Many workers and their unions have fought a defensive battle for decades. The industries that employed them, entire sectors that employed them, were in decline. Worker and community suffered and to many it was plain that America was losing more than just a paycheck, it was losing the ability to produce high-quality goods and services. In the affected sectors, though, new ideas began to percolate, and unions and progressive, community-minded managers took heed.

Union and employers moved beyond the idea stage when they agreed that their problems went beyond single contracts or the problems of a single plant or company. They affected the entire industrial sector in many different ways. The result in many cases was a sectoral alliance or partnership that sought to address a wide range of problems such as:

• Sector standards
• Manufacturing skill standards
• Manufacturing partnerships
• Technology
• Sector expansion

Beginning with that core of union and allied employer membership, sectoral partnerships evolve either as employer-funded labor-management programs or as labor-management consortia. Sectoral high road partnerships tend to have a very broad sweep, and they can develop a professional staff which will benefit the entire industry and its workforce. Sectoral partnerships can go beyond the range of a single union, employer, or community group reaching thousands of workers and many companies.

Two Ways to Go

There are two general types of sectoral partnerships and both have been successful. The first is bargained programs. These are born when unions and employers negotiate a training or partnership fund with a governing board of both union and employer representatives. For instance:

• The San Francisco Graphic Arts Institute (GAI) brings the Graphic and Communications Industries Union (GCIU) into a bargained, multi-firm partnership that gives students training in new technology and helps member firms modernize.
• The Las Vegas Carpenters Journeymen's and Apprentice Training Program, a traditional, construction-sector, labor-management training program, has produced a dramatically expanded training program focused on upgrading skills for new members, and providing ESL classes for members and families.
• Through collective bargaining Philadelphia Hospital and Health Care Workers 1199-AFSCME and New York 1199 SEIU have built healthcare training and education sectoral programs serving over 100,000 union members and new workforce entrants.

The second type is the regional labor-industry organization which goes beyond a single company or small group of linked companies to address problems of an entire type of industry. These include:

• Detroit's Labor-Management Council for Economic Renewal (LMCER), providing skill upgrading in the auto parts industry.
• New York's Garment Industry Development Corporation (GIDC), sponsored by UNITE and garment industry associations, providing skill upgrading and modernization assistance.
• The E-Team training and job placement partnership in Eastern Massachusetts, combining the IUE and General Electric in a congregation-based community initiative.

Sectoral partnerships can sometimes help to heal fractious relationships between labor and management in troubled industries.

Both kinds of sectoral partnerships benefit from size and scope, and both have shown a healthy flexibility in developing their activities and structures. Although the original purpose may be simply skills training, they frequently encompass larger issues such as modernizing workplace technology and technique - how the work is done. Partnerships can use their strength to reach disadvantaged workers and to propose or alter the course of regional economic development.

Sectoral partnerships didn't arise because unions and management suddenly felt the need to work together. Rather they came about because of worldwide wrenching changes in industry, changes which American industry eventually could no longer ignore: cutthroat competition, globalization production and markets, and declining real wages for most workers.

A number of trends came together to create an unprecedented shortage of skilled manufacturing workers. The maturing of the manufacturing workforce, the growing instability of manufacturing jobs, the increased complexity of some manufacturing processes, and the systemic dismantling of manufacturing training programs have all had their impact. Skill shortages have been blamed for everything from increased accident rates to lagging productivity and performance. Neither unions nor management could solve this critical problem alone.

Similarly, contingent, part-time and temporary work increased at both high end and low end jobs. Unions in the communications/information technology sector are losing skilled technical workers even as the sector creates new industries and new technically skilled occupations. And contingent workers in new industries and professions often lack basic health care and other benefits. But militancy alone could not stem the move to contingent work, and unions knew that in the long run both workers and companies would suffer if changes were not made.

If necessity was the mother of the sectoral partnership, then the child was a success. Sectoral partnerships have thrived in ways that the initiators could not have foreseen.

The Power of Sectoral Partnerships

Sector partnerships can make a serious imprint on their industries.

Take the case of the Garment Industry Development Corporation (GIDC), a single-union, multi-firm, labor-management partnership covering hundreds of New York area employers and over 30,000 union members. In the early 1980s, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (today part of UNITE) began looking for solutions to job flight in the New York garment industry. The result was GIDC, which today offers a comprehensive array of support services for workers and the workplace and has helped retain union jobs and the industry in New York. GIDC has generated more than $35 million in new sales, and has opened new international markets. The partnership has provided training to thousands of workers and technology transfer and business assistance directly to scores of firms.

In pursuit of goals which benefit the entire community, alliances find ways to compromise and to work in coalition.

Sectoral partnerships can sometimes help to heal fractious relationships between labor and management in troubled industries. In the Bay Area, the San Francisco Hotels Partnership Project joined the feuding hospitality industry and the large, multi-ethnic Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 2. A 1994 Multi-Employer Group agreement put $1.8 million into an existing training fund and formed the Partnership, covering nearly 5,000 workers in 11 Class A hotels.

Through training, language and upgrade programs workers have gained new skills and promotion opportunities, customer relations have improved, hotel profits and efficiency have improved, and union-management relations are on a positive track. As a result, the Partnership has earned the respect and financial support of the HERE international union, the member hotels, and the State of California. It is a model for HERE locals nationwide.

Some sectoral partnerships have become part of the very highest levels of economic decision-making and increase the visibility and power of unions as a result. It was the Wisconsin AFL-CIO which raised the future of Wisconsin manufacturing with that state's academic and government leaders. Union leaders saw that the state's metalworking industry was in general trouble, and research proved them right. As a result, in 1991 the Governor's Commission on Workforce Quality endorsed the formation of the not-for-profit Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership. Today, WRTP includes 56 firms, 60,000 workers, 42 local unions, and 14 international unions, covering all manufacturing activity in the state. WTRP has $21 million in private investments, and more than 6,000 people receive training each year.

Although the partnership originally focused on incumbent metalworkers, it now deals with school-to-work for youths, welfare-to-work for unemployed workers, and modernization for firms. Studies have shown that WRTP improved access to good jobs for low-income workers. The 320 low-wage workers placed through WRTP more than doubled their annual income to $22,500 plus full benefits. Sector-based high road projects can grow beyond the original bounds of an industry. In New York, Wisconsin and Las Vegas sector partnerships have not only improved the quality of work and the quality of work life, but have added to the market share of unionized companies. They do that in several ways: one is through greater depth and scope of activity within a sector, another is by the expansion of the number of sectors actively engaged within a region.

Road Signs

For union and community activists who want to begin or improve sectoral partnerships, the best way to go is through networking with those who are already on the same road. The Working for America Institute has compiled case histories and analyses of existing sector partnerships, and these are available on the website and in the Journal. But there is no substitute for peer-to-peer meetings with other activists.

The May 13-16 Working for America 2000 Annual Conference is exploring and analyzing the issues of high road sectoral partnerships through the following workshops:

• High Tech Contingent Work Initiatives Temporary workers in high wage, high skill industry
• Made in the USA: Transforming Low Road Motivations into High Road Possibilities Getting consortium initiatives to serve the union agenda
• Building Worker Voice: Lessons from Manufacturing Skill Standards Overview of findings from the MSSC research process.
• Anatomy of a Strategy: High Roads in Health Care Use SEIU 660's experience as a start up to highlight process, support issues and challenges
• Taking Flight: Bargaining the High Road at Work and in the Community Applying high road standards at the bargaining table and in community negotiations
• Building Momentum: Extending and Adding New Sectors Wisconsin, Las Vegas, and GIDC