32 million workers lack collective bargaining rights

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — About three-quarters of the civilian work force, or 103 million people, have some form of collective bargaining rights under federal, state or local laws, congressional investigators have found.

Nine out of 10 workers in manufacturing have collective bargaining rights, the highest percentage of workers, according to the report released yesterday by the General Accounting Office.

By contrast, the GAO found that some 32 million civilian workers as of February 2001 did not have the right under any law for a designated agent to negotiate with employers their wages, hours or other employment terms.

That group included 8.5 million independent contractors; 5.5 million employees in small businesses; 10.2 million people working as supervisors and managers; 6.9 million federal, state and local government employees; about 532,000 household workers; and 357,000 agricultural workers.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called yesterday for legislation "to protect this basic right."

Gordon Pavy, AFL-CIO collective bargaining coordinator, noted that private contracting, including work for temporary employment agencies, is "the area where there's been the most erosion."

The GAO report also said two recent Supreme Court rulings affecting National Labor Relations Board decisions could result in either the loss or reduction of collective bargaining rights by some workers.

A decision last year in the Kentucky River case could increase the number of employees considered supervisors and thereby excluded from collective bargaining, the report said. The court ruled that the NLRB should revise its test for determining supervisory status in a case involving charge nurses.

In a ruling this year in the Hoffman Plastic case, the court reversed the board's decision to award back pay to an undocumented foreign worker fired for union activity. The ruling said illegal aliens do not have the same rights as Americans when mistreated on the job.

Because back pay is one of the remedies available to workers whose rights are violated, the decision has the effect of reducing the bargaining rights of an estimated 5.5 million foreign workers without documents, the GAO said..

The question of collective bargaining gained importance recently in the fight over legislation to establish a Homeland Security Department as President Bush tried to win authority from Congress to waive those rights for that agency's 170,000 employees.

The White House accused Democrats yesterday of blocking the agency by upholding "perverse" union demands. Democrats, in turn, say the administration is dragging out the dispute for political purposes.

Since 1959, no major group of workers has lost collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act, the GAO noted. At the same time, other federal, state and local laws have extended the rights to some workers in groups excluded from the 1935 act — about 14.5 million workers mainly in the nonprofit healthcare industry; federal, state and local government; and agriculture.