Unions

I like the idea of collective bargaining. I don't generally like unions so much.

I think it's important for people to protect themselves from abuse by anyone. This can include employers, neighbors, government, or anyone else. Unions have historically been a good method for unskilled people to protect their own welfare from tyrannical employers.

My own personal feelings about modern day unions, however, is that they tend to have drifted from the notion of reasonable treatment more toward the notion of fanatical protection. They seem to be institutions that are interested primarily in their own survival regardless of their actual usefulness to their subscribers. That's a fairly unsubstantiated feeling though.

During my time working at the City, which is a union employer, I have heard some pretty appalling acts by employees, from drunken bus drivers to six-months-absent computer operators that have gone unpunished (and un-fired) by management due to aggressive union leadership. That sort of thing tends to leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

This is my common sense take on why unions exist. It's not based on any particular education on the subject:

In the free market, supply and demand for jobs are fairly stable. Workers and businesses are able to equitably agree on fair compensation in return for good job skills and reliability. Most of the time this seems to work pretty well. If I as a worker feel I am not being compensated fairly, I can choose another more generous employer. My current employer loses out on a skilled, reliable employee - a scarce asset. This is the market in which I have operated throughout my career.

The folks who don't do so well in this arrangement are unskilled workers. Since it's easy to find people with no skills, employers aren't as incented to treat their employees well - because they can find plenty of people willing to do the job. This is where unions came from. By drying up the supply of unskilled labor through organizing potential workforce (often heavy handedly), unskilled people got negotiating leverage they wouldn't otherwise have had. This has worked well for jobs like bottling soda pop, bagging groceries, and collecting garbage.

It's less clear to me why there are unions for skilled, experienced people like airline pilots and nurses. It seems like those positions might be more difficult to fill if disgruntled employees left their jobs. But I suppose a large enough organization could weather the vacancy.

The fact is, 65% of US workers, both skilled and unskilled don't operate under any sort of union - and that number is apparently growing.

The Guardian has an article this week about the recent unraveling of the AFL-CIO, which as far as I can gather, is a union of unions. By uniting local unions into a larger national union, they can all enjoy greater political and economic power. That is if they can all get along.

It appears that major factions of those local unions are starting to disagree about the future direction of of the AFL-CIO. The major disagreement seems to be over whether they should pour more money and resources into political contributions or into growing union membership through recruitment. A perfectly valid controversy.

It has been becoming clear lately to the local unions that they don't have nearly as much power as they had hoped when negotiating with international corporations. You see, even if, for example, the Safeway workers in the entire state of California were to strike, Safeway still has thousands of other stores to keep themselves economically healthy. In other words, they can weather local or even regional strikes pretty easily nowadays. The only way for unions to be effective is by organizing nationally. Which means a whole lot more consensus among previously sovereign local chapters. Yikes.

With the growing importance of national solidarity and the deteriorating consensus on agenda, it seems like the very fabric of unions are at a crossroads. Would two or three splintered national unions collectively hold the same clout as one united AFL-CIO?

Interestingly, the book I just finished, Freakonomics, has a compelling argument about the effect of increased campaign spending on election outcomes. There is apparently good evidence that pouring even large amounts of cash into a campaign budget will not have more than a 1% effect on the outcome. I wonder if anyone in these unions has read that book. That might help them choose a direction.

I haven't given up on unions altogether, but I would like to see them focus more on employee development and protection and less on power and politics. We'll see what happens.