Earlier this year, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace ended the longest and largest white-collar strike in American history.

Traditionally white-collar workers have not been as active in unions as America's blue-collar workforce. But the Boeing settlement is evidence that white-collar workers are now parlaying their increasing value in the economy's tight-labor market into more leverage through unions. With blue-collar jobs moving overseas, organized labor has staked its future on professional workers.

White-collar employees are just beginning to organize around long-standing concerns that they share with their blue-collar counterparts about wages, benefits and job security. But they have other concerns as well - such as respect in the workplace, the ability to attain professional goals and control over how they do their work. Overtime pay, job security and health-care benefits have all become issues for technical workers as companies like Boeing and Microsoft try to squeeze more productivity and profits out of employees.

Two important developments in the U.S. economy that relate to this are the shift from manufacturing jobs to jobs based on information, communications, and technology, and the shift toward temporary workers and subcontracted labor. Today, the economy's reliance on nonstandard jobs - part-time work, independent contracting, "temping," on-call work, day labor, and self-employment -is stronger than ever.

Despite the challenges, unionizing efforts among white-collar workers are growing and, increasingly, contractors and professional temps are seeking collective bargaining agreements. One example is the Washington Alliance of Technical Workers, or WashTech, which is organizing thousands of temporary high-tech employees in the Puget Sound region of Washington state.

On One Hand...

The river of wealth running through high-tech regions, fails to trickle down to thousands of temporary tech workers. Increasingly, these workers are hired as so-called "permatemps," employees who work at a company for at least one year, have flexible hours and high take-home pay, but no benefits or job security.

The booming tech economy has passed over the long-term temps, who save costs for companies by working without these benefits. White-collar workers, like blue-collar workers, should join together to provide an effective voice in the legislative and corporate arenas, and to advocate for improved benefits and workplace rights.

On the Other Hand...

Contingent work provides the flexibility companies need to be competitive. High-tech industries, led by companies such as Microsoft, AT&T, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Boeing have used temporary contracted labor more extensively and aggressively than most other industries. A third of Microsoft's workforce - about 6,000 people - is composed of temps who often work in the same position for years at a stretch. Companies need to shrink the size of their core work force by using various forms of temporary, contracted and sub-contracting arrangements to respond to uncertain market conditions and rapidly changing niche markets.

The contingent workforce is not a problem. Rather than treating nonstandard work as a problem in need of a solution, it's more appropriate to see it as a largely positive development in labor market mediation.

• Self-employed and temporary workers now make up 30 percent of the American workforce.

Economic Policy Institute