We asked you to tell us if unions were necessary to restore wealth to average American families. Some said no. Some said yes. Keep talking.
'Organized labor is central to any solution to our current economic problems'
The question of whether unions are necessary is misguided. There is
no other proven method to ensure that working-class people receive
decent wages, safe working conditions, or a voice on the job. Unions
continue to provide workers high-quality representation, helping them
receive a fair share of the income their work generates while protecting
them from capricious bosses, hazards on the job, and harassment from
superiors. There are no other known systems that provide workers these
benefits.
The better question is why unions have declined. There is a clear answer
to this question: a half-century of intentional union-busting from
corporations with assists from federal and state governments. Historians
have shown that the supposed "Grand Bargain," where companies agreed to
unionized workplaces in return for an end to radical workplace action
was never accepted by corporate America. Even before World War II,
corporations looked to move their unionized factories to non-union
states. When unions proved too popular across the United States and when
federal labor and environmental protections began affecting profit
margins, corporations lobbied the federal government to promote
globalization, first through the Border Industrialization Project that
allowed American companies to build on the Mexican side of the border
and then through a full-scale race to bottom, as companies traveled the
globe looking for easily exploited labor. None of this has made unions
irrelevant; rather, recent labor defeats are simply the next round in
this corporate assault upon the rights of working people.
Simply asking a question like whether unions are necessary gives
credence to right-wing talking points about organized labor. We need to
focus on how to fight back against the corporate malfeasance and greed
that has undermined the American working class and plunged the economy
into stagnation that has already reached a half-decade. Organized labor
is central to any solution to our current economic problems. It is worth
noting that the heyday of organized labor coincided with the longest
period of growth in the history of the American economy. Only strong
unions can provide a fair piece of the economic pie to the working and
middle-classes, creating a robust economy that benefits all Americans. -
Erik Loomis
HOW THE GOP KILLED THE UNION BY A THOUSAND PAPER CUTS
You'll
note that the steepest decline in membership takes place around the
time of the Reagan and Bush administrations. It isn't coincidence. For
12 years, a Republican appointed the members of the labor dispute
resolution panels and the general counsels who would prosecute
violations of labor law. I'm guessing that employers took advantage of a
general lack of urgency during that period, and unions had no
meaningful response that didn't involve an armed uprising.
Labor disputes aren't heard by courts until they've passed through a
panoply of administrative bodies whose purpose is to hear and settle
labor disputes. In the U.S., there are three: the National Labor
Relations Board (handling state/city public employees, Postal Service
employees and the private sector, excepting those airline and railway
employees covered by the Adamson Act), the National Mediation Board
(those airline and railway employees covered by the Adamson Act), and
the Federal Labor Relations Authority (handling federal public
employees). In theory, these bodies act to relieve pressure on the
court system for grievances between the employees who are either
represented or seeking to be represented by a union, and their
employer. The general counsels prosecute violations and give out
penalties.
In practice, employers know that there are rarely real consequences
to be suffered from flouting any of those boards, and this is especially
true when a Republican appoints their members. What penalties there
are do not deter employers, who are willing to take a chance on paying
the modest damages involved with harming most employees in order to
deter others. While a Democrat is in office, you have a chance of
seeing the NLRB or FLRA do its job in a timely manner and in accordance
with the law, as with Boeing.
But half of the time, you can't reasonably expect it. Unless unions
can count on the government to help them, then they fail until things
are bad enough for the membership to consider violent alternatives (and
thank God they aren't). -- kindasorta
'Organized labor is
critical'
In
any country based on a capitalist, free enterprise system where
coordinated labor is used to produce commodities, organized labor is
critical to assure wages and rights for workers. Parity in negotiations
between labor and management is of key importance. While management,
by design, possesses the ability to coordinate labor pricing, workers do
not. Working classes need an organizational structure that allows them
to negotiate pay and benefits with a similar management structure,
otherwise it is as if an invertebrate is trying to haggle with an
vertebrate, they may make some noise but not a whole lot can
happen. While this does not necessarily need to be a Union, a structure
of some type that allows labor to concentrate power is critical to
negotiating higher average labor prices. -- Jason Richardson
'Mutual respect and real partnership ... or class warfare'
Unions may or may not be an answer (an
answer --- there isn't just one answer) but something needs to be put
on the other side of the scale to counterbalance management
dictatorship.
