Christians love unions and conservatives should as well.
From Poland to West Virginia, unions, organized workers, have checked the power of tyrants and helped working people.
This is obvious. It is equally clear that any group is corrupted when it becomes too powerful. Unions in the United States helping working people, but then lost sight of reality and the needs of the workers when they gained some of their first goals.
They asked for too much and did not adapt to a global economy. They also became too tied to “progressive” politics, even when those politics had nothing to do with union issues. (Abortion is the best example.)
As a result, unions gained a bad odor amongst traditionalists, but perhaps this has now gone too far into a reflexive anti-union bias. As the grandson of two union men, and the son-in-law of another, I have seen the benefits unions give workers as well as the down sides. Reagan was right: unions are good for America.
Powerful people often let down workers and that is true of union leaders and business tycoons. Traditional conservatives should put no more faith in the rich businessman than they do in the union boss, but of late I have noticed we often do.
In the private sector at least, the scales are now tipped against organized workers. Partly this is the fault of the unions themselves, but it is also the result of too much magical thinking from conservatives.
We are right to trust free markets to correct themselves. Mostly this must be allowed, but we are wrong (as Christians) to allow the full measure of human suffering that such corrections can produce. The “redundant” worker may eventually get a better job if the free market is allowed to work, but it will not help him if his lack of a paycheck has ruined his health and his family.
Traditionalists have long supported a social safety net to ease the free market transitions. In some areas, this net has become a trap, but in others it has become too weak. Workers feel powerless, because in many cases they are.
Eventually bad businesses are punished by the market, but this retribution can come too late for the patience of the working class. Justice unfelt or unseen is justice too late to save a republic from the seductive force of tyrants on the right and left.
I think workers recognize this fact and this explains the lopsided win in Ohio for public unions. Public unions are, oddly, too powerful and are threatening the health of state finances, but the public sector is one of the few places where this can be said. Public workers also include teachers and public safety officials nobody thinks are overpaid outside of esoteric think tanks.
It is time for conservatives to begin supporting a new union movement . . . one untied to old organizations tainted by scandal, the mob, graft, and burdened with the past.
Unions have done great good and their relative weakness is not good for our Republic.
November 9th, 2011 | 3:34 pm | #1
I really like what you have written. I come from a union AND Christian household. I have seen the blessings and drawbacks of unions. Thanks again for the sanity.
November 9th, 2011 | 4:43 pm | #2
John,
I support the idea of unions and I think that their ability to check unethical practices of uber-powerful business is necessary in the current marketplace.
On the other hand, I also agree that Unions have grown so powerful, and in many cases so corrupt and politically motivated that the distinction between them and the businesses that they oppose can be blurred.
Unions still check unethical business practices today, and I’m not going to deny that, but I look to the massive lobby forces of the unions and politically charged motives for those lobby forces and I have a hard time truly trusting union leaders.
I’m really curious about where you said
“In the private sector at least, the scales are now tipped against organized workers.”
I’m wondering where exactly you might be referencing? Is there a specific private industry that is so biased against union workers that would warrant such a claim? I’m not saying this is a false claim, I’m just curious because I’m unaware of such a scenario.
I agree that among conservatives there is an “anti-union” atmosphere but I think that has a lot to do with their alignment with progressive politics.
It’s obvious that you and I have similar objections to the current way that many unions operate (in my area, the teachers union operates much like a mafia family) and you recommend that we shouldc ” begin supporting a new union movement . . . one untied to old organizations tainted by scandal, the mob, graft, and burdened with the past”
But I’m not sure if just making new unions and a new union movement is going to be enough.
The thing that has always perplexed me about unions (as much as I like them) is that the idea behind them is workers coming together to check unethical treatment and termination of workers by large and powerful businesses. But shouldn’t this ideal also apply to the unions themselves?
Currently, in many unions, there is no way for a worker to avoid or object to what may be injustices committed by the unions themselves. In the private sector, the unions check against wrongful termination and have lobbied for laws that make it illegal for a business to terminate an employee and then make sure that other businesses in the industry don’t hire said worker (also known as blackballing). But can’t the unions do the same thing?
