Professional and Technical Employees in the Labor Force: An Overview

Excerpted from The Professional and Technical Work Force: A New Frontier for Unions

Over the past thirty years, a dramatic transformation in the American economy has resulted in a steep decline in manufacturing and blue-collar jobs and a concurrent growth in service sector technical and professional employment. Professional workers comprise roughly 15% of the total U.S. labor force — its largest occupational grouping. Their numbers and significance are expected to grow rapidly. An additional 5.3 million new professional jobs are projected through the year 2008 — an increase of almost 27% over 1998 (Braddock, 1998). Technicians’ jobs are expected to experience a similar boom, with more than a million new jobs anticipated through 2008, an increase of 22%.

The size and growth of the professional and technical work force make it a major source of union membership today and in the foreseeable future. This chapter discusses the general employment situation of professional and technical employees, introduces major issues and trends expected to shape their professions and explores ways in which unions seek to address their concerns and provide them with a voice.

Trends in Employment, Education and Earnings

The professional specialty category is the fastest growing element of the labor force in terms of numbers and rate of growth. It includes a wide range of highly skilled and educated workers, such as architects, engineers, lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists, teachers, etc. Of the more than 20 million professionals in 1999, significant numbers were employed as elementary and secondary school teachers (5.3 million), health assessment and treatment professionals (3.0 million) and engineers (2.1 million) (Employment and Earnings, January 2000).

The technician and related support category includes drafters, surveyors, licensed practical nurses, dental hygienists, emergency medical technicians, etc. Technical employment has been a small portion of the overall labor force, with only 4.9 million individuals employed in 1998, mostly as health technologists and technicians or science and engineering technicians, including computer programmers. But their numbers are growing rapidly — especially in various computer based occupations.

While professional and technical workers are dispersed throughout the economy, their concentration has been highest in three key industries: health services, which has a workforce that is 45.3% professional and technical; education services, with 56.5%, and social services, with 36.5% working in these occupational categories. Professional and technical work is found least often in transportation, public utilities, and wholesale and retail trade.

Professional and technical workers are well-educated: more than 76% of all professional specialty workers have four or more years of college education, with almost one-half of them doing post-graduate work. Professional specialty workers, in fact, are the most highly educated of all occupational categories, exceeding even executive, administrative and managerial workers, of whom only 14.6% attained any education beyond the bachelor’s degree. Perhaps this accounts for their higher median weekly earnings. Professional workers earned a median weekly pay of $800 in 1999, slightly more than that received by people in executive and administrative positions.

Technicians, while not as highly-educated as professionals, nevertheless have fairly high levels of educational attainment and ranked as the third highest paid occupational category.

The high levels of education achieved by professional and technical workers comes at a cost, however. Though compared to other workers, their earnings are greater, most will work many years to recover the cost of tuition, books, supplies, etc. Many take out substantial loans to fund their education, and the repayment of these loans takes a significant share of their post-education income.

Issues and Concerns

Not only do professional and technical workers face many of the problems that plague workers in general — such as periods of unemployment, underemployment and technological displacement — but the dual forces of privatization and conglomeration of employing institutions in the so-called "new economy" threaten to undermine their professional autonomy, working conditions and dignity, as well.

New technologies have rocked the broadcast, cable, performing arts, recording and telecommunications industries, as well as library services, science and engineering. All of these industries employ large numbers of professional and technical people and have been greatly affected by computer-based technology that raises concerns about job loss, de-skilling, and, in some cases, loss of rights in intellectual property. Consider the increased on-line availability of books and journals which has led some to predict that library patrons soon may bypass traditional libraries altogether by heading to a "virtual library." Concerns have been raised by engineers and drafters, regarding deskilling and displacement by computer-assisted drafting programs (CAD, auto-CAD) and other uses of computers. Additionally, new developments in communications technology make it possible for corporations to utilize engineers and computer scientists who work anywhere in the world. This raises the possibility that employers, always in search of cheaper labor, will export even these highly sophisticated jobs to overseas work forces.

The advent of digital technology in the performing arts and in the broadcast, cable and telecommunications industries has increased concerns both about job loss, and even more about issues of copyright infringement. For example, digital technology offers instantaneous and unlimited reproduction of music with little loss in sound quality, as well as the ability to dissect previously recorded performances to create new works. This latter issue has been particularly salient in the debate over "sampling", in which producers of recordings or sound tracks incorporate samples of the recorded work of musicians in their work, sometimes without permission or attention to the rights of the original artists.

The use of digital technology in broadcast, cable and telecommunications has led to anxiety over resulting changes in job responsibilities and job losses in these areas of major employment for professional and technical workers. As jobs are eliminated, new technologies make it possible for remaining employees to take on new tasks which were formerly outside their particular job description or for lower skilled and lower paid workers to do the work. In either case, turbulence is created at the work place, which raises deep concerns for the professional and technical work force and the unions that represent them.

Technological change also has hastened the consolidation and convergence of many industries in which professional and technical workers are employed — health care, finance and insurance, information, communication and entertainment services, etc. As this occurs, many positions become redundant or restructured in ways that disrupt past patterns of professional responsibility and authority, a development that leaders of unions of professional and technical workers must address.

Finally, trends toward the privatization of historically public functions are affecting many professions — especially those in education and health services — and raising concerns about the ability of many professional and technical workers to maintain high levels of professional quality service.

Union Organization

All of these trends — advancing technology, the convergence of previously distinct industries, conglomeration and privatization, etc. — present serious challenges to professional and technical workers and have led to increased interest in union representation.

While total union membership declined, the percentage of union members who are white collar employees increased steadily between 1986 and 1999. Indeed, professionals in 1999 were the second most unionized occupational category. Since professional and other occupational areas are growing rapidly, there is ample opportunity for continuing union growth within them.

As growing membership indicates, professional and technical workers are turning to unions. Why? A 1997 study by Cornell University Professor Richard Hurd who surveyed 1,500 non-union professional and technical workers found that the primary reason given for such support is the belief that unions provide workers with a voice at the workplace. When these workers were asked to identify the most important issue on the job, the most frequent response was the ability to exercise professional judgment — a matter of growing importance as employing organizations increase in size and scope of activity and consequently discount the role of the individual professional or technical worker.

Thirty-six percent of the participants in this survey said that given a choice, they would choose a union. Still, a significant number (30%) said they would rather have a professional association represent them. The most common reason given for not supporting a union organization is that it "might create conflict at work." Eighty-one percent want their employee organizations to seek a cooperative relationship with employers though many did not believe their employers would want this.

What this survey seems to demonstrate is that although professional and technical workers clearly want some form of representation and a collective approach to addressing their work-related concerns, they still wonder if a union is the answer. Therefore, unions seeking to expand membership in the professional and technical occupations are challenged to be sensitive to the issues that are important to these workers and to their concern that unions exacerbate workplace tensions by relying too much on confrontational tactics. Unions must assure these workers that they are capable not only of defending their rights and voicing their concerns, but also of resolving conflicts and alleviating the uncertainty and tensions that exist.

Note:
This summary was taken from The Professional and Technical Work Force: A New Frontier for Unions. To find out more about ordering this publication, click here.

Sources Cited

Braddock, Douglas, "Occupational Employment Projections to 2008," U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 122, No. 11, November 1999, pp. 51-57.

Hurd, Richard, The Organizing Challenge: Professional/Technical Workers Seek A Voice. Washington DC: Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO, 1997.

Hurd, Richard, Professional Workers, Unions and Associations: Affinities and Antipathies, Ithaca, New York, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, 2000.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of EducationStatistics, 1998.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Career Guide to Industries, 2000-01 Edition, Bulletin 2523, Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Current Population Survey, Annual Averages, 1986-1999.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment and Earnings, Vol. 47, No. 1, January 2000.