Union of Interests - A Different Way Forward

Better than the common platitude, "United we stand, divided we fall", is Benjamin Franklin's more powerful statement, "We must hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately". And as the public service unions of Wisconsin attempt to hang together, it's worth considering the alternatives, should Governor Scott Walker and his fellow conservatives win their way.

Growing up, I had a rather negative attitude towards unions. India, in the eighties, was in the thrall of the unions and they ably demonstrated everything that was worst about unions with too much power. Yet, looking back, the problem was not so much the unions, though they were no angels, but the byzantine mix of laws that rewarded lack of initiative and thwarted any spark of entrepreneurship. The unions and their leaders were willing collaborators, but they did not set up the massive state-run companies that had no incentive to turn a profit, that were treated as a way to buy political support. As I embarked on my journey across the world, I began to see unions in a new light.

The recently beatified former President Reagan won great acclaim for breaking the unions, and since then, his disciples have built on his victories to roll back the power of unions, and more importantly changed the public perception of unions and their members. In America today, unions are victims of their own successes in the past century. The inhuman working conditions and powerless position of the workers in early twentieth century America is now little more than a bad dream and generations raised to regard basic health-care and forty hour weeks as the norm forget that none of these luxuries were gifted to us by the magnanimity of our employers, but were won by furious, often bloody, battle by the much maligned unions. Yet today, they are reviled and distrusted as agents of a socialist Dystopia, somehow alienated from their neighbors, their fellow citizens. It's easy to see the battle over unions in simplistic black and white terms - the liberals want them, the conservatives hate them, the Democrats support them, the GOP wants to eliminate them.

But reality is rarely if ever that simple. I'm greatly conflicted over unions, in part because of the poor example they've set, in part because the anti-unionists have sold a seductive counter argument, and in part because I can't join one any more. The "right to work" is a slick piece of marketing, of a piece with "pro-life" - it sounds really great and reasonable and would work great, except that it doesn't. The pro-life brigade is busy imposing their moral view upon everyone else using a reasonable sounding term - who's anti-life after all? - to deny people the right to believe differently from them. In much the same way, the "right to work" has absolutely nothing objectionable at first blush. To be honest, I always thought that the idea that everyone who joined a unionized workforce had to join the union seemed unfair. Of course, on reflection it's obvious that once non-union labor is introduced, it becomes fairly easy for the management to weaken the union and destroy it. Likewise, seeing a portion of my payroll sucked away as union dues didn't seem too attractive an option either, which was a large part of why I opposed the unionization of the graduate students who were teaching assistants while at school. In the end the unions have to recognize that the world has changed over the last half century and they can no longer rest on their past laurels. Their time has passed and now has come the moment for a new idea.

Unions, at the their best, represent the most important part of a company. Let's be honest, if a company could survive without its labor, they would do it in a heartbeat. But the fact is, the workers are what makes or breaks a company. It is a common theme that the owner brought in the capital that made the company possible, which is a fair enough idea. But capital without workers is as meaningless as workers without an employer. Labor and capital need each other, no matter how much the pretend otherwise. It's time for both sides to forge a new relationship and it will need a lot of adjustments from both sides. Let's start by dropping the term "union' with all it's negative connotations - I propose that alternate terms like "Workers' Guild" (a shout out to the World of Warcraft) or "Workers' League' be adopted. But more importantly, all workers not invested in the company be made a part of this new association. The old distinctions between blue collar and white collar made sense, when the white collar workers were few and were usually treated as part of the company management. Today, when the line between the two has blurred and vast numbers of white collar workers struggle with less rights than their blur collar fellows, it's just another idea whose time has passed. And if  the professional players in the NFL can band together to bargain with their employees, why not the rest of us? Obviously, shareholders in the company cannot be a part of the association, since their interests are nominally at odds with those of the workers, but all others can and should be free to join this association. Of course, I see no role for "outsiders" in this association - only workers in the company can be in the association. And of course the positions would carry no additional salary - if the janitor won the job, he'd sit on the board of directors as a representative of his fellow workers, but he'd still draw a janitor's paycheck. And he'd still have to fulfill his janitorial duties.

However, it's critical to note that in fact, labor and owners are not on opposite sides of a zero sum game. And that is where the greatest adjustment is required in thinking. The worker's association, as partners of the capitalists need to have a role in company policy, not during wage negotiations only, but at all times. We live in an era of short term gains and myopic worldviews, when the CEO and his fellow Board of Directors earn a hundred times more than the average employee, and where those decisions on company policy and CEO compensation are never discussed with the people they impact most and who contribute every bit as much as the CEO or owner. In fact, for an established company that raises money largely on the stock market, the capital is so diffused that there is hardly a single person contributing overwhelmingly to the company's coffers and the workers are probably far more important. Ownership is the great American Dream, so let's make the workers equal partners in the company.

Now such an idea could be dismissed as socialism. So be it; if this is socialism, I embrace the concept, Comrades! But it's worth remembering that Margret Thatcher executed something fairly similar in Britain during her initial terms when she sold off state-owned corporations, often to the workers. I've heard of small company founders selling their company's to their employees when they wish to retire, so it's neither a revolutionary or ground breaking idea, really. I just suggest that this be implemented on a wider, near universal scale, and that the workers have a voice in all company policy. That would include the association having access to the company books, and all the same information as the rest of the Board. It will not end bad decisions - Hummers would probably have been built even under this system - but it will make the labor part of the solution. There are many other problems that would definitely remain, but workers invested in the long term health of the company would probably make reasonable accommodations on salaries and benefits and assume a fair share of the pain during the bad times, so long as they also reaped the profits during the good. Naturally workers who choose not to join the association would have that right and would still enjoy the benefits of any labor agreements negotiated by the association, but only association members would share in the decisions of the Board and in the profits - or losses - that flow therefrom.