File The Roanoke Times

1989: When miners went on strike against Pittston in Carbo, they blocked the entrance to the company's largest coal-cleaning plant and waited to be arrested.

File The Roanoke Times

2003: Jack Rowland with IUE-CWA 82162 flashed the victory sign to passing motorists as he and others picketed at ITT Night Vision in Roanoke County.

File The Roanoke Times

2009: Members of unions from across the Roanoke Valley gathered at the IUE-CWA Union Hall in Roanoke County in March to write letters to area politicians supporting the Employee Free Choice Act.

Coal mine operators once hired Roanoke's notorious Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to put down union organizing campaigns. Violence frequently followed. People on both sides sometimes died.

Times have changed.

As Labor Day 2009 approaches, union-busting thugs are history. Unions in Southwest Virginia confront different struggles. And Congress faces the hot-potato debate about the Employee Free Choice Act.

Leaders of several union locals contend that the battles they fight, and have fought, have produced gains for all working people. Some suggest that unions might become more attractive as regional employers eliminate pensions, reduce or eliminate contributions to 401(k) accounts and reduce health care coverage.

Contemporary struggles include declining membership statewide, although many union presidents in the region believe membership has stabilized.

A smaller stick

With reduced ranks, unions have lost clout.

"I think they [unions in Southwest and Southside Virginia] are weak right now," said Bob Trumble, a professor of management at Virginia Commonwealth University and director of VCU's Virginia Labor Studies Center. "How do you take any [bargaining] position when your company is trying to survive?"

Sherry Heck is president of Local 82167 of the International Union of Electronic/Communications Workers of America. The local represents hourly workers at Roanoke-based Virginia Transformer Corp. Heck said the embattled economy has diminished unions' power.

"We cannot fight the way we should due to companies closing down or threatening layoffs, as ours has done," she said.

Roy Hall, president of Covington Paperworkers Union Local 675, offered a different perspective, one colored by CPU's stormy split in 2007 from United Steelworkers Local 8-675.

"I'm going to say unions are less powerful but not due to the world economy or exportation of jobs," Hall said. "Union workers have been betrayed and abandoned by the unions they finance in the name of politics. Unions spend more money today per capita to lobby in Washington than on any other function."

In turn, Bobby Harrison, president of USW Local 8-675, noted that corporations spend huge sums on lobbying efforts and that USW International has the resources to counter legislation and trade policies that could, or already do, hurt union members.

"They fight the battle the common man cannot fight on his own," Harrison said. He cited as an example campaigns to battle unfair importing of paper from China.

A labor law attorney in Roanoke suggests other influences are affecting union membership. Tom Bagby, president of the Woods Rogers law firm, works with companies facing a union organizing effort or other labor-related issues.

"I think a lot of employees just don't see many advantages these days of being members of a union," Bagby said. "Employees have voted with their feet by moving away from labor unions. And I think many union members wonder whether they are really getting their money's worth when they pay union dues."

Some unions in the region have bucked the trend.

At ITT Night Vision in Roanoke County, union ranks have grown as the company has secured multimillion dollar government contracts for its military-grade night vision goggles.

Bobby Keener, president of IUE-CWA Local 82162, said the local at ITT has about 1,030 active union members and 50 retirees. In 2003, he said, the local had about 550 active members.

But Jim Leaman, president of the Virginia AFL-CIO, said globalization, outsourcing and advances in manufacturing technology have taken out scores of regional factory jobs, some of which were unionized.

"Obviously, the biggest factor is the loss of manufacturing jobs in Southwest Virginia," Leaman said.

Lester Hancock is president of the United Auto Workers Local 2069 at Volvo Trucks North America in Dublin. In 2005, there were nearly 3,000 union employees at the plant, he said. Today, Hancock said, about 914 union members are left.

Retaliation?

There are other challenges described by unions in Southwest Virginia. They include Virginia's status as a right-to-work state in which workers in a unionized company cannot be compelled to join or pay dues. They also include fears about retaliation by employers in response to organizing attempts -- anxiety that is heightened by the recession -- even though threats of such retaliation or actual payback are illegal.

