Together We Fall

I have been pondering the role of unions in the modern world and my gut reaction is that they are an idea that has past its use by date.

But first the disclaimer, I am employed in a position that puts me in the “bosses” side of the “workers” vs the “bosses” interface between management and unions. Worse than being in that camp it is part of my duties to negotiate with the unions on behalf of my employer. So you can decide for yourself how biased that makes any further comments.

I have tried to persuade some people recently that the union (any union as it wasn’t in fact the one that I deal with that I was discussing) is bad for their employment health. My argument was that when negotiating with a union, the worker that the boss has in their head is inevitably the worst case scenario worker, who while performing their job will always operate to the lowest allowable standard. The union of course thinks all of the people they represent are brilliant workers which in most cases any number of them are but never all. And that is the problem with collective negotiation at best it tends to the middle and it never allows for the performance of individuals within that collective. Net result lower average wages for the group.

If people are rational and it is a bad idea why does it still exist. Well one reason is that for employers it is quite handy to treat workers as a lump. As already mentioned it potentially allows you to keep total wages lower than they might otherwise be and saves you a heap of admin time by having to deal with just one negotiation, rather than many individuals. So maybe the bosses like it and promote it although the evidence for this idea seems scarce given what most would say about unions.

So the individual is smarter than that right, I mean after all it costs them money (union dues) and for most it lowers their wages (the better ones presumably the poor workers may be better off) so they must be doing it for some reason. Presumably it is therefore the protection from “bad” employers that it offers, you know those firms you hear about that fire people at will and offer poor working conditions.

But unions don’t do that. These days it is the law that offers those protections and at best the union offers a sort of enforcement system to make sure the law is adhered to. But it is a very expensive option for the workers given that there are government paid for organisations that will do this stuff for free.

And any way the bigger an employer the more likely they are to have Union involvement but also the more likely they are to behave properly in terms of employment law. It tends to be the small employer who doesn’t know or potentially doesn’t care that abuses worker rights and you seldom have any union involvement.

One of the unions my organisation deals with holds itself out as representing hospitality workers, bar and waiting staff and the like who regularly have their employment rights trampled in bars and cafes around the country but never a peep out of the union because as the union guy told me “it is too much trouble”. So unions represent workers who by and large don’t need it and ignore the little guy cause it is too hard for them which maybe very rational from a union point of view but doesn't seem to add much value to the process.

While historically there was a need for unions who fought for the employment law and workers rights that we, including me, enjoy now (as the union tends to forget I am a worker too just in a different job) the fight is over. The maintenance of those laws (something the union is quick to worry about) is a political fight now not the struggle of the workers at an employee / employer level.

So why workers feel the need to hand over unions dues for no perceptible gain remains a mystery to me, unless like a lot of people and a lot of things in life they have never stopped to think about it and it is “just what we do”.