To Unionize or Not?

Workers, Unite!

Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.

John L. Lewis

Anyone who ever had the good fortune of being taught Civics by Gene Lawless or History by Gordon Warren will recall the lessons learned from what we now call “The Gilded Age” and “The Great Depression.” I had that good fortune and some of the things I learned there formed my later understanding of political philosophy and laid the groundwork for comprehending “The Social Contract” that every citizen of our republic engages in. This is not to say that this was the only possible understanding of what those fine educators taught. Others have come to different conclusions but the basics of what they taught remains.

One of the lessons of The Gilded Age was that corporate managers as a rule have little regard for the well being of the line worker. Their main objective is ever increasing profits at the expense of adequate wages and workplace safety. Those negative conditions gave rise to trade and labor unions by which the average worker could leverage the combined power of the work force into something that could wring concessions from management.

Kentucky is no stranger to the organized labor movement having the example and tradition of the mine workers and their attempts to organize in order to improve safety and working conditions. They faced not only hired guns of the mine owners but also the national guard which was called up by either the Governor or the President in order to force the miners back to work. John L. Lewis was recalled by many miners with reverence as a savior who had brought respectable wages and hours to the common man. The passing of time and the increased use of strip mining has lessened the remembrance of John L. Lewis and the abysmal conditions of those mines. Today the unions have been broken and while conditions are still much better than in those days miners are still subjected to unsafe working conditions.

Labor unions brought prosperity to the middle class by allowing the worker to enjoy a larger piece of the pie, by bringing health care and the 40 hour week. For the first time the average worker knew what it was to have leisure time. During the period just after WWII there was an exodus from the South to the North to take advantage of the union scale jobs. The past thirty years have seen a dramatic decline in the number of American workers who belong to unions. Many of the union shops of the North have relocated to the South where unions have never met with favor in spite of the abundance of poor workers.

Recently aerospace giant Boeing announced the building of a huge plant in South Carolina in order to escape the impact of the worker's union in Washington. When Toyota located in Georgetown the lack of UAW representation was a factor and it it was the same with Nissan in Tennessee. By the local standards jobs in those shops are better than average but slightly more than ½ what the scale was in Detroit. The global market has emphasized the effect of production costs of automobiles and now we must compete with nations whose manufacturers do not share the same burdens as our domestic ones.

The pressure on manufacturers is intense but the pressure on the American worker is ruinous. The middle class now takes home less in real buying power than it did 30 years ago when the attack on unions took root. Their health care was tied to the job and when they lost their jobs they also lost their health care. Many of the workers were in the final 10 years before reaching retirement and not likely to be able to quickly learn another trade without suffering the loss of the years of financial planning.

Here it doesn't matter much because we never had much to begin with. That is the way it was with Toyota, Nissan and now Boeing. If you don't have much then a little looks like a lot. But is it enough to enjoy the American Dream? Will you be able to buy your own home? Put your kids through college? Do you really think that it is fair that the CEOs and the Wall Street titans are able to acquire more wealth than they could ever use while you must accept a dwindling portion of the fruits of your labor? Or could those ethereal titans perhaps take a little less and what would be wrong with that? Is it wrong for the worker to expect to make a wage that will allow him or her to participate in the American Dream or should the worker be held to whatever wage the most desperate person will take? Should the worker be faced with the loss of health care for him and his family if that job is lost or if he should pursue a better job? Why should health care be tied to the job at all? These are all things that we used to be able to thank the unions for because they were the only voice speaking for the American worker. The strength of their numbers gave them the power to negotiate better wages and benefits. Or will we be content to allow the former middle class to sink to the level of the worker in China or Mexico or Guatemala?

Say what you will about unions, and there is plenty to say, but they have been the only voice for the American worker. Without them the thirst for profits will drive what used to be the most prosperous middle class in the world into poverty.

In 1981 President Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers Union and fired over 11,000 air traffic controllers. One of the results was short staffing and that caught up with us last month with the revelation of controllers asleep at the wheel. The union had demanded that there never be only one controller on duty but without the union market forces prevailed.

So, I guess you can figure my take on unions. What's yours?