Still a long way to go, union members told

On a day designated for the remembrance and advancement of human rights around the globe, a gathering of union supporters argued that Utah has a long way to go.

Mine workers from Huntington and Kennecott Utah Copper joined educators, nurses, emergency response dispatchers, academics and others at the Salt Lake library Wednesday for a half-day seminar on the union movement. At the front of the room, a sign taped to a podium read, "Workers Rights Are Human Rights."

Edward Armour, a Utah union organizer and member of the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association, said unions protect workers and build stronger companies, communities and economies.

"People think that if you're a union member, you're anti-management," Armour said. "We believe in strong companies, and we believe that collective bargaining is part of it."

Collective bargaining has contributed to the creation of the eight-hour work day, Armour said, as well as paid sick leave, overtime pay, pensions and maternity leave. But with increasing international competition, deregulation, free trade agreements and other strategies implemented as part of a larger "business-centric agenda," union density is declining, Armour said.

Today, Peter Philips, University of Utah senior labor economist, said workers are struggling and employers have found themselves "in a tough fix."

"Where have all the good employers gone?" Philips mused. "It's not that there have been huge personality changes in the class of capitalist. It's that the employers have found themselves in a tough fix, . . . and their response has been to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The baby is the American labor movement."

Employers have forgotten that their efforts to hold down wages, increase productivity and improve competitiveness may create products and services that American workers can't afford to buy, Philips said. And increasingly, what they can't pay for out of their paychecks, they charge on credit cards.

"Credit has replaced the labor movement," he said. "The average American has debt of 80 percent of their personal income. People have replaced credit cards for their union cards."

Not all. Lori Day, a registered nurse at Salt Lake Regional hospital, said Wednesday she and about 175 other nurses have been working for two years to get union representation. The nurses' vote for representation, held two years ago, is held up at the National Labor Relations Board on appeal by hospital operator Iasis Healthcare.