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Trade unions are obsolete. It is found that since at least past
sixty years, the states of the trade unions are at their lowest sides.
The shape of the private section unionism is found to be in even worse
shape. The labor movement is kept from being weaker throughout the 20th
century due to the density and strong growth found in the public sector
membership. There are many causes of the decline of the trade unions.
Causes of the Decline
Arguments over what is the cause (or what are the causes) of private
sector union decline often seem insoluble, in part because causality is
difficult to establish in historical situations where certain factors
cannot be held constant while others are manipulated. At best
correlations are established, not causes; and the historical variations
are seldom numerous enough or closely enough specified to make for
conclusive results regarding causality. Furthermore, many of the
"causes" are conceptually or empirically related to others in such a
way that it is difficult to separate them cleanly. Probably the best
that can be achieved is clarity about the major factors involved, and
greater conceptual clarity about what which factors arc relatively
unchangeable "givens" versus which might be altered.
I note basic assumptions underlying some of the arguments that are highly questionable.
First, the strongest argument: It is virtually indisputable that
employer opposition to unionization, both legal and illegal, has grown
enormously from the 1960s to the 2000s (Freeman and Medoff, p.112-134;
Goldfield, p.211-254; Robinson, p.33-56; Lawler. P.232-254; Freeman,
p.143-69; Clawson and Clawson, p.95-119; Kleiner, p.292-316). Even if
workers win an NLRB union election, employer refusal to bargain a first
union contract frequently kills the union (Bronfenbrenner. P.75-89).
Near universal management resistance is undeniable, but does it make
any difference? An early study (German et at., p.176-192) claimed that
it did not, but the overwhelming evidence obtained since then has cast
serious doubt about this one dissenting study.
Virtually all other studies conclude that professional anti-union
consultants and strident anti-union management behavior arc major
determinants of union organizing success or failure. Yet, some
observers, while conceding the behavior, dismiss it as a major factor.
Lipset and Katchanovski (p.9-27) make a particularly weak argument in
this regard. They rely exclusively on attitude surveys to argue that
American employers are no more hostile to unionization than their
counterparts in Canada or elsewhere, where unionization rates are
higher. This ignores entirely the relevant issues: employer ability to
engage in viciously anti-union behavior with impunity, and the costs to
employers of doing so.
Canadian employers may be just as opposed to unions as arc their
U.S. counterparts, but their freedom and opportunity to engage in
intimidating antiunion behavior is much less. Simple surveys of
attitudes will not uncover this reality.
Employers, who spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year hiring
professional "union avoidance" experts, do not consider the potential
impact of anti-union employer behavior to be negligible. Neither do
union organizers, who routinely see levels of union support in the
60-75 percent range, melt to less than 50 percent in the face of a
withering anti-union campaign by the employer that crests just before
an NLRB union election. These practitioners know that employer
opposition is a major determinant of election outcomes, even it' union
organizing campaign methods also have an enormous impact
(Bronfcnbrenner and Juravich, p.19-36).
Freeman's estimate (p.45-64) that approximately 40 percent of the
decline in union success in NLRB elections is due to management
opposition is clearly of about the right magnitude. A closely related
factor often cited is the unfavorable legal climate for organized
labor. Changes in both the law (i.e., Taft-Hartley) and in NLRB
interpretations of the law have been almost uniformly negative for
organized labor since World War II (Weiler, 1983: Klein and Wanger,
p.1769-827; Gross, p.34-67; Craver, p.76-98).
An analogy shows the lopsided nature of the law. Suppose U.S.
political elections were legally structured so access to the electorate
is denied one political party (analogous to the union), while it is
granted the other one for eight hours a day at one's place of work. The
second political party (analogous to management) could force the
electorate to listen to campaign speeches (captive-audience meetings),
while the opposing party was denied similar access. Voters can be
required to meet with a government agent affiliated with the favored
party (analogous to management) to be grilled about electoral
preferences. This would seem grossly unfair and undemocratic to
American voters; yet, it is precisely the situation a union (the
disfavored party) faces in union certification campaigns.
This "cause" of union decline operates only indirectly by creating
the context against which employer behavior is allowed to interfere in
worker choice. But a major change in labor law could greatly alter the
fate of the U.S. labor movement. Imagine if the "default;' or norm, for
worker representation status was union status and collective
bargaining, rather than nonunion status. Even less drastic changes,
such as allowing a simple check of signed cards from a majority
indicating a desire for union representation to constitute grounds for
union recognition, or requiring equal time for the union in "captive
audience" sessions, would make a big difference.
Another particularly strong argument accounting for labor's decline
is the lack of organizing effort. Complacent about declining union
density for many years, U.S. unions devoted less than 5 percent of
their resources to organizing at the time of the 1995 contested
election for the AFL-CIO presidency (AFL-CIO Elected Leader Task Force
on Organizing, n.d.). Even after the new AFL-CIO leadership elevated
organizing of the unorganized to the first priority of the labor
movement, most unions put few resources into this supposedly top goal.
In September 2000 former AFL-CIO Organizing Director Richard Bensinger
noted that 10 percent of the unions were doing 90 percent of organizing
efforts, and that the vast bulk of labor's resources still went into
servicing union contracts, not organizing workers ("Tough Love for
Labor;' p.118-120). At best, only a half dozen of the federation's
sixty plus unions were seriously undertaking organizing efforts.
