on new non-unionized employees.

His 50-person shop is not completely unionized. While he and some of the road striping crew belong to AFSCME, many new employees do not.

"It can be hostile and intimidating and unfair," he allows, "a place where the ‘in crowd’ knows the answers to test questions before the questions are asked, and choice assignments somehow are never shared fairly."

That means a lot to the road crew, where 110-degree summer days are the norm, and 10-foot snowdrifts in winter are all part of the workday.

"There are times when we put our lives on the line," he says. "It’s important we’ve got a union that helps us make a living and sticks up for us."

"Makes you realize how lucky you are," says Mike.

GOOD GRIEF. "Amen, brother," offers Charles Melott in Chicago Heights.

For two years, the 26-year-old has worked as a mental health technician at the residential facility for mentally disabled adults run by Services Exchange in suburban Chicago. His pay is $5.50 an hour and he has minimal sick leave and vacation time, with modest health care coverage.

"Good grief," explains Melott, "I have to work seven days a week in two different departments at Services just to live. You can’t do much with $5.50 an hour, so I’m on duty every day. And if I want to take a day off to rest or spend some time with friends, I have to burn a sick day or vacation day — just so I can make ends meet."

That’s why earlier this year he picked up the phone to call Council 31 in Illinois to ask for help in organizing fellow workers at Services Exchange. The call wasn’t out of the blue; he and his co-workers were "just sick" of all the unfairness there and decided to try to organize a union.

"One of the things we’re looking at," he says, "is that over the past 12 years this company has raised pay from $5 to $5.50 an hour. How in the world can folks live off that?"

Not surprisingly, Melott and everyone else at the 100-person staff facility are hurting.

"I can’t afford a car, so I bum rides or take the bus," he says, "I can just about pay my bills, but if anything happens to me, I’ll have to move back home to Ohio with mom and dad."

That’s not the way "work is supposed to be," says Melott. "Work is supposed to be about decency, not slavery."

GOOD IDEA. Ida Calloway, president of Local 1591 (Council 31) thinks Melott’s got the right idea.

"The workplace is supposed to be a place of respect," says the 59-year-old, who does almost the same work at the state-run Howe Developmental Center in Tinley Park, a few miles from Melott’s private facility.

The Mental Health Technician is a 12-year veteran, with a base pay of $26,400 or about $14 an hour. Her job comes with a generous sick leave allowance and vacation time, as well as a health insurance plan that protects her whole family.

"Sure, the money is important," says the grandmother of 11 who just bought a new car, "and we’re real pleased that our pension rights were almost doubled thanks to AFSCME pushing the legislature this year."

"But for me," says Calloway, "the idea of belonging to a union is about getting respect at the workplace. It’s a way for workers to hold our heads up high."

So strongly does Calloway believe in the dignity a union provides, she gives something back by serving on the AFSCME Health Advisory Committee, as well as several Council 31 committees. She also plans to do "all I can" to help Melott’s organizing efforts at the nearby Services Exchange facility.

"Nobody should ever be treated that way," insists Calloway.

GOOD HEARTS. "Christmas can be real hard," quietly observes Margaret Jean Pray.

She’s a registered nurse and works two jobs in newborn intensive care units of both Kaiser Permanente and the Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women in San Diego.

"You see heartbreaking things sometimes," says the member of AFSCME’s United Nurses Associations of California/National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees (UNAC/ NUHHCE).

"Some of our newborns are so, so sick," says the mother of two grown children. "We’re there with parents planning on healthy babies, and suddenly they’re looking at something that is not recognizable as a baby."

For Pray and other nurses, the job is about "caring for the very fragile lives of these newborns, and trying to encourage families who all of a sudden have their priorities and goals changed, possibly for the rest of their lives."

Because her two kids are grown and she’s a senior nurse, she works every Christmas, making time to be with her family after first caring for society’s most vulnerable.

It’s just a part of her well-paying jobs that bring in up to $75,000 annually. But the income also brings stress so overpowering "nurses and staff burn out all the time," she says.

She puts in three 12-hour days a week working without a contract at Sharp, and another one-to-two 8-hour days as a UNAC/NUHHCE nurse covered by a contract at Kaiser.

"The difference is shocking," Pray says, "It shows how important a union is for nurses like me."

At Kaiser, for example, if someone has a complaint about your medical practices, she says, "you can have a union rep with you at such a discussion."

By contrast, at Sharp — which UNAC/NUHHCE successfully organized but is still negotiating a contract — work rules do not yet safeguard the privacy and integrity of the nurses, who are "pushed around" without access to union protection.

"My pay at Kaiser is 150 percent of what Sharp pays," continues the 48-year-old, "and Sharp makes you pay for health insurance, while Kaiser just has a minimum co-pay for great health, dental and vision coverage."

Most hurtful is the culture of "looking over your shoulder" at Sharp, she insists. "It’s so destructive" of morale and a nurse’s sense of self-worth while trying to help the helpless infants in the unit.

"I’ve worked both sides," Pray repeats, "and no one can tell me a UNAC nurse isn’t having a better life."

By Ray Lane