Part-Time Work, Full-Time Pain
Part-time jobs drive down wages in related
positions and cost full-time workers
extra tax dollars in benefits.
By Gerald W. McEntee
Every so often, an event grabs the attention of the entire nation.
One of the more recent national attention-grabbers was the strike by the United Parcel Service (UPS) workers who are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. For nearly two weeks, our sisters and brothers at UPS stuck together, walked the picket lines and held out for a decent contract. As a result of this strike, cargo and small package shipping in the U.S. became very difficult. Catalog sales sagged. Merchandise was not delivered to stores. Even birthday presents were delayed.
And despite these inconveniences, public support for the strikers ran high because people everywhere could identify with the issues that brought about the strike.
During the first days of the strike, the news coverage focused on the headaches that UPS customers were dealing with. But as time passed, the media shifted its focus from customer inconvenience to one of the main issues that was at the heart of the strike: part-time work.
Part-time work has been a permanent part of our economy for a long time. It used to be that the only people filling part-time positions were teenagers working after school, students working around a college schedule, or people who needed scheduling flexibility for child care or other needs.
And to this day, it still provides those opportunities.
But the UPS strike just confirmed what working women and men have already known for years: Part-time jobs are no longer just for teenagers and college students. Employers are shifting their workforce away from stable full-time positions in favor of "throwaway" jobs — part-time or so-called "independent contractor" positions.
On the whole, part-time jobs pay less money on a per-hour basis than do full-time jobs; they seldom offer benefits such as health care or a pension; and they are likely to last a limited amount of time.
Since the mid-1970s, part-time employment has grown faster than full-time work. Today, over 37 million workers, about 30 percent of our national workforce, are employed outside of full-time positions.
Even at AFSCME, the overall percentage of members who fill part-time positions has grown. In 1975, only 2 percent of AFSCME's membership held part-time positions. In 1995, 9 percent of AFSCME's membership held part-time positions.
Compared to AFSCME, the statistics at UPS are astounding. In 1996, UPS made over $1 billion in profits — which is fairly typical for the company. Despite that healthy profit margin, when it came time for contract negotiations, UPS demanded the right to hire more part-time workers, despite the fact that part-time workers account for 60 percent of the current UPS workforce.
Everyone, including AFSCME families, is affected by the increase in part-time labor: Part-time jobs drive down wages in related positions and cost full-time workers extra tax dollars in benefits like Medicare, Medicaid and aid to the unemployed.
So what do we do?
The first thing we can do is to hold both politicians and corporate managers accountable for their actions.
We can educate ourselves about how our local, state and federal representatives stand on the use of non-union, part-time labor in the public sector. And when they make a promise, we can make sure they keep it.
The second thing we can do is to continue to be creative in the ways we include people who want to work part-time in our union contracts. AFSCME councils and locals have been very successful in the way they have balanced the needs of full-time workers and part-time workers while stemming the growth of unnecessary and non-union part-time workers.
As we all know, the Teamsters signed a favorable contract for their workers that protected existing full-time positions and would start the process of converting several thousand part-time positions to full-time positions.
After the contract was concluded, a rank-and-file member of the union told a reporter that if the negotiations were truly "a marathon" he was happy that the Teamsters crossed the finish line first.
Well, that union member was right. But it wasn't just UPS in a race a couple of months ago — all of us are still in that race and part-time work is just one of the hurdles we face. The question for all of us is, are we in a race to the top, or to the bottom?
