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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Will Union Growth Require More Than the Employee Free Choice Act?
An interesting article on unions, via the great blog Economist's View. Its thesis is that the decline in unionization is a product of a wide array of legislative and regulatory changes. The upshot is that much more than laws like the Employee Free Choice Act may be necessary to substantially increase union membership.
Even more interesting, the article finishes with the dreaded "e" word (exploitation) as the basis of promoting unionization.
Unions may be able to prosper as a niche movement in the government sector, which is the sole remaining noncompetitive sector, and in sectors where individual firms or industries take advantage of either uninformed or immobile workers to enforce below-competitive pay packages. Neil Chamberlain, one of the great figures in industrial relations, wrote in 1959 that "unions' chief contribution to their members' welfare has been to free them from the tyranny of arbitrary decision or discriminatory action in the work place." In those cases where individual firms exercise exploitative power to set wages below competitive levels, the same beneficial results emerge -- unions can and should improve the functioning of labor markets.
Exactly! The key question is, then, how many industries are like this? The divergence of the median wage and productivity gains seems to indicate that this type of workplace environment is much more pervasive than commonly believed. Let's face it- too many American workers are being exploited, and these workplaces will still be around even if everyone gets a chance to go to college. Labor market reform is a necessary condition of a more equal nation.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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