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Jewish World Review Sept. 6, 2005 / 2 Elul, 5765 Self-inflicted wounds border on suicide for unions By Peter A. Brown
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
As we celebrated Labor Day, the movement it honors continues to wither from self-inflicted wounds that border on suicide.
No better example exists of why unions are going the way of the dinosaur than the teachers' Wal-Mart boycott.
It showcases organized labor's penchant to get in the way of a speeding train, in this case the global economy, while picking fights that alienate many and have nothing to do with its major purpose for existence.
Please explain how the National Education Association telling members to boycott Wal-Mart improves salaries and working conditions for teachers, which, last time I checked, is that union's reason for being.
There is absolutely no correlation, unless one believes that depriving the giant retailer of some tiny amount of business will strike a blow for class solidarity. And that it will translate into a corresponding gesture by Wal-Mart workers around the country to vote for tax increases to raise teacher salaries.
That is, of course, how it should work according to Karl Marx, but his views and values aren't even selling in Russia or China these days, much less in Middle America, where Wal-Mart is the retailer of choice.
Organized labor doesn't like Wal-Mart because it is non-union. Labor sees the firm's pay and benefits as subpar. Moreover, railing against Wal-Mart has joined questioning George W. Bush's intelligence as cocktail party talk from Boston to Berkeley.
Yet it is the company's ability to cut costs that makes it popular with consumers, especially among the income groups into which most teachers fall.
Another union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, has spent millions of dollars trying to organize Wal-Mart without success because of a lack of employee support. That union has asked others to join in, which the NEA did.
The NEA is telling members to give priority to the union leaders' ideology and deal with other chieftains of organized labor over their own best interests when it comes to stretching the family dollar.
I'm not suggesting people should shop at Wal-Mart. They should shop where they want.
I just don't think union leaders should tell members how to spend their money, especially when it is for a cause so removed from the reason why members pay their dues.
There's no evidence that the NEA boycott is having much effect on Wal-Mart, or that most teachers are taking part, but it does confirm many skeptics' doubts about the union mentality in a global economy, not to mention its overall lack of competence.
Instead of dissing Wal-Mart, the unions might want to learn from their adversary, which has become the nation's largest employer by catering to its customers' desires.
Unions played an important role in creating the American middle class. They forced business to raise wages and improve safety conditions for workers. They forced managers to consider their employees as more than human machines.
But they have long since stopped meeting the needs of the average worker, who has voted with his or her feet. Only 12 percent of the nation's workers now belong to a union, only 8 percent of those in non-government jobs. And the unionization rate is lowest in those knowledge-based jobs of the future.
The membership numbers are a quarter of the share four decades ago, when, for the most part, organized labor achieved its goals. Of course, there are always worker-management disputes, but the days of sweatshop conditions and wages are long gone.
Their main job accomplished, unions began to look elsewhere for things to do, and that is where they took a wrong turn. They lost their way by not remaining focused on members' pay and working conditions.
Unions joined with others to form coalitions on issues that had little or nothing to do with the workplace. They mortgaged their political soul to the Democratic Party.
In the process, they turned off those who didn't share the union bosses' political views.
Now, in the last decade or so, they have been faced with a global economy that is sending many low-skilled jobs overseas.
The result has been a finger-in-the-dike mentality toward globalization and trade issues. Unions have fought trade liberalization efforts in the futile hope that tariffs would protect their members' jobs.
The recent split within the AFL-CIO that led unions representing about a quarter of organized workers to leave the federation is proof of the disarray within the movement.
The split should encourage the union leaders to reevaluate how they do business.
A first step would be for each union to represent its members' interests and not engage in symbolic flights of fancy.
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Peter A. Brown is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
