Labor's love lost

How public sector unions became the bête noire of uneasy times

When it comes to rising anger toward public sector unions, Wisconsin’s hard-charging Republican governor, Scott Walker, has taken the battle to a new—and caustic —level. But think of Barry Bluestone as the canary in the coal mine. Nearly two years ago, Bluestone penned an op-ed in the Boston Globe warning of a growing backlash against public sector unions that resist everything from changes in generous health care and retirement benefits to reform of outmoded teachers contracts. That backlash (along with the backlash to the backlash) is now in full fury, as cash-strapped states and local government struggle to maintain services, while education reform advocates target hidebound union contracts that they say hold back schools.

It’s not just that Bluestone, dean of the school of social science at Northeastern University, was ahead of the curve in warning public sector unions to change their ways or see their fortunes and public support slip further. It’s that he was such an unlikely guy to deliver this message. The liberal-leaning economist is not only a believer in the union cause, his late father, Irving Bluestone, spent 40 years as a top United Auto Workers union official.

The industrial union movement “is what converted an insecure working class into a more secure middle class,” says Bluestone. But public sector unions seem to be turning that idea on its head. With taxpayers fretting over cuts to services and schools, the squeeze that public sector unions are putting on public coffers can make them look more like a threat to the middle class than a guardian of its security and quality of life.

In the labor movement’s heyday in the 1950s, when one-third of all US workers were union members, the union surge caused a rising tide that lifted all boats, as non-union employers felt pressure to increase wages and im­prove benefits. But today just 11.9 percent of the US workforce belongs to a union.

What’s more, with almost all the falloff in union membership occurring in the private sector, public sector workers now make up a majority of all union members. That is a dramatic change, and it has turned union battles into a zero-sum scramble over scarce public dollars, where union gains are often seen as a community’s loss.

“The problem today with public-sector unions is too many taxpayers, too many cities, too many parents of school children see unions not as fighting for them but as only defending their own members,” says Bluestone. That view is reflected in policy shifts by even union-friendly liberals like Gov. Deval Patrick, who has significantly altered his stand on issues such as charter schools and the need to force savings in municipal health care costs.

Labor leaders say the assault on public sector unions is simply driving a race to the bottom—a deterioration of public workers’ benefits that will only put them on the same shaky ground as those in the private sector. While some, like Wisconsin’s anti-union governor, are seizing on the budget stress to try to drive a stake through the heart of labor, Bluestone fervently hopes unions can save themselves. Nearly 20 years ago, he coauthored a book with his father, Negotiating the Future: A Labor Per­spective on Ameri­can Business, that may help point the way. They argued that traditional, adversarial negotiations over labor contracts, which imply conflicting interests, should give way to “enterprise compacts,” agreements that build off of shared interests.

There are some glimmers of hope. Bluestone hails the recent election of Paul Toner as the new president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. In contrast with other union chiefs, Toner has signaled the MTA’s willingness to help craft new teacher evaluation tools that include measures of student achievement, a reform embraced by everyone from President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, to state education leaders.

MIT management professor Thomas Kochan helped mediate negotiations between state officials and unions under the new merged state Department of Transport­ation. Agreements were reached that “got rid of a lot of complicated and costly work rules,” he says, with a share of the savings directed to workers. “This is the moment for really transformative change,” says Kochan.

Blue­stone says public sector unions must recognize the need to embrace reforms, not fight them, and help fashion solutions to the problems facing public budgets. “Pro­gressive unions are crucial to society and I rue the day when unions are so weak that they will not be able to play that traditional role,” he says.

But the time for unions to step up is now. “It’s the eleventh hour,” he says.