From the Drafts Folder: "This Almost Certainly Will Not Interest You", March 7, 2011

The public sector unions' protest in Wisconsin has, not surprisingly, given me a lot to think about. I've been working with unions since 1997, and most of those years have been depressing. Not because unions weren't making strong economic or political gains for their members, but because their market share was shriveling. Today, only 6.9% of the private sector is unionized. The public sector helps boost the unionized market density to around 13%, but the power of unions is, at this point, nostalgic and political. The Wisconsin battles are unusual in that they are focussed on the rights of unions (collective bargaining, dues collection) as opposed to individual rights or political interests. In fact, the unions in Wisconsin have largely acceded to the Republican budget cuts; they firmly recognize that the governor is trying to deal the fatal blow. If Walker can win in Wisconsin, the Republicans can win anywhere.

But what if the unions win? What then? They aren't about to regain market share at this point. At its height, the American labor movement included more than 30% of the workforce; that height is unimaginable today. We've lost those jobs completely. Good-bye, manufacturing sector. And even if they do win in WI, they are saddled with a whole set of responsibilities which inhibit their ability to deal with industrial issues in the represented workforce.

Let me back up and talk a little about the different components of what a union offers its members. Via their union, members get (1) political power, via campaign contributions, access to politicians and voter turnout machines that are top notch; (2) legal service, via the grievance and arbitration process. Individual workers who are disciplined and groups of workers deprived of contractual rights have representation for their issues. This is called representational services. Then there's (3) industrial service, where unions advocate for industrial services and standards. This springs in some part from a "craft" or "trade" mentality, where the labor market understands that union labor is superior, because of its training and safety standards. The member gets superior training and the union advocates for those individuals to get the work over non-union employees. Unions also offer (4) collective bargaining/negotiations service, wherein the union bargains for higher wages and benefits than are available elsewhere.

Each of these services is emphasized differently within each union, and each is demonized by the enemies of unions. In turn, the union may be viewed as "the machine", the reason that the jerk comes back to work, the reason people are excluded from certain jobs and budget-busters. I'm not really going to deal with those assumptions. I just raised those frameworks to ask, "If the unions in Wisconsin win, what do they offer their members, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC?"

I have two ideas. In Ohio, public sector bargaining rights have been rolled back to a point where the unions can only negotiate about wages and benefits. However, what if the opposite were true, and unions had to negotiate about everything? Literally, what if the unions were required to bargain about all the problems faced by their employers? This is antithetical to most ideas about bargaining, but I think that *not* asking unions to think constructively about the future is one of the reasons that they have no incentive to bargain over anything but their share of the pie.

Second, I do think that the basic structure of unions is flawed in a way that inhibits their ability to effectively incorporate all four of their service orientations. Presently, most unions assign staff based on the employer, and the union representative is expected to be political organizer, legal advocate, journey level trainer and contract negotiator. This is absurd. No one can do all of these. In addition to the problem of having the right skills mix, individual staff get overly involved in a particular workplace, and become myopic. The problems of those employees become all that the union representative, and their creativity and objectivity fall into disuse.

I think that a union should staff in the following way. There should be advocates handling grievances; political organizers doing issues organizing and voter turnout; career counselors and trainers for industrial skill development; and trained negotiators. I think that there should also be healthcare and retirement benefit counselors who understand union health and retirement plans and can help workers navigate those, as well as advise negotiators about issues that need to be tackled. These folks would work as a team, providing high quality services from their area of expertise.

Why? Unions need to make the case that their battle is worth winning.