I shall preface this piece by stating a couple of things. First, that I am a former union member myself. Second, that I come from a union family (uncles, father, grandfather), and am grateful for what a union life did for my family.
However, what I'm about to talk about is how we can lead ourselves to a post-union world, not because unions are awful and evil, but because in an age where union membership has declined for thirty-plus years, and where the very word is considered anathema to many Americans due to conservative vilification of unions, we need to consider an alternative approach.
For the past ten years, unions have been pushing hard in various sectors to increase union membership, with the strong support of liberals and certain politicians. Democratic members of Congress pushed the Employee Free Choice Act and fought union-busting legislation. And yet, for all the effort, there has been very little union growth. Even worse, in places like Ohio and Wisconsin (states at the