An article of faith for almost all the Democrats at the Denver convention is that the country's much-diminished trade-union movement needs to be revived. Membership has fallen to less than 10 percent of the private-sector workforce. This decline is a main reason, it is argued, for stagnating middle-class wages. Public policy, say the Democrats, can help.
The rallying-point is the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a measure co-sponsored by Barack Obama and already passed by the house of representatives. Mr Obama promises to sign it into law as president, if the senate moves it forward and it reaches his desk. Politically and on its merits, however, this is an ill-advised piece of legislation.
EFCA's most sought-after provision is a "card-check" rule that would oblige employers to recognise a union and bargain with it if half the workforce signed cards saying that they were in favour. Labour law varies from state to state but the current procedure usually requires a secret ballot, which protects workers from intimidation. John McCain has opposed the change and advocates a Secret Ballot Protection Act instead.
The unions have a point when they complain of intimidation by employers. EFCA would stiffen penalties for firms that bully union sympathisers, which is both desirable and good politics. But the card-check initiative is what the party is emphasising, and otherwise pro-union voters are bound to have mixed feelings about it.
A secret ballot protects workers who want union recognition as well as those who do not. That is why opposing it arouses suspicion. Membership has fallen at least partly because workers themselves doubt that unions best serve their interests, and with reason. Opposition to secret ballots does not reassure them. It is a self-serving demand, and plays badly with the centrists the Democrats need to bring in. It is bad politics, therefore, as well as bad law.
A broader question is whether weak unions are part of what ails the middle-income workforce. Their decline probably explains some of the wage slowdown--although the most striking aspect of the country's growing inequality is the astonishing growth in the very highest incomes, an unrelated issue. The right kind of unionism can raise wages and advance workers' interests while improving a company's competitiveness. The wrong kind, as the UK knows only too well, can cripple industries and indeed whole economies.
The secret of success, arguably, is a culture of accommodation and non-confrontation. Unions can make it easier for firms to work in closer partnership with their employees, to their mutual advantage. But if the relationship is framed as nothing but a contest over rents--a zero-sum game, with no holds barred--the drawbacks seem likely to predominate. What may concern centrist voters is that Democrats are apt to press the unions' case in precisely this spirit of confrontation. Anti-business sentiment is a dominant note at the convention. EFCA's most enthusiastic advocates would like nothing better than to grind the faces of the bosses. You do not have to be a boss to be wary of that.
[This article appeared in the FT yesterday. The last paragraph was cut for space except for its first sentence, which on its own is either mystifying or absurd, according to taste--as emails to me have pointed out. So, with apologies if you have seen the edited piece already, I thought I would post what I filed.]
*I have good health insurance.
*I have a pension plan-not a 401k but a real pension plan.
*I enjoyed four weeks vacation this year.
*I have a job at which a high school diploma earns me $27.00 an hour,and with some overtime, $84,000 last year.
I BELONG TO A UNION.
The secret of success, arguably, is a culture of accommodation and non-confrontation. Yeah right! Like these benevolent corporations (Walmart is an obvious example) are going to sit a a table with union leaders and ask them what can we do for you.
When I combine this essay with today's Joshua Green article describing Kucinich's behavior at the DNC as that of a meth-addled smurf I must say good bye to The Atlantic. You guys are little more than water carriers for the corporations that run this country. You pompous smug bastards.
Unions have done such a great job preserving jobs, wages and benefits in the airline, automobile and steel industries: that's a model we ought to follow!
John- Do you work for the government? Because if not, you better not count on that pension or that job.
And if so, you're example isn't helpful because government service unions doesn't have to compete and are designed to subsidize fat political interest groups.
Airlines are victims of mismanagement.
Automobile industry is also a victim of mismanagement, and making poor quality products for decades and "free trade" policies created by their corporate controlled government. If General Motors had lobbied for universal healthcare with the politicians they have bought they would be in much better shape today.
Te steel industry is a victim of our trade policies.
By the way, $27 times 40 hours times 52 weeks = $56,160.
That means you worked 687 hours of overtime? The equivalent of 17 whole weeks?
Your kidding,
I couldn't agree with you more about the poor management in the airline, auto and steel industries. A key part of their management failure was giving away the store to the unions in the expectation that they would never face any foreign or domestic competition.
Of course, that's the reason that unions have found a home in the public sector: there's no competition, from anyone, at any time, for any reason. There's just featherbedding and politicians bidding for votes by piling more benefits onto the unions (see, e.g., New York and New Jersey).
I grew up in Youngstown, OH and watched the mills close one by one from my backyard. I did financial analysis of their balance sheets over the last decade of their existence. Don't give me any of that garbage about trade policies - the only trade policy that would have saved our heavily unionized steel industry would have been to ban foreign imports - basically wall off our ports. The truth of it was that the Japanese and Germans invested in their mills, and ended up making high quality steel at a price that mills throughout the rust belt could never hope to match. Our mills closed because they made a better produce than we did, period.
Management of those mills - yes, management - didn't invest in the good times, the times when Europe and Japan were basically rebuilding from rubble. If you look at the capital expenditures, they weren't even replacing what was wearing out. But unions got fat, dumb, and happy, expecting high wages and bulletproof benefits, demanding a raise with each contract cycle, and when the day of reckoning came, stood their dumbfounded because they had helped slay the golden goose. Management is complicit for letting it happen, for not taking on the unions when they still had time to save their companies. Hopefully GM and the UAW have made their deal in time, but that is no sure thing.
When the mills closed, the workers tried to buy them out, have an employee-run shop. But ask yourself - modern efficient steelmaking takes 1/3 the number of workers it did in the past. Could a union house, looking to the survival of its business, FIRE 2/3 of its union brothers and sisters for the business to survive?
And lets look at what happened since - no industry has moved into Youngstown to replace the mills? Why? Because they know the workforce doesn't have the mindset to help a business succeed - they have a mindset to take what they can get on threat of constant strikes and labor conflict.
A secret ballot vote is free choice. If the secret ballot is removed so is the freedom of choice. Whatever else you do, keep the secret ballot.
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