"Workers want to organize but do not for fear of losing their jobs," said Vickie Hurley, president of IUE-CWA Local 82161 at General Electric in Salem.

The National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1935, administers the National Labor Relations Act, which governs relations between unions and employers. The law guarantees workers the right to organize unions and bargain collectively with employers without fear of retribution.

The agency's board has been understaffed since December 2007 and some contend that the backlogged agency was especially business-friendly during the administration of former President Bush.

"We've had fairly lax enforcement by the NLRB," Trumble said. "I think employers have felt emboldened during the Bush era and even prior to that."

Bagby disagrees.

"Most companies are careful in campaigns that they don't cross the line," he said.

A Salem-based manufacturer stepped over the line in June 2000 when it fired two men involved in a union campaign.

Both the NLRB and, subsequently, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, found evidence that steel joist manufacturer John W. Hancock Jr. fired the men because of union activity. The court ordered Hancock to rehire the men with back pay. Today, the plant has a new owner and new name and remains nonunion.

Bagby said such violations are rare.

Free Choice Act

Union officials counter that companies frequently use intimidation to stifle campaigns. And that is a key reason many favor the controversial Employee Free Choice Act, which they contend will help limit illegal tactics by companies.

Labor expert Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., offered his take on the national political environment for labor organizations.

"In my view, this is the best of times and the worst of times for labor unions nationally," Chaison said. "The best of times because unions finally have a friend in the White House and a Congress that appears willing to pass laws that the unions propose," aside from, perhaps, the Employee Free Choice Act, also called "card check" legislation, he said.

Some Senate Democrats are wary of the EFCA, he said. The act could make it easier for union organizing campaigns to move forward. Businesses and business groups have voiced fierce opposition to the act as proposed for a host of reasons. They say fallout from the law would cripple many companies or send them overseas. They say the legislation would, in practice, eliminate secret ballot elections during union campaigns, allowing organizers to browbeat workers into joining up.

Proponents insist secret ballot elections would still be an option.

"Everyone is hung up on the secret ballot issue [but] that is not the problem," said Keener.

"The real issue is the six to eight weeks the company has before an election must take place," he said, an interval he said allows time for intimidation of employees.

"Proof of this can be found in our own organizing committee," Keener said. "Two of our four members lost their jobs at previous companies trying to get a union in."

Alternative versions of the act "have given the Democrats some wiggle room for not supporting the Employee Free Choice Act while still appearing supportive of workers," Chaison said.

Right to work

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, six states had union membership rates in 2008 below 5 percent of employed wage and salaried workers. The national average was 12.4 percent. At 4.1 percent, Virginia was among the six.

All are right-to-work states, where employees can reap any benefits of union representation without joining or supporting the union financially. Hurley said about 5 percent of hourly workers at General Electric have chosen not to join. The plant has about 350 union members, she said.

Looking forward

Trumble said the weakening of unions could compound already daunting challenges facing a nation with an aging work force moving into retirement without pensions and company-funded health care.

"When unions were very strong, retirement and health care were covered by a much greater degree by companies," he said.

And not just union retirees face tight incomes and high expenses, he said.

"At some point, society as a whole will have to make up the difference," Trumble said.

He said cutbacks in benefits, frozen wages and job cuts could ultimately stir more organizing efforts over time.

For now, Bagby said he senses that union organizers have stepped back.

"Right this minute, I think a lot of unions are doing some groundwork and waiting to see what happens with the Free Choice Act," he said.

Meanwhile, Chaison said there are divisions among players on the national stage.

Some unions are emphasizing organizing low-skilled, low-wage workers while others, such as the United Auto Workers, are fighting to save jobs and negotiating concessions, he said.

"So, the unions are at a junction when they should be gaining influence politically and economically, but instead the union movement is in disarray, unable to achieve its main objectives for renewed growth, and the unions will be approaching Labor Day with great frustration and hopes that somehow the tide will turn in the future," Chaison said.

News researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.