#3 Abolishing Unions

So the first two bad ideas were not truly bad ideas. By definition any plan advocating state-sponsored vasectomies lacks balls. So here’s a truly bad idea that will never work, but perhaps we should just do it anyway: let’s dissolve labor unions in the United States of America.

There are (understandably) not a lot of professional academics doing research on this idea, so my facts will be a bit lighter than normal. Still, in the last 60 years we have seen a 66% decrease in union membership. 12% of all workers in America are unionized, and only 8% of private sector employees. Construction unions have seen a drop from 84% of all workers in 1953 to 22% in the late 1980s. The percentages of union members by private or public business has essentially reversed in those years; in the 40’s, only about 9% of public sector employees were unionized, today that figure is about 36%. Union membership is clearly on the decline; let’s help it out a little extra.

I have had the opportunity to work with a unique institution: the Prospect Park Alliance. This not-for-profit corporation runs Prospect Park in conjunction with the New York City Parks Department, and the difference in the two organizations is startling. I have personally witnessed Parks employees literally falling asleep on the job. They are often poorly trained, and are always incredibly inefficient. Yet they have no fear of consequences, as it is near to impossible to fire them. I’ve spoken to friends of mine in other sectors that work with trade unions, specifically manufacturing and education (throwing the NEA into a wood chipper is a future Bad Idea). Their impressions mirror my own.

They have found that labor unions remove two of the best incentives for professional excellence, money and fear, leaving only pride, which is a difficult factor to assess statistically. People generally work hard because they want to earn more money. It is a generally accepted notion of free market principles that if you work harder and are more productive than your neighbor, you will make more money than him/her. Labor unions remove this incentive from the equation. You are either a worker or not, a supervisor or not. Union members often know what they will be making for the next twenty years, barring catastrophe. As for the second incentive, to return to our neighbor, it is generally accepted that if you do not work as hard and are not as productive as him/her, than they will have a job, and you will be on the streets. This is not possible in most unions, barring catastrophic mistakes. Business are put in the position of having to decide in 6 months whether they want to retain an employee for the next 20 years. And given the huge financial incentive presented to the employee in those 6 months, a fair and honest evaluation of their productivity for the next 20 years is probably impossible. It’s the equivalent of signing a ball player in a contract year, who you’ve only watched for those 6 months, to play third base for the rest of his life.

The other major problem is that unions were originally created to defend the average worker from unspeakable working conditions and backbreaking poverty. That is no longer the case. The average union worker is living comfortably by United States standards, and their benefits and pensions dwarf those of most non-unionized workers. Though it was a hotly debated statement, some Senators in the auto bailout hearings stated that huge pension and health plans had put US automakers at a competitive disadvantage with their foreign competitors. Whether that is true or not, I think it is clear that unions are no longer protecting people who need them the most. The worst and hardest work in the United States is being done by immigrants. Fatalities among foreign-born workers while on the job have risen by 48% in the last several decades, according to the AFL/CIO. Many of those injuries did not involve workmen’s compensation, because the fatalities were to illegal immigrants.

So here is my bad idea: dissolve labor unions. Let the average worker be included in the capitalist system. I believe it will increase productivity, and therefore increase the standard of living for workers everywhere. Are other significant improvements needed to fix the labor problems in America? Yes. It is time to take a good, hard, communist look at the unconscionable amounts of money paid to executives in America today. We must also devote immediate time and energy to protecting the fundamental rights of all workers in America, even if they are not American. Employers taking advantage of cheap, imported foreign labor should be taken to task, and should have their competitive advantage removed. We can replace labor unions with the NLRB when it comes to unfair hiring and firing practices, and both the average worker and major industries will improve in the long run. You see, I realize that millions of hard-working and incredibly productive people do their producing in unions, and I have no issue with them. In fact, they would make more money with this idea. It makes the market for better workers incredibly more competitive, and it forces inferior workers to step up or stay home.

I apologize for the mostly theoretical nature of this blog post, as I said, statistics were harder to come by, and I have limited research time. But we need to find ways of updating the concept of the American workforce, and I think this could be a huge part of it. Unions have become a place to have it made, and I believe that institutionalized coasting is profoundly undemocratic.