A big footprint: organizing and training a new generation of union members.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: Editorial

A Picture of Jesse L. Carr stares down beneficently from the wall at the General Teamsters Local 959 hall in the three-story building he built in Anchorage with the wealth of the Transalaska oil pipeline.

Union members wait at long tables for the 10 a.m. call-out for jobs that they can either accept or not. With slip in hand, off they go to the job site to apply.

Retirees Ken Ridder, Jim Fenton, Dan Craig and Ted Lesko gather here for coffee several mornings a week and talk. Between them, there's many miles traveled across Alaska.

Lesko, former line driver and town hosteler, remembers Carr's footprint as a big one.

"For the pipeline, all of those involved met with Jesse Carr and told him, 'This is how it's going to be.' And he said, 'No, this is how it's going to be.' And they signed," Lesko said.

But that's not how unions do business today.

"We partner with employers to enhance their business success--more collaboration than combative," said Ken Coleman, Teamsters' secretary-treasurer.

FALLING FROM GRACE

The Teamsters stumbled in the mid-80s after an industry-wide labor agreement for work on the North Slope expired in 1985, and companies hired workers from Outside. That loss of union jobs and an ensuing statewide bust in construction drove wages down. By 1989, the union had broken out of bankruptcy, gained new credibility and signed onto a new agreement.

The Teamsters were back on the Slope again, but it was not the same as it once was.

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It was only natural that after the pipeline boom, union membership would drop. For the Teamsters, it fell from a high of more than 25,000 members to today's 5,000, plus an added 1,500 affiliate members, Coleman said.

"Every union in Alaska experienced decline after the pipeline," Coleman said.

SKILLED WORKERS BECOMING SCARCE

Union wages are usually more than non-union wages, something that makes employers wary of hiring union.

It is getting to the point though some say that no matter what the wages are, there are fewer and fewer skilled workers to be had. Companies are having a hard time finding experienced labor--that pool is drying up. Like everywhere else in the country and in every segment of the economy, the population of baby boomers is poised to bow out from the labor force, and with them goes years of experience. Who will replace them?

Dana Cruz of Cruz Construction in Anchorage worries that a generation may have been passed over and is not represented in today's skilled labor...