Friday, January 4, 2019

The Future of Organized Labor Should Be Volunterism


Organized labor, i.e. unionism, has been steadily losing ground for decades. And most of what’s left are public sector unions, which are coercive monopolies. That was the reason for last year’s New Jersey symposium “to redefine labor for the 21st century,” sponsored by Democrats. It was covered by the New Jersey Star-Ledger in an article By Jonathan D. Salant, How organized labor can have a future in 21st century America.

The problem is, the whole debate came down to how government force can be used to “give workers a voice to advocate for better pay.” Pro-union advocates lamented GOP efforts to roll back forced unionization. But if force is unionism’s only asset, who needs them? A worker’s “voice” shouldn’t, and ultimately doesn’t, grow out of the barrel of a gun. It grows out of the productive skills he can contribute to those who would pay him. As one opponent put it:

What concerns those who oppose requiring employees to join unions is what kind of solution the group will propose.

"Our criticism of union officials and the way they operate is that they rely so much on government-granted powers," said Patrick Semmens, vice president of National Right to Work. "In New Jersey, they have the power to compel workers to pay fees and if they don't, they can have a worker fired."

"An approach that respects the individual rights of workers not to be forced to join a union, that's the reform that Congress ought be looking at," he said.

And the rebuttal argument:

"There is no shortage of defense being played," Norcross said a forum at the Teamsters Local 676 union hall in Collingswood. "Elections have consequences. Boy, do we know that now."

Republicans are seeking to weaken what's left of traditional unions. Even the House Education and Labor Committee, which Norcross and DeSaulnier sit on, was renamed Education and the Workforce under GOP rule.

More than half of the states, 28, now have so-called Right to Work laws, and a national Right to Work law has been introduced in both houses of Congress.

Such laws allow employees to get the benefits of membership, such as higher wages and benefits, without having to pay dues or other expenses, while putting the unions at a financial disadvantage.

Of course, dues or other expenses are not just used to negotiate on behalf of the worker. They are also used to fund political advocacy the dues payer often doesn’t agree with. furthermore, it is incredibly arrogant and unfair to force a worker into a union based on “the union is good for you, whether you like it or not, so you must join whether you agree or not.” It is up to each worker to decide for himself if it is in his interest to join the union, and thus be bound by all of the restrictions of the union rules.

I left these comments:

Whether by design or not, it’s noteworthy that a trade union official should be the main reference for this article. That’s because private sector trade unions offer a good model for effective unions. I say the following as a member [ret.] myself of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters union. To be relevant, unions must. . .

  1. Offer something of value in return, not just make demands. They can take responsibility for fringe benefits like health insurance and retirement coverage, and apprenticeship and journeyman training and education. This relieves the employer of these burdens and gives workers more control of their own economic security. My union funds these benefits out of the pay package negotiated with our employers.
  2. Recognize that, contrary to the slogan, equal pay does not mean equal work. People in the same job can be vastly different in productiveness and other factors based on individual attributes. Therefor, no rigid seniority or tenure rules. Employers should not be stifled in putting together the most effective workforce, nor should more ambitious and conscientious workers be stymied from advancing.
  3. Stop fixating on the Marxist notion of us (workers) vs. them (capitalists). Employer and employee interests are much more aligned than a fool like Karl Marx cared to acknowledge. Employers need quality, dedicated workers, and workers need good advancement opportunities (including the freedom to quit one job for a better opportunity elsewhere). The average worker doesn’t care about any “workers movement”—nor should he. We’re not cogs in a collective machine. We are individuals.
  4. Stop aligning with the political Left. Stop trying to legislatively stifle others freedom of speech. Stop obsessing over economic inequality. My father once told me in regard to my paycheck, “Don’t worry about the other guy. Only worry about yourself.” It’s good advice. One person’s achievement does not come at anyone else’s expense. Unions should focus on increasing the economic value of their members, not cutting others down. That’s how you get higher pay.
  5. Stop trying to legally compel companies to deal with unions. There is no such thing as “collective bargaining rights,” if the employer doesn’t view negotiating collectively as being in his self-interest. The more we try to compel employers to accept unionization (and compel workers to join unions), the more they’ll resist doing it—and the more right-to-work laws you’ll get (which wrongly outlaw voluntary union shops). Unions must appeal to the economic self-interest of both companies and individual workers. You’ll see unions become more relevant when you remove coercion from the equation.

Finally, we must recognize that unionization is not universally good for all workers or all industries. Many if not most workers don’t see union membership as a value. Workers, like employers and everybody else, are individuals that care about their own economic self-interest. Contrary to the pessimists’ propaganda, Americans’ standard of living has grown strongly even as union membership has declined. Unions are good for some workers. It’s been good for me. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have been a part of it. But I recognize that unions are not advantageous for all. I know plenty of non-union people who have done well. Unions should be good for individual members, not peddled as some kind of nirvana for some abstraction labeled “working class”.  

Most of the above is a good description of my union. To have a future in 21st Century America, the champions of unionization should take a page from New Jersey’s trade unions. Offer something of value to individuals in exchange for membership. Offer something of value to employers for agreeing to hire its members. Persuasion will go a lot further than coercion.

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Despite a certain level of coercive government backing, private sector trade unions face stiff competition from non-union contractors, unlike public sector (government) unions. So, we still must face market discipline and economic reality.

More from the article:

As unions continue to lose influence, workers are trying to get their kitchen-table issues addressed at the ballot box.

Even as Republicans won the White House and held onto both houses of Congress in the last election, four states, Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington, voted to raise their state's minimum wages. The federal wage is $7.25 an hour.

"What we've seen in the worker movement is a lot of action at the ballot box to gain benefits that were formerly done at the bargaining table," Asaro-Angelo said. "Folks realized they could do this on their own."

At the “bargaining” table, unions are backed by coercion in the form of laws requiring companies to recognize and “negotiate” with unions based on a vote of workers, which also forces those who vote against union representation either joining the union or being fired.

But if coercive unionization is losing ground, the answer is not legislative coercion.

For the record, while I sympathize with the right-to-work impetus, I disagree with right-to-work laws. As I observed in my Objective Standard article  End "Collective Bargaining Rights" and "Right-to-Work" Laws:

“Right-to-Work” laws emerged as a reaction to other rights-violating laws that impose an alleged “right to bargain for better wages”—”bargain,” here, meaning “coerce”—which “right” is otherwise known as collective bargaining “rights.” These “rights”—which are not rights but government-granted permissions to violate the rights of others—emerged under laws such as the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, which force companies to “bargain” with unions.

A proper, rights-protecting government does not pass such laws. Nor does it outlaw voluntary union shops. As long as there is no fraud, breach-of-contract, or other rights-violating actions, the government has no role in labor-management relations.

Nor does the government pass minimum wage laws, compulsory paid sick leave laws, and the like.

Unions can have a future if organizers realize that they can not just take by force, but must and can offer enough value to employers to entice them to voluntarily recognize them. And if they can’t get a voluntary collective bargaining agreement with the employer, or voluntary membership from individual workers, then the union should not exist.

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