Freeman's (p.45-64) estimate that 20 percent of the reason for union
failure in elections is due to lack of union organizing effort is
roughly correct. Whether vastly increased organizing efforts would
yield commensurate results is anybody's guess, but we will never know
if unions never attempt it. Farber and Western (p.25-58) use badly
outdated figures from the 1953-1977 period to assert that 20 percent of
union expenditures are devoted to organizing. If the AFL-CIO's own
admission that the real percentage is under 5 percent is correct,
Farber and Western's claim that a 500 percent expenditure increase is
necessary to maintain current union density is less daunting. A 500
percent increase in organizing expenditures would still fall short of
the increase to 30 percent of expenditures called for by newly elected
AFL=CIO President Sweeney. Skepticism should be directed toward whether
unions will choose to change their expenditure priorities, not whether
it is possible.
The "globalization" of the U.S. economy is another frequently cited
cause of union decline. "Globalization" is a vague term; because of
space limitations this article cannot clarify all the confusions and
misconceptions regarding the debate over globalization. But many
popular views of how "globalization" undermines organized labor are
inadequate. For example, U.S. production facilities are not wholesale
"running away" to Third World countries to pursue low wages. In a few
industries (automobiles, electronics, textiles, and garments),
production has gone multinational, but output by foreign facilities of
U.S. multinational corporations in 1999 was 2 percent of world
production, little changed from twenty years earlier.
Furthermore, 57 percent of the product of U.S. foreign affiliates is
produced in Europe; adding Canada, Australia, Japan, and newly
industrialized countries like Singapore and Korea brings the percentage
to 80 percent (Henwood, p.2-3, 7). Most (but not all) of these
countries have labor movements as strong as, or stronger than, the one
in the U.S. In this narrow sense, the impact of "globalization" on most
U.S. unions is much less than commonly imagined. (This is not true for
certain individual unions, such as those in the automotive, electronic,
textile, or garment industries.) Positive Human Resource Management
(HRM) practices are sometimes credited with reducing the rate of
unionization.
According to this reasoning, "union substitution" occurs when
employees feel no need for union protection due to pro-employee
measures undertaken by managers. The research on this issue is far from
decisive, but in general it fails to show that HRM practices are a
major factor. Fiorito's (p. 224) conclusion that "... positive HRM
appears to have been a contributing factor in past union decline, but
it is not clear that it has been a major factor, nor that it will be a
key force for union decline in the future" best captures the state of
evidence to date.
A couple of the arguments to account for union decline are
particularly weak. One is the argument is that governmental laws and
regulations substitute for unions, decreasing their appeal.
Quintessential examples would be health and safety regulations, or
employment discrimination laws. The biggest problem with this argument
is the virtually total lack of evidence to support it. Bennett and
Taylor argue that the government substitution hypothesis makes
intuitive sense even though they admit a "lack of empirical support"
(Bennett and Taylor, p. 247).
Beyond the lack of supporting evidence, this argument has both
conceptual problems and a factual blind spot. The conceptual error is
to conceive of the union as a representative of the members only in its
role of bargaining a contract. Unions are an organized expression of
the members' (and working-class) interests in many arenas, including
the political and community realms. To argue that unions undercut
themselves because they achieve their goals through one venue (the
political process) rather than another (the collective bargaining
process) is to wholesale misunderstand the role of unions, and to
reduce them to the narrowest of economic bargaining roles that even a
staunch "business unionist" would see as too restricted.
In fact, to the extent unions win more inclusive goals (for members
and nonmembers alike) through the political process, they lose the
"special interest group" label and are more favorably viewed by the
public as a whole. This public good will is crucial to union survival.
Second, many legal protections of workers are minimally effective in
the absence of an organized presence at the work site guaranteeing
their implementation. Health and safety regulations are a good example.
In particularly hazardous industries, such as the construction
industry, nonunion workers have a higher accident and injury rate, even
though they are covered by the same law (Occupational Safety and Health
Act -- OSHA) as are unionized workers. Unions set up union and joint
labor-management safety and health committees, require extensive safety
and health training as part of their apprenticeship programs, and
bargain safety and health language in union contracts. Unionized
workers are also more aware of the OSHA law and use it more. The mere
formal existence of a law is no substitute for an organized presence at
the work site to make legal protections meaningful.
Americans believe that workers have a right to form unions and
bargain collectively through them, free from employer interference.
They disapprove of "union busting" by employers and management
consultants and believe such behavior seldom occurs. When it is brought
to their attention, they see it as an aberration, not the norm. Yet, 75
percent of employers hire consultants to help them fight union
organizing drives (AFL-CIO, p. 2), and unionization rates would more
than triple (to about 44 percent) if employers were forced to stay out
of the process as originally intended by the National Labor Relations
Act (Freeman and Rogers. P.56-76).
Unaware of the extent of abuse in the private sector, the American
public does not see the denial of unionization rights as a particularly
salient or prominent issue. In this sense, the "consciousness" of the
American public does allow labor laws and employer behavior that
effectively deny many their purported labor rights, despite disapproval
of such behavior.
A combination of strong anti-union behavior by most private sector
employers, weak labor law stacked against workers and allowing such
behavior, lack of organizing effort by unions, and (to some degree)
"neoliberal" economic trends that are often loosely gathered under the
rubric of “globalization" are the main factors underlying the decline
of private sector unions in the U.$. Other factors arc less important
or less relevant.
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