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Labor Day and unionism: Are unions necessary anymore?

Christopher Curran
Posted 9/10/15

Having grown up in a union household, I was conditioned to believe that unions were not only good for our family but also good for America.

My father who was an active union member of “Operating …

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Labor Day and unionism: Are unions necessary anymore?

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Having grown up in a union household, I was conditioned to believe that unions were not only good for our family but also good for America.

My father who was an active union member of “Operating Engineers Local 825,” and my schoolteacher mother, who was an active member of “The New Jersey Education Association,” believed in the infallibility of the union cause. We were taught to believe that there was an indisputable positive correlation between the quality of life of the American worker and the success of union negotiations.

However, that supposition was not as clear-cut or simplistic as we thought.

Unionism, in its infancy, was a necessary movement to bring about fairness, safety, and a reasonable wage. The Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s produced many factory jobs and saw the injudicious use of human beings as cogs in the wheel of manufacturing without a consideration of their individual well being. Thus, these injustices gave birth to organizations that fought for the worker and challenged the “Robber Barons” who owned the factories, railroads, and various other facilities that housed workers.

Some of these organizations were thinly veiled attempts toward achieving a socialist form of American government. Some were effective at shining the light on unfairness on the workplace. Others had grand organizational ideas that were too cumbersome to be realistic. Whereas the cause of the unrepresented worker was originally just, the juggernaut of unionism over time became an impediment to the success of business and the solvency of governments.

As the decades transpired, unions gained in strength and political prominence, and the pendulum of power shifted in the union’s favor. As a result, manufacturing migrated overseas in search of lower-wage workers, and municipal and state budgets suffered with astronomical liabilities due to the indulgence of public sector workers.

The reasonable balance between the needs and aspirations of workers and the ability of an owner to realize profit and a municipality to balance their budgets has often been lost to the stranglehold of union dominance.

So, how do we serve unionized workers with fairness but not excessive accommodation? Also, with the standard of OSHA worker safety laws and federal wage and work requirements long ago written into the law, are unions necessary today given are current economic realities?

When Sen. James Kyle of South Dakota proposed a national holiday to celebrate the efforts of the American worker in 1894, many of his fellow senators expressed the concern that elevating the worker and burgeoning unionism might lead to socialism and the demise of our capitalist democracy. Nevertheless, Labor Day was established. A workingman’s holiday recognized the growing reality that the giants of industry were not invulnerable, and those employed had basic human rights that could no longer be ignored by those in power.

The road to this recognition was paved with strikes, riots, and depravations.

Early organizations such as the “Knights of Labor” failed to effectively organize, while other entities such as cigar roller Samuel Gomper’s “American Federation of Labor” succeeded in rallying workers and forming coalitions with craft unions. The AFL eventually evolved into the AFL-CIO in 1955, which is arguably the strongest union in the country even today.

Democrat politicians especially fear alienation from union support and are willing to pander in any way to curry favor with union voters. Recently, possible presidential candidate and Vice President Joe Biden sought advice and the promise of support from current AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka prior to making his final decision to throw his hat in the ring.

Some early outlandish efforts in unionism included the “Industrial Workers of the World” (IWW), also commonly known as the “Wobblies,” who sought to unionize all workers regardless of skill level into a global socialist movement. The Wobbly idea that the workplace should be a democracy, where workers elect their supervisors, was the very antithesis of a logical and logistically successful business structure. Their efforts sparked the concern that there could be a progression from unionism to socialism to communism in a similar manner to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

Although our government never transitioned to socialism, elected officials fearing union opposition and the next election cycle often kowtowed to union negotiators. Indulged union representatives with insurmountable demands were accommodated. Thus, public sector workers were made promises in contracts that the taxpayer simply would never have the ability to pay for. Collective bargaining became political extortion, with the additional levying of taxes on the property taxpayer the result. In the Ocean State, these “bargains” resulted in the highest commercial property tax rate per capita and one of the highest overall residential tax rates in the nation.

So, this situation begs the question of how much more does public sector employment cost the taxpayer in comparison to privatization?

According to the Economic Policy Institute, public sector workers make an average of 21 percent more for the same tasks as they do in the private sector for similar employment. That is why states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Rhode Island have been on the edge of financial collapse due to liabilities directly related to generous public employee defined benefit packages. Thus, modifications have had to be made to save these states and the municipalities within from total defaults.

Despite this cruel reality, one must empathize with the public sector worker, who has anticipated a certain retirement and now due to the budgetary realities will never enjoy what was originally promised no matter how extraordinary these promises were.

Going forward, one has to ask the question, should a worker who works for the taxpayer be classified as an employee at will rather than a contractual worker? Additionally, what services can be privatized to lower the outrageous burdens on the taxpayer?

In regard to the private sector worker, unionism has pushed manufacturers to expatriate to areas of the globe where low-wage, non-union workers are available. As a result, the United States has transitioned from the manufacturing giant we were in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, to the service economy and debtor nation we are today. Great nations build great products and Pacific Rim manufacturing has been encroaching on our manufacturing base for decades. These corporations would not have left our shores if union demands had not driven them to consider moving their businesses to an operational venue that would preserve a reasonable degree of profit for their shareholders. As union demands increased, domestic manufacturers saw their bottom lines disappear and cost per unit production prices escalate.

Not surprisingly, “Right to Work” states where workers have the option of joining a union or not have faired better economically than strong union states. States with “Closed Shop” rules, where joining a union is a predicate to employment, or states with “Union Shop” rules, where one may initially not join a union, but will have to eventually, have faired much worse in regard to the number of manufacturing startups or continuing factories.

All in all, unions serve a purpose in our society providing a delicate balance is struck between owner and worker or taxpayer and public sector employee.

To overly indulge one viewpoint or another is in the end caustic to our society and to commerce. We should celebrate Labor Day and remember the early righteousness of the Labor Movement and the original objective of ultimate fairness that the most earnest of those activists sought to achieve.

My parents erred in their perception of union infallibility. Unions are not infallible, but they can be constructive and protective and reasonable.

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