As anyone who's worked for a major corporation knows, you dont
negotiate with your manager at review time. You can complain, beg,
wheedle or whatever -- but he or she already has decided pretty much
what you'll get, an answer dictated by , among other things, algorithms
that decide how much excellence can be acknowledged and failure that
must be discovered.
The Germans have discovered Worker Councils -- they have members who sit on corporate boards and create a true partnership, rather than the ex cathedra power monopoly exercised by American management. This monopoly is as bad for management as it is for all those little dots on the chart representing "resources," a corporate euphemism for people -- because it means that management is by definition out of touch with employees.
There needs to be mutual respect and a real partnership. Or there will be class warfare and a fatal cynicism. -- arvay
Unions: 'A necessary evil'?
A
system that ensures the rights of workers are protected, whether that
be a union or some other body, is necessary. Every bureaucracy has it's
shortcomings, unions are no exception, this I know from my family
members' first hand experience with labor unions in Wisconsin. However,
such bureaucracy may be a necessary evil. An organization that collects
the people together to coordinate how they structure workers'
relationships with their employers is necessary for every industry.
Without that system, employers hold all the cards. Even in the plush
world of office work, I wish I had a system through which I communicate
my needs to my employer without fear of retribution or judgement. HR is
ineffective, controlled by my employer. Any whisper that working from
8am-8pm is inappropriate exists only between lowly staff, never
mentioned to upper managers due to constant anxiety that the job will
disappear. My generation, those that watched their baby boomer parents
work 60 hours a week as a standard, yearn for a work life balance, fair
wages, respectful treatment, and a welcoming environment. I've seen my
well-educated, well-prepared peers crumble under the pressure of an
overly demanding employer, requiring regular work on weekends, taking
one's laptop home every night, constant contact with smartphones.
"Burnout" is a phrase I am hearing from fellows in my graduating class,
and I am 24 years old. If this is how white collar workers are treated,
what respect is given to teachers, mechanics, steelworkers, machinists?
Especially in an economy where even having a job is considered lucky, no
matter how poorly you are treated, any body willing to defend my
rights, my ability to have a life and a job, is welcome in my country. -- Mo Foley
WHY GERMAN UNIONS WORK
My
take on it is that each side of the political circus tend to blame the
other side for their own worst faults. Thus, the right accuse the left
of being anti-capitalist, whereas the reality in most western countries
is that when the right win, the stock markets go up for 4 days and then
down for four years, whilst when the left win, it's the other way
around.
The left, on the other hand, accuse the right of being too friendly
to capitalism, whereas a typical right-wing government promptly
introduces legislation which actually make it much harder for typical
capitalists to thrive, since they tend to favor short-termism, which is
almost always diametrically opposed to the long-term interests of
capitalists.
Unions always have the long-term interests of the companies they're
involved with at heart. If those companies don't thrive, then neither do
the unions. That's what's at the heart of the German economy, since
unions have members on the company boards. They've always argued against
short-term dividends to shareholders and in favor of long-term
investments. -- davric
WHY JAPANESE UNIONS WORK
I was, for about a year, a member of a Japanese union. I worked for a
major Japanese electronics firm, and even though I was a visiting
researcher, and a foreign national, somehow I still got membership into
the company union, complete with newsletter, membership forms, emails to
union events, the whole nine-yards.
In Japan, at least, the reason they get along, at least in the
private-sector, is because the union and management are pretty much on
the same side. If the management wanted to save energy and cut down
waste, the labor unions would print up fliers with tips on turning off
appliances when not in use and proper recycling sorting practices. If
there was some bad news, it would be a good-cop, bad-cop routine.
