The purpose of this research is to examine how the process of privatizing city and county government services has affected labor unions and various labor-union constituents. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which the privatization phenomenon has emerged in recent years, as well as the relative position of unions in the whole scheme of government-related services, and then to discuss possible lines of development if current trends toward privatization continue.
Private-sector unionism has declined in significant part since the 1970s because of the decline in basic-industry activity in general. The fewer manufacturing jobs, the fewer manufacturing labor-union members. Heckscher (1988, p. 239) cites the decline in mass-production industries and the massive "unemployment and technological change," which is code for automation that has supplanted mass-production workers that had been unionized. The service sector, which has received so much attention, has not historically unionized to the extent that the manufacturing sector has, although as we shall see that fact has shifted in the most recent period. Heckscher also notes the increasing levels of dissatisfaction among the technology-oriented replacements for mass-production workers who have displace workers formerly protected by unions, citing "the growing discontent among semiprofessional employees: middle managers, technicians, sales representatives, engineers, investigators, and others who constitute the core of an economy based increasingly on the production of knowledge." He continues,
The expectations of this group are defined largely by the traditional concept of "management." In the past their positions have brought job security and privileged working conditions: in bad times workers get laid off, not managers. They have been part of the "family" of management, trusted to do their jobs and, in return, offering loyalty and commitment to the company....