If a union is forcing workers of a certain industry to pay dues to the union (which is a common practice in many industries, part of your pay is already deducted to support the union) but that union is supporting a certain movement or cause that the employee disagrees with (also a common factor, you cited abortion) there is effectively no way for the individual worker to avoid supporting lobbyists for abortion rights.
In the private workplace, many would say to simply move to a company in the same industry that treats their employees better (or in this case aren’t involved with unions). That’s easy to say, but in industries where the union dominates the field (such as auto) there is no place to go within that same work field where the employee is able to work without paying dues for lobbyists he doesn’t support.
I would argue that forcing money from someone’s pay to support lobbyists that work for abortion rights is a grave injustice.
So what I’m getting at is that there needs to be something in place to check the unions. The unions work for the collective rights of the workers, but they rarely have in place something to protect individual worker rights from the union. Unions (much like businesses) like to have money, they like people paying dues, and just like businesses, they have a tendency to monopolize industries for larger involvement. Larger involvement=more money to support politically charged (and often not work related) lobbyists.
Ironically, the very organizations that were used to oppose monopolies have created a new and different form of monopolies. Unions can be just as dangerous as large corporations, but unions have less regulation because they are created on the foundation of protecting the collective workers’ rights.
So I would agree that we need a new union movement, but not just one that holds to truly protecting collective workers, but the individual worker also. Protection from the large collective power that they’re creating.
November 10th, 2011 | 9:50 am | #3
Canadians are singularly blessed to have the Christian Labour Association of Canada, a bright light in the often conflicted area of labour-management relations. From its website:
There is a smaller counterpart south of the border, although it does not currently have a very high profile. It deserves to be better known.
November 10th, 2011 | 11:37 am | #4
No one seems to have addressed the issue that Unions forcing wages up is unions forcing Management not to hire. Sometimes it seems that Unions are as much a protection of the oldies from the newbies as a protection of workers from management.
November 10th, 2011 | 11:57 am | #5
Jason,
This is true in some cases, and I do agree that there are industries where wages are too high due to Unions, but I think that on the whole the wages that the Unions help to raise do more good than harm. On a massive scale increased wages could cause job loss, but coming from a business background, my experience has been that the wage increase has never been so high that it required hiring less employees.
I don’t think people really realize that businesses already do anything they can to hire less employees, the fact is that no businesses hire employees just to have an extra body, that’s too inefficient. When it comes down to it, an employer is going to hire the employee he needs even if his wages are higher because his business can’t operate without the needed employee.
November 10th, 2011 | 12:29 pm | #6
There does need to be some force checking the power of owners/employers. But today’s unions are not that force. They are not even really trying to be that force. Their resources are not being spent wisely or effectively.
The only solution is for unions to reform themselves. They will not do this until they are forced into it. But checks and balances is the way of nature, and they are the way institutions grow, stay current with progress, and become more mature and more effective.
Unions right now in America cannot be supported because they are not a force for good.
November 10th, 2011 | 8:55 pm | #7
First, labor folklore suppresses the monopolistic tendencies and intentions of the unions themselves. Unions intend to monopolize the work supply the corporation needs to purchase in order to produce its merchandise. Unions want to eliminate the competition among prospective workers. They want to be sure that a union shop hires only union workers, that the shop has no freedom to hire others. If there’s competition among prospective workers, then the workers have to bid against each other in order to offer their services at the best price for the corporation. In order to keep their wages artificially high, unions aim to eliminate competition. They do it in many ways, some moral and legal, some not.
The most common way to keep others from competing for jobs is to pay large sums of money to elect legislators who will pass laws that eliminate worker competition. Unions want a shop closed to worker competition, a shop wherein the union monopolizes the work supply — which the elected legislators provide by passing laws toward that end. It’s a special interest system from Hell: What the unions want, the politicians provide; what the politicians want, the unions provide — all others be damned. Unions strive after, and frequently attain, job sovereignty. They enclose the labor pool; they assert union fraternity over employer and competitive worker liberty. In effect, they place “No trespassing” signs in front of the hiring office. By doing so, unions stage an invasion on managerial prerogatives, by demanding control, or veto, over hiring and firing.
