America's unions are mighty proud of their long and successful history, and rightly so. The past achievements of collective labor bargaining have resulted in many landmark achievements for workers. And while unions today continue to do excellent work on behalf of the working man, they face a far less rosy future.
Besides the self-admitted dangerous scarcity of educated union members, the union as an institution faces several other difficulties in the 21st century labor market. Many new industries, such as internet blogging, find themselves poorly disposed to unionization, despite earnest collectivist efforts. Even unions' traditional strengths, such as securing guaranteed benefits, are being eroded in the dynamic labor market. While unions try to figure out how to wrangle quality dental care and a 401(k) out of greedy capitalists whose last interest is complying with those demands, the best option for many workers in such a situation is to simply find another job that offers better benefits, thus using the market to replace the union.
The power of unions, however, is still entrenched by the closed shop policies in the majority of American states. Closed shop laws require that if workers are unionized at a company, then all new workers are forced to unionize as well. As a result of their gaining membership by coersion and state-sanctioned monopoly, unions' membership far exceeds their true popularity. As a result, well-meaning union-led efforts often end in strikes and lockouts that end up banning their own workers, without their consent, from actually working.
As a result of their disproportionate monopoly power, unions remain (not surprisingly) formidable political machines. And like most formidable political machines, they gain power not by reason and dialogue, but by coercion through numbers. The unions' special interest lobbying also has another disadvantage, however, namely that their preferred policies, putatively for the benefit of their members, are demonstrably atrocious for the nation as a whole. Unions oppose open trade with other nations, Social Security private accounts, and portable health care accounts, among others, apparently concerned much less with the national interest than political grandstanding.
The good news is that solution to this problem is easy; the bad news is that the unions won't like it. The entire country should adopt right to work as the law of the land, and let anyone who wants to join a union join one. Companies should be prevented from actively interfering with a worker's choice to join a union, but so should the unions be prevented from forcing workers to join them. Ensuring a free and open choice for workers regarding unionization should be the job of public policy, which is a much better plan than artificially inflating a monopolistic and outdated mode of collectivist extortion. Happy Labor Day.
The above work is the opinion of the author, and not necessarily that of the Prometheus Institute
Believe it or not, this is a T-shirt sold by the AFL-CIO. No, seriously.
Believe it or not, this is a T-shirt sold by the AFL-CIO. No,