Labor Unions: Necessary to Protect Workers

Evan Ash
Intro to Democracy and Justice Studies
Prof. Jon Shelton
10/13/14

Labor unions have been an important, if controversial part of American history since the
late 1800s. Beginning with groups like the AFL, CIO and Knights of Labor and represented now
by the SEIU, AFL-CIO, Teamsters and others, they have had a turbulent existence, which lies in
clashing with corporate power. Here in Wisconsin, union became a dirty word after Scott
Walker won the gubernatorial election in 2010 and embarked on his promise of fiscal
responsibility, which involved the stripping of public unions collective bargaining rights. His
behavior followed the pattern of several Republican governors across the nation who enacted
legislation designed around model bills from the American Legislative Exchange Council, an
organization where corporate representatives meet with lawmakers to draft legislature tailored to
their demands. Along the same lines are another contemporary problem that ALEC has thrown at
unions nationwide: Right-to-work laws. In a bit of doublespeak, RTW laws have little with
ensuring a persons right to worktheyre targeted at private sector unions to eviscerate them.
As evidenced in an ALEC brief released by the organization ALEC Exposed, right-to-work laws
specifically state that:
The right to work shall not be infringed or restricted in any way based on membership in,
affiliation with, or financial support of a labor organization.
The act also provides that employees cannot be made to join a union as a condition of
employment, and forbids unions from taking dues out of an employees wages.

States who sign this legislature claim to do so for reasons of giving fair opportunity to workers
and to lessen the political impact of unions, which are stereotypically seen as supporting
liberal/Democratic causes. Proponents, like pundit John Fund from Fox News claim that RTW
laws create jobs:
Well, the Labor Department has shown that states that have right-to-work laws created
something like 900,000 new jobs over the last 10 years. States that didn't have right-towork laws lost over 3 million jobs. So, looking at this, it makes it easier for employers to
come in and makes work schedules more flexible, and a lot of employers are now looking
at states like Indiana to move to, especially from states like Illinois which are raising
taxes and also have lots of union protections.
However, data on the subject is unreliable at best. Economists Okran Eren and Serkan Ozbeklik
conducted a survey in 2011 of economic effects pertaining to RTW laws in Oklahoma and Idaho.
A summary of their findings were published by the Associated Press in 2012:
Obscuring the answer is "the difficulty of distinguishing the effects of the RTW laws
from state characteristics, as well as other state policies that are unrelated with these laws.
Unions also suffer from significant stigmatization from the political and media community as
greedy and corrupt. Ever heard someone say Look what unions did to Detroit? (Well, NAFTA
and citizens electing leaders that are pro-corporate are more to blame.) Union membership has
dwindled to almost pre-Great Depression levels, and the US lags behind many other developed
countries in membership at just over 10% compared to the UK at nearly 30% and Finland at
nearly 70%. In 2012, The Atlantic ran an opinion series asking their readers whether or not they

thought unions were necessary after detailing union decline and economic inequality. Some
readers said yes:
Unions are the one check and balance on [corporate] power--the only one. Workers have
no other power or right to maintain this necessary balance except to organize and collective
bargain. Unions may need to be reinvented for a new economy, but they are indispensable.
As anyone who's worked for a major corporation knows, you dont [sic] negotiate with
your manager at review time. You can complain, beg, wheedle or whatever -- but he or she
already has decided pretty much what you'll get, an answer dictated by, among other things,
algorithms that decide how much excellence can be acknowledged and failure that must be
discovered.
However, other readers felt differently about the matter:
[E]mployees will work for the employer offering the best terms of employment. Right
now there are more job-seekers than jobs, so the leverage lies with employers. The opposite is
true in a good economy. Making it more difficult for businesses to hire and adapt may mean
some people get better terms, but a larger percentage get no job at all.
If you are treated worse than market value, you go somewhere else. In times like now
when everyone's market value is less, and there are fewer options, you take what you get and you
like it. When times get better, that is when you get your due. Companies that don't pay their
people what they are worth go out of business. Companies that pay their people more than they
are worth go out of business even faster.
With those principles in mind, why join a union? Can they truly protect workers and the middle
class? My answer is yes. Throughout history they have proved capable of disrupting corporate

power and bringing industries to a halt if they are seen as unfair (think the Pullman Strike). In
our modern world, unions are a key force in solving income inequality. Floyd Norris of the New
York Times puts it quite simply: Corporate profits are at their highest level in at least 85 years.
Employee compensation is at the lowest level in 65 years. Despite conservative rhetoric,
Americas economy is booming. Norris article even attests that only Bill Clinton and FDR saw
higher increases in the S&P 500. Its worth notingCorporations fear the bargaining power of
unions, as evidenced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled The Union Cudgel, which stirs up
fears about big labor and downplays their ability to perform work. Republicans may champion
themselves as advocates of hands-free, laissez-faire capitalism, but in the case of a Volkswagen
plant in Tennessee that wanted to unionize (to more reflect the social democratic workings of the
German economy), they stepped in and said no. As Paul Waldman of The American Prospect
notes, Republicans are really afraid of is that the union will come in to the Chattanooga plant
and things will work well. If that happened, the rationale for the race to the bottom would be
severely undermined. Waldman notes the economic philosophy of race to the bottom, one that
was pioneered by railroad barons in the Gilded Age, a philosophy of massive deregulation that
leads to low wages and poor working conditions. Even in the 21st century, we still see a race to
the bottom.
In order to ensure the long-term needs of the United States, it is crucial that we encourage and
protect unions because they collectively represent and give voice to citizens who are the
lifeblood of the working economy and have the countrys best interests in mind. Unions
represent a way for workers voices to be heard on a corporate level, and serve as an important
balance for corporate power in a capitalist society.