New Realities

When the dust settled, the implicit "contract" that had existed between the companies and their workers for years was largely gone, replaced by a host of new work arrangements that left many workers - and their families - vulnerable.

The premise that workers would work 30 or 40 years with one employer and expect good jobs and fair treatment was all but extinct. Deeply eroded as well was the commitment to seniority, which had largely determined who did what, when and how in the old system.

In the workforce of today, insecurity is the rule. Often, you do not know if your employer is even going to be in the same line of work next week, let alone what you will be expected to do. Full-time, union work has often been replaced by part-time, subcontracted work. "Independent contractors" are commonly used. Today, people other than full-time employees do 30 percent of traditional telecommunications work.

At the same time, whole new industries have arisen out of the new technology. For many of these workers, unions often seem to be a foreign concept.

As the union movement confronts these developments and takes on the question of how to protect existing jobs and organize the unorganized, traditional approaches may not be effective.

The question is how do unions organize themselves and present themselves in ways that get people to want to join, regardless of who their employer is and what is going on in their particular workplace. The starting point for that process in the high tech arena is an understanding of what unions have to offer high tech workers.

Obviously, there are the traditional lures of high wages and good benefits. However, these have only limited appeal in many situations because high tech wages are often relatively high already.