The domestic policy story of the day continues to be the demonstration going on in Madison, Wisconsin by members of public employees’ unions and their supporters:
MADISON, Wis., Feb. 28 (UPI) — Police said they would not eject or arrest people encamped overnight in the Wisconsin Capitol to protest the governor’s budget repair bill.
Officials said Sunday they would allow them to remain in the Capitol in Madison because they were peacefully protesting, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
“The people who are in the building will be allowed to stay,” Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs said Sunday. “There will be no arrests unless people violate the law.”
Ezra Klein continues the persistent conflation of private sector unions and public sector unions. I won’t fight the strawman: I agree that we still need unions. Young Mr. Klein fails to distinguish between private sector unions and public sector unions but makes no case whatever to support the continued existence of public sector employees’ unions. I think that private sector unions continue to be important, particularly in defending working conditions. Would public sector working conditions really deteriorate to unsafe levels in the absence of unions? I don’t see it.
Mark McKinnon, writing at the Daily Beast presents four reasons to end public sector employees’ unions:
- Public unions are big money, a lot of which goes to support Democratic candidates, in essence forcing taxpayers to fund the Democratic Party or, worse, borrowing to do it.
- Public unions redistribute wealth. I think the more serious charge is economic inefficiency.
- Public unions silence the voters’ voice.
- Public unions are unnecessary.
Economist Robert Barro argues in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that collective bargaining is not a right:
Labor unions like to portray collective bargaining as a basic civil liberty, akin to the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion. For a teachers union, collective bargaining means that suppliers of teacher services to all public school systems in a state—or even across states—can collude with regard to acceptable wages, benefits and working conditions. An analogy for business would be for all providers of airline transportation to assemble to fix ticket prices, capacity and so on. From this perspective, collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.
In fact, labor unions were subject to U.S. antitrust laws in the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which was first applied in 1894 to the American Railway Union. However, organized labor managed to obtain exemption from federal antitrust laws in subsequent legislation, notably the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
Remarkably, labor unions are not only immune from antitrust laws but can also negotiate a “union shop,” which requires nonunion employees to join the union or pay nearly equivalent dues.
I think he’s right but the reason he gives is wrong. I think that collective bargaining is better understood as a power than a right. It is the power to coerce all workers to accept the instrument favored by some workers as their point of negotiation with management. Under certain conditions allowing that power is useful and necessary, among those conditions large corporations and monopoly power. I see the argument as markedly different for public employees’ unions.
In the comments thread of a post at OTB I was taken to task for having the temerity to suggest that union leaders might actually have made mistakes and contributed to the decline of private sector trade unionism. I’ll repeat my argument here. I think that management, union leaders, and government officials have different fiduciary responsibilities. Top management’s primary responsibilities are to present and future stockholders. This distinction is important: without it shouldn’t top management’s sole chore be to liquidate the company?
Similarly, union leaders have a responsibility not only to the present union membership but to its future membership. Surely it goes without saying that I believe that both top management and union leaders have been mortally guilty of failing in their responsibilities through short-sighted leadership.
Most importantly, elected officials have greater responsibilities than just getting re-elected. Unless we find a way to hold them to those responsibilities we’re in a world of trouble.
The government is staffed and managed by people. In consequence, they let personal concerns influence hiring and firing, have petty turf wars, and engage in most of the kinds of practices found in the private sector. Moreover, there’s no ex ante reason to believe that simply because democratic mechanisms produce some level of accountability, that government managers, executive branch officials, city councils, state legislators, etc. won’t try to screw government workers. In short, I don’t understand the case against collective bargaining rights for public employees.
Now, we can complain (rightfully) that public employee unions influence the political process and therefore can “capture” those they bargain with. But a whole host of corporations and other forces can also “capture” government officials. Indeed, that’s what Wisconsin comes down to: an attempt to destroy public employee unions as a countervailing force in government policy by interests who clash with public employees.
I’m against that, too. I’m not sure how pointing out the injustice of big business influence of government justifies public sector employee influence of government.
My grandfather was a union man and a minor politician. As a kid in the 70s I used to haul a wagon behind him as he passed out fliers.
He wouldn’t have understood public unions. I don’t think he would have come out against them, but I think he would have avoided talking about them since they didn’t really fit into his sense of why unions were needed and what their role was. He didn’t think people with degrees were “the working man.” He thought the purpose of labor organization was to share the profits of their sweat and protect themselves from workplace injury. He would have his arm torn off on the assembly line.
He voted for one Republican his entire life, Ronald Reagan. Reagan understood the working man. Jimmy and Teddy had lost their way.
I believe that pattern bargaining should not have been exempt from anti-trust laws; I think it helped contribute to Detroit’s downfall.
People who believe unions are merely people assembling, overlook the collusive nature of the relationships and that people colluding on price is pretty much what can destroy a free market.
” people colluding on price is pretty much what can destroy a free market.”
Management colluding does not?
While I agre that in principle public sector unions have some problems, after putting in quite a bit of time on it, I am surprised to find that there is not clear evidence that teacher unions have succeeded in gaining major advantages for their members. I have to wonder if actually having a lot of their negotiations take place at the local level mitigates their influence.
Query-If incentives matter, do we want to pay our teachers less, on a GDP per capita rate, than do other countries? Do incentives matter only for management? If incentives matter for tax purposes, why would they not matter for teacher salaries?
Steve
I’m not sure what your point is Steve. Companies can’t collude to set the price on labor. That would violate anti-trust laws. Labor can do so.
Pattern bargaining to some extent allows companies with dominant market position to collude with labor in setting a labor price that will keep on market entrants.
“Companies can’t collude to set the price on labor. ”
I know what all of my competitors pay their staff.
Steve