EXPLAINING FALL IN UNION MEMBERSHIP

I was disappointed to hear on the news this morning that labor union membership fall to a new low of 11.3%. I sincerely support Labor unions. That new statistic is a tragic figure for a couple of reasons. The first is that is tells me that anti-labor forces, Republican forces, are winning the battle in the public mind. The political operatives in conjunction with their allies, management, have succeeded in condemning unions, the very force unions workers designed to counter management overreach. As stated several times in posts on this blog site, management and labor seem to be natural foes at the biological level and manifested in our political culture as Republican verses Democrat.

In trying to understand this drop in membership, I considered several things. The first was the impact of anti-labor rhetoric. Some of this is self-inflicted. Unions to maintain and gain membership often find themselves defending lazy and incompetent workers only because they are union members. The antagonists see this and hold a single case up as if that is the norm even to the point of trying to make people believe that is why union exists.

The next thing is that there is a “natural” imbalance. The Republican way, to be fair, is a minority’s way with the caveat that those with a Republicans philosophy are and always will be a perpetual minority. A natural result of peck order: one company executive, whose objective is to maximize profits, standing in opposition to a mass of workers who are trying to maximize wages. Every worker understands that the owner (management) of a company has to have authority. Perhaps, the 11.3% figure reflects a degree of acceptance of this truth—contented workers accept their position as followers. What the workers hope for is a “benevolent” boss or dictator. When he or she is excessively greedy, then the workers suffer. The workers or the unions want negotiating power (Democrats) and management does not think they have that right (Republicans).  Without that right, there is no balance, which in a republican one-man-one vote society; union leaders sell their position to the membership by telling them they should hold all of the power, which is the communist position while the progressive position, at least as I see it. The answer is a matter of finding a balance between management and labor, which in a republican society hinges principally on having a contented work force.

The last point is that in a proper function democracy, government fashions laws that people want and enforces them. When the Congress passed such as minimum wages, unemployment insurance, social security insurance, OSHA, and a whole host of other laws they usurped the need for unions. Perhaps, we should not decry but rather celebrate the 11.3% figure for union membership should as a reflection of not only union successes but of government successes; we no longer need them except as watchdogs against management abuse—representing the thing Republicans hate the most, regulation.