Unions are commemorating the 104th anniversary of a tragic factory fire that triggered an historic campaign for workplace safety. It’s a reminder that organized labor deserves credit for much of the workplace progress of the 20th century – and how little unions have accomplished in this century.
I knock unions a lot. After all, I handled communications for the management side in labor disputes and half a dozen strikes. But I’d hate to see unions disappear.
Organized labor may be in a death spiral. Union membership continues to drop even though the most pro-union federal administration in history has stacked the deck in their favor. Unions rely mostly on government-sanctioned coercion to attract and retain members, which is why they see right-to-work laws as an existential threat.
Part of the problem is that unions have worked themselves out of a job. Worker rights now are embedded in law and won’t go away if unions disappear.
Unions also are victims of their own excess. When they overpower management the enterprise becomes uncompetitive. Union representation in the private sector has diminished because union-dominated industries have lost jobs to overseas competition. Organized labor today is primarily a political engine that collects dues from government employees to elect compliant politicians.
I have little use for unions in government but believe they play an important role in the private sector. Unions, and the threat of unionization, keep employers honest. During my business career I saw no indication that managers are getting kinder or gentler. However, they are bright enough to understand that they can keep unions out by paying employees well and treating them fairly. Unions currently win more than half of certification votes, and companies whose workers vote for a union in a fair, secret-ballot election deserve what they get.
Unions can thrive in a right-to-work environment if they reform and adapt to the current century. Here is what union reform could look like:
- Give union members more power. Many unions are run like banana republics and some even have hereditary leaders. If unions were held to the same standard of governance as corporations, rank-and-file members would have the same rights as stockholders. They could elect their national officers, vote on their leaders’ salaries and have a say in political contributions.
- Make unions more accountable to their members by holding a re-certification vote every five years or so. This is equally risky for employers: If employees kick their union out, that opens the door for a tougher union to organize them.
- Stop treating teachers and other professionals like assembly-line workers by embracing merit pay and performance management instead of shielding the incompetent. This could make union membership more attractive to millions of administrative and technical workers who could benefit from representation.
- Get back to organizing employees who actually want a union instead of spending millions on the futile Astroturf campaign against Walmart. Union organizing in recent years has brought dignity to immigrant janitors and improved staffing in hospitals.
Unions won’t reform voluntarily so long as politicians continue to prop them up. That’s starting to change at the state level as voters support right-to-work laws and push back against soaring public employee benefit and pension costs. Even the federal government is distancing itself from the teachers’ unions in its school reform initiatives. A more significant trend is that environmental groups are beginning to supplant unions as the cash cow of the Democratic party, as evidenced by Democratic opposition to the union-supported Keystone Pipeline.
Unions are headed for rocky times and may fight their way into oblivion. But wouldn’t it be great if they transformed themselves into organizations that workers would be willing to join voluntarily?
Tough love for unions
Unions are commemorating the 104th anniversary of a tragic factory fire that triggered an historic campaign for workplace safety. It’s a reminder that organized labor deserves credit for much of the workplace progress of the 20th century – and how little unions have accomplished in this century.
I knock unions a lot. After all, I handled communications for the management side in labor disputes and half a dozen strikes. But I’d hate to see unions disappear.
Organized labor may be in a death spiral. Union membership continues to drop even though the most pro-union federal administration in history has stacked the deck in their favor. Unions rely mostly on government-sanctioned coercion to attract and retain members, which is why they see right-to-work laws as an existential threat.
Part of the problem is that unions have worked themselves out of a job. Worker rights now are embedded in law and won’t go away if unions disappear.
Unions also are victims of their own excess. When they overpower management the enterprise becomes uncompetitive. Union representation in the private sector has diminished because union-dominated industries have lost jobs to overseas competition. Organized labor today is primarily a political engine that collects dues from government employees to elect compliant politicians.
I have little use for unions in government but believe they play an important role in the private sector. Unions, and the threat of unionization, keep employers honest. During my business career I saw no indication that managers are getting kinder or gentler. However, they are bright enough to understand that they can keep unions out by paying employees well and treating them fairly. Unions currently win more than half of certification votes, and companies whose workers vote for a union in a fair, secret-ballot election deserve what they get.
Unions can thrive in a right-to-work environment if they reform and adapt to the current century. Here is what union reform could look like:
Unions won’t reform voluntarily so long as politicians continue to prop them up. That’s starting to change at the state level as voters support right-to-work laws and push back against soaring public employee benefit and pension costs. Even the federal government is distancing itself from the teachers’ unions in its school reform initiatives. A more significant trend is that environmental groups are beginning to supplant unions as the cash cow of the Democratic party, as evidenced by Democratic opposition to the union-supported Keystone Pipeline.
Unions are headed for rocky times and may fight their way into oblivion. But wouldn’t it be great if they transformed themselves into organizations that workers would be willing to join voluntarily?
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