A broader view for unions

Unions need to stop doing the work of bosses by pitting workers against each other for marginal parochial gain. They need to reverse the path taken by the hard-hat rioters. In a recent article, Unions Must Attract the Young and Hip—or Become Obsolete, the following discussion was great. I think that unions need to go beyond the cultural and re-examine the basics. Here’s my take:

Unions first provide a direct benefit for their membership. They negotiate and help protect favorable wages and work rules. Secondly they directly provide to the employers that enter into contracts with them a trained work force with a reliable level of productivity. Unions provide an indirect benefit to the communities from which they gather their strength. They provide a standard of living higher than otherwise would exist. They add to a culture of democratic process in the work place that is essential to a functioning democratic society. As a community’s perception of a union moves away from providing these benefits then the ultimate source of union strength evaporates.

The rationale that if a social policy will cost one union member a job then that is a bad policy has caused unions to take stands recently against the good of the communities from which they derive their support. Organized labor support for the recent bad budget ballot initiatives is one example of this. Another is the electrical workers opposition to Marin County’s attempt to wrest local control of electrical power generation from PG&E. This selfish logic is misguided. The real problem lies in the work rules that the rest of the folk in California and most of America work under. Laws that protected workers and guaranteed the right to work were stripped out and replaced by the so-called “at-will”, right to be fired, rules.

Unions are now struggling with a lack of favorable perception amongst younger workers. The community that the “not one union member’s job lost” doctrine opposes largely consists of those same18 to 40 year old workers the unions are trying to attract. Until unions work towards the Roosevelt doctrine that a meaningful job is a human right for all workers, and not just for their members, they will not succeed with their youth agenda. There is so much social discontent now towards our corporate plutocracy and its control over our representative government that unions could help swing the balance towards a renewed democracy and in the process develop the loyalty of those young workers that was lost in the 60’s and 70’s.