Last week the head of a major labour union spoke to a massive gathering of NDP supporters, thundering against corporate greed, insisting unions are needed to improve workers’ conditions, and denouncing government policies that let workers decide whether or not they want to join a union before they are forced to pay union dues.
Oops! It wasn’t actually an NDP gathering, it was the Republican National Convention taking place in Milwaukee. I should have known it wasn’t an NDP event, the NDP can’t attract massive gatherings. Donald Trump can, though, and used that ability to give Teamsters president Sean O’Brien a platform to pitch his union agenda to a national American audience.
Unfortunately, the union agenda is to increase the power of unions and union officials by pushing government to restrict the rights of workers who don’t want to join unions, restrict the rights of workers who don’t want to pay union dues, and protect union jobs from competition.
O’Brien encouraged Republicans to drop their support for right to work, which are laws in 27 states that disallow making the payment of union dues a condition of employment. “Right to work lets workers decide whether to join a union,” as the Wall Street Journal describes, “and it isn’t pro-worker to force them to pay dues on Mr. O’Brien’s orders.”
The Teamsters union he leads also supports regulatory crackdowns on workers who prefer to be independent contractors instead of employees, as well as legislation that would limit workers’ rights to a secret ballot election before a union is certified to represent them.
Basic economics explains union support for such government policies. Wages are determined by supply and demand, but because unions reduce worker productivity (by breaking the link between individual productivity and compensation through collective bargaining) the only way they can raise members’ wages is by restricting supply. This is done by lobbying for government regulations that restrict the ability of non-union workers, such as independent contractors, to compete for jobs.
In fact, not only do unions try to raise unionized workers’ wages at the expense of non-union workers, but many unionized workers themselves discover after the fact that unionizing the workplace is often an unlucky thing to do. Case in point: last month, a week after more than thirty of its workers unionized, OCF Coffee House in Philadelphia shut down all three of its locations.
No differently, while only about two per cent of all Starbucks locations across the United States are unionized, locations where employees are unionized or have started organizing seem disproportionately targeted for closures by the company. That shouldn’t be a surprise. When workers unionize, businesses have to pay more for less: a significant competitive disadvantage. Recent studies have confirmed unionization negatively affects a firm’s likelihood of survival.
And while Trump’s Republican Party seems intent on wooing unions, workers themselves seem to be increasingly rejecting unionization. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports as of 2023, only 10 per cent of American workers are union members, down a hair from 10.1 per cent the previous year, and half the 20.1 per cent union membership rate in 1983, the earliest year with comparable data.
In fact, just two months ago, the United Auto Workers tried to unionize roughly 5,000 workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama, but 56 per cent of workers voted against joining the union versus 44 per cent in favour. In addition to negative effects on firm survival, union corruption is a problem. “Some workers had expressed distrust of the UAW,” the Wall Street Journal reported, “citing a corruption scandal last decade in which more than a dozen union officials were convicted of crimes, including two past presidents.
Notably, the UAW’s 56 per cent to 44 per cent loss on the secret ballot vote was after it successfully had 70 per cent of workers sign cards indicating union support. That this plummeted to 44 per cent on the secret ballot shows why unions are so intent on getting rid of secret ballots.
Another tidbit of unionization information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Among the private sector, only six per cent of workers are unionized, versus 32.5 per cent in the public sector. That is near bulletproof evidence that unions tend only to thrive where employers don’t have to compete and where they can afford to pay more to get less. Donald Trump used to enthusiastically support right-to-work laws, but bowing to unions if he gets a second term would be a big step in the wrong direction.
National Post
Matthew Lau is a Toronto writer.