Union bashers can get their facts straight

Private-sector unions are just about gone; public-sector unions are headed the same way, yet we’re still supposed to be outraged that they have any rights at all

My favorite saying is that of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “People are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts.” I think of this rule often when I listen to people grinding political axes without the benefit of valid information.

Recent controversy over public-employee benefits provides a good example. Frankly, some people just have it backwards when it comes to the issue of collective bargaining rights in the workplace. For most workers in the United States, collective bargaining isn’t even an issue; they have no collective bargaining. When it comes to negotiating with employers, they’re on their own. If they’re in a position to demand better pay and benefits, they can help themselves. If, like many more, they’re desperate for a paycheck and have no leverage to bargain, they accept whatever terms employers offer. To show for it, we have decades-long wage stagnation for the majority of American workers, while the richest people receive ever-greater portions of the wealth those workers help produce.

Not all workers are in such a funk. Many unionized public employees have relatively favorable contracts in terms of pay, benefits and job security. It’s true that in some cases such employees receive a combination of benefits that could fairly be called generous or even excessive. But surely these excesses can be curbed without abolishing all collective bargaining rights. (And I apologize for calling you Shirley.)  

Yet abolishing collective bargaining rights is exactly what several recently elected Republican governors and legislators seek to do. Where did they get the idea that unions representing government workers are the major obstacle to fiscal prudence? Well, it helps when unions are portrayed as being much more powerful than they are, and when exceptional cases are allowed to obscure the general contradictory truth that unions are less powerful than ever and headed for obsolescence.

One article mentions “tea party leader Ted Lyons, an electronics executive from Troy, Ohio, who said the proposed union changes are long overdue. ‘The labor unions have become so powerful now on a worldwide basis,’ Lyons said.” It may look that way to Mr. Lyons, but to the majority of American working people, union rights aren’t even on the table. Many work unstable hours for low pay and no health insurance or sick leave. The few who still have union benefits are under pressure to make painful concessions.

So why the anger at the few remaining union workers? States are under pressure to cut costs, and one of those costs is pay/benefits for public workers. Some feel angry that their taxes are paying for public employees to get better pay and benefits than they enjoy in their own jobs. Especially when that pay and benefits appears to be contributing to budget shortfalls.

Here is where I get a little Marxist, so bear with me. This kind of resentment among working people is great for the elites. It takes the pressure off them when the main issue is how much to cut workers’ pay instead of, say, how to find ways to collect more tax revenue from wealthier people. Class warfare works best when it happens between members of the same class, presided over by members of the upper class. I say this as a reluctant supporter of (moderately) laissez-faire capitalism, since this appears to be the system that produces the most wealth for everyone. It’s better to have a smaller slice of a larger pie than a larger slice of a smaller pie.

But the size of your slice isn’t the only issue. This is also about democracy itself. People without property should still have a say in how the system’s rewards are distributed. (Distribution – redistribution – hammer and sickle, oh my!) Collective bargaining is one way besides elections that ordinary people can have a say. At the end of the day, the managers and executives will still fare best. It would be nice if ultra-conservatives would realize that and stop hyperventilating about an egalitarian straw man. If they haven’t noticed that the inequality between the richest and poorest people has increased under both “socialist” Democrats and conservative Republicans, now would be a good time to start noticing. And no, President Obama represents no threat to this arrangement.