UNION MESSAGE

The message should be fairly clear by now: Workers in the Cape Girardeau area who have been targeted by unions don't want organized labor. Dana Corp. is the latest example, where employees voted 205-87 last week against representation by the United Auto Workers.

The Dana vote was the fifth so far this year. All of the votes ended in rejection of union representation. The Ceramo Co. in Jackson, M&W Packaging north of Cape Girardeau, Cape Girardeau Community Counseling Center and TCI Cablevision workers all voted on attempts to set up collective bargaining units, and each was unsuccessful.

This trend of resisting organized labor has far-reaching consequences. On the one hand, it is an indication that some of the area's largest employers have workers who prefer dealing directly with management rather than relying on union officials. This employee-management relationship is an indicator of the kind of workforce that is available to prospective new companies looking to locate here. On the other hand, the rejections show a mounting resistance to strong organizing efforts by some of the nation's largest unions -- efforts that have specifically targeted smaller operations outside of urban areas.

The labor mindset is an important factor for companies that want to move into a growing area like Cape Girardeau and provide jobs at a decent rate of pay. The five union votes so far this year send a fairly strong signal that workers are more interested in doing their jobs than in dealing with organized labor.

One important consideration for many of the workers who have been asked to vote on unions this year, no doubt, is the record of other companies in Southeast Missouri that have voted in recent years to embrace organized labor. Most of them are no longer in business.

Hundreds of workers around the region, displaced by the closings of plants where unions have been accepted, are now either in the labor force, seeking jobs or getting training to pursue new lines of work. These workers and would-be workers have one main objective: a steady paycheck. For most of them, union representation would be pretty far down on any list of top priorities.