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Union Membership and Inequality Thursday, October 23, 2008 From the U.S Chamber of Commerce website Union Membership and Inequality by Brad Peck The AFL-CIO published a post the other day on wage disparity in the U.S. claiming: If you’re born in this nation, you have less chance of upward mobility than in England, our stereotyped epitome of the immobile, class-based society. The distribution of income is a concern in the United States. As Dr. Marty Regalia explained in our Labor Day briefing this slide has been occurring since the 1970's. The one constant during that period has been the increase in productivity and the rewarding of technological skills. To shrink this gap we must provide better education for our current and future workers. Perhaps if unions spent less of their money on trying to buy legislation to force workers into unions, and more on worker training or even fully funding their pensions they could increase their numbers the old fashion way, by earning it. But bravo to the AFL-CIO for pointing out the gains the United Kingdom has made in the last 28 years. How did they do it? By implementing secret ballot elections for unions. Union membership has been on the decline in the United States since World War II when one-third of employed people in the United States belonged to unions. Union membership decreased to 24.1 percent of the U.S. work force in 1979. By 2007 it was 12.7 percent. The AFL-CIO wants to reverse this trend and thinks EFCA would accomplish this. There is reason to believe it could. The exact opposite occurred in the United Kingdom. Britain's 1980 Employment Act changed the procedure for recognizing unions from a public voice vote to a secret ballot. Those who did not want to join a union complained of harassment and physical intimidation. As soon as the secret ballots were implemented, workers began rejecting unions. Union membership was 50.7 percent of the British workforce in 1980. Ten years after the Employment Act was enacted, membership in British unions declined to 39.3 percent, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As we posted yesterday: Thatcher was right. As soon as the secret ballots were introduced, many workers began defying the trade union leadership and rejecting the unions’ ruinous policies. When she had taken power, Britain was the second-poorest nation in Europe. Her reforms led to the longest sustained period of British economic expansion of the postwar era. Regarding harassment and physical intimidation we have a new ad up which shows just who will be collecting signatures if card check passes. The Las Vegas Sun wrote an article on the ad which engendered this comment: I worked at place that went through a union election. If the pro-union workers found out that a worker was not going to let the union in then that was harass often. His/her tires would be slashed. He/she would get food thrown at them. He/she would get no help to do their job. All of that was under a secret ballot. Can you imagine if a couple of union thugs walk up and ask you sign a union ballot and you turn it down? One more note on the AFL-CIO post, at the end they hold up France as another beacon of income equality hope. How are the unions doing there? Within Europe, France stands out as a country with relatively low union density and particularly sharp losses in membership. In fact, France with a 47.1% decline between 1970-2003 beats out the drop in England -- 35.2% -- during that same time. Maybe the AFL-CIO does have something; to shrink the income gap we need to decrease union membership even more in the United States. Let's let the workers decide, in private. Oppose "Card Check" and Protect Secret Ballot Elections for America's Workers Contact Your Legislators Become a Member U.S. CHAMBER IN THE NEWS |
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