Collective bargaining is not an instrument of liberty, but of control. Unions wield it precisely in order to restrain trade, namely the trading of money for work and of work for money that occurs freely between company and employees — absent third party intervention or coercion. Unions try very hard to prevent companies from dealing directly with free employees and free employees from dealing directly with companies, which is why so much relevant discussion has centered around whether or not antitrust law (law designed to preserve competition) ought to be applied to labor unions. When unions apply pressure across an industry to drive up their income, unions call it collective bargaining. When businesses do it, unions call it price fixing.
Perhaps a commonly employed analogy will serve: Imagine that a homeowner, John, and a prospective buyer, Sam, were negotiating over the purchase of John’s home. Imagine that Sam were invested with the bargaining privileges now enjoyed by labor unions. In such a case, Sam would be able to deprive John of all other purchase offers. Sam would be able to physically isolate John’s home and thereby to cut it of from all deliveries of any sort, even food, as well as to prevent personal movement into and out of John’s home so that, even if John were, say, an ambulance driver, he could not ply his trade or make his living. Sam could impose at will a virtual boycott, or embargo, of John’s business, even if John did not work at home. Were you or I to exert such coercive pressures on John, it would be called criminal. When unions exert them, it’s called collective bargaining.
Second, despite their monopolistic practices, unions want you to think of them as the victims, not the victimizers. When non-union forces try to re-assert their liberty, unions portray that re-assertion as fascist tyranny. Unions want you to forget that just as collective bargaining is a legally protected activity, so also is opposing it.
Unions are not victims. On the whole, organized labor stands quite well up in the rankings of worker wages and benefits, both here and around the world. Nevertheless, the perception remains that union workers are downtrodden and oppressed. This mistaken notion of victimization is not simply a matter of cultural lag or of perceptions not keeping pace with reality, but of propaganda. Unions purposely portray themselves as the stoop-shouldered cannon fodder of capitalist emperors battling each other over filthy lucre.
Unions want you to think that they are victims of greedy capitalists when in reality they are simply unable to compete successfully for consumer dollars in the marketplace. They do not present their failure in this regard as their failure, but as their victimization at the hands of others.
Union folklore says that others are greedy, not union members. As everyone knows who thinks about it even for a moment, human nature and its manifold weaknesses is fully represented on both sides of the bargaining table.
Third, labor folklore asserts that what’s good for unions is good for America. It’s an old myth, and widely employed by many groups for their own advancement, whether by farmers, retailers, wholesalers, or public servants, that whatever is good for them is good for the nation. In other words, unions are not the first or the only small group to assert that their interests are identical with the interests of the country.
This myopic self-centeredness ignores the basic reality that if money is allocated in one direction it cannot be allocated in another at the same time. When one sector gets a larger share in the consumers’ allocation of money, another sector gets less. But the whole country is not thereby either diminished or enlarged. When group A prospers at the expense of group B, the nation is not thereby either richer or poorer. The gains (and losses) are relative: They are relative to other groups in the economic equation. The nation isn’t financially enlarged, just one portion of it. What one sector gained, others paid. The benefit is unidirectional, not universal. What’s described as better off for the nation is simply reallocation. Reallocation within the system is not the same as increasing the system. The pie is not magically bigger, just cut up in different proportions. That’s not good for the country, just good for one sector. I’m not saying that economics is inescapably a zero sum game; I’m saying that mere reallocation is.
Indeed, one might argue that, because no industry is truly isolated from all others and therefore is impacted by what happens in them, when other companies consent to raise wages because of union pressure, they must also raise their prices in order to absorb the additional labor costs. That means that the corporations and consumers who wish to purchase that company’s products must pay more, raising everyone else’s costs accordingly, thus making them worse off than before. Those who are now worse off believe that they must demand more, which raises the price of their products, and drives the cost of living higher in ever-rising circles of upward pressure. In this way, what’s good for unions is bad for everyone else, despite union folklore to the contrary.
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