Bad-cop: Year-end bonuses to be cut due to low profits. Good-cop: Thanks
to union reps, they won't be cut as much as we thought! -- A_Lee
'Unions make a difference'
I
can only give my perspective as a former union member, I'm self
employed now so unionizing at my office would be pointless, and current
union supporter. When our bargaining unit negotiated a new contract with
management, I saw a real disconnect between the people the union sent
to help and the workers in our union. The people sent from the union
were labor activists and busy calling everybody brother and stuff like
that. We union members were joking and making fun of them behind their
backs because they were, well... silly.
For the professional union employees, negotiations were some type of
political statement. For union members, we simply wanted wages and
benefits to keep pace with inflation even as we recognized that our
industry (newspapers) was contracting. I don't know if other union
members have had this same experience or even if CWA members in more
typical blue-collar jobs have had this experience. But when I think
about why unions in this country are in trouble, I think about my own
experience and I think the fact that union staff is often trying to make
a political statement that union employees aren't trying to make is an
issue. But I'm no expert.
Certainly, unions make a difference in pay. I made much more at a
union paper than at a non-union paper. Of course every paper I have
worked at has let reporters and other staff go lately. So again, I don't
know if my experiences translate to other businesses and unions. -- mishamb
'Unions are indispensable'
The
laws and rights structure of the US emphasize the primacy of ownership
(this is not a condemnation, just a fact) but, as with the structure of
government, a healthy economy requires a system of checks and
balances between owners and workers.
Owners' rights extend over the whole of a company's revenue,
including salaries. In the narrow scope of a single case--one owner,
considering only their own company, their own life and family--the given
owner will almost always opt for a larger portion of the revenue. Is the
nature of all people. Yet if that narrowly-conceived goal were pursued
by every owner over a whole market economy, the market would fail: the
majority of people would not have enough aggregate purchasing power to
sustain the edifice of the economy. The balanced distribution of revenue
is key to the long-term stability of a market economy.
However owners have all the rights to revenue, and so we rely on
owners to be uncommonly broad-minded, intelligent, unselfish. But owners
are common. They're human. Lucky, clever, and/or hardworking perhaps,
but essentially like all other people. Unions are the one check and
balance on their power--the only one. Workers have no other power or
right to maintain this necessary balance except to organize and
collective bargain. Unions may need to be reinvented for a new economy,
but they are indispensable. -- Daniel E. Pritchard
'Private-sector unions are a useful; Public-sector unions are a different story'
You must differentiate between public- and private-sector unions.
Private-sector unions are a useful and legitimate tool for pressuring
firms to allocate more of their earnings to wages. Workers should have a
right to free-association and to contractually bind themselves into
larger groups. There is a natural equilibrating force in the private
market - if the unions make too great a demand on their employer, the
employer will simply fail. The management, which stands to lose
salaries, stock value, and pensions, will fight back. Most of the
so-called "anti-union" legislation is negotiating the machinery of this
arrangement. Things like secret ballots, automatic deduction of union
dues, the right of an employer to fire union employees, seniority
rights, et cetera. The merit of each of these items can be argued ad
nauseam, but the scope of the debate is the relative leverage of labor
vs. management, not whether private-sector unions should exist.
Public-sector unions are a different story. There is
no equilibrating force. The government is backed by an unlimited
capability to raise revenue via taxation. Their management counterpart
are elected officials who do not have a necessarily significant
financial stake in the future fiscal health of the government. Their
primary goal is to obtain re-election. Furthermore, they may have a
vested interest in pouring more public money into public unions, with
the full knowledge that some of the money will come back to them as
campaign contributions. The adversarial stand-off between labor and
management in the private sector is absent in the public sector. In the
public sector, the true oppositional forces are between government
employees and the taxpaying citizen.
The citizens of Wisconsin have just stated their position on the matter. -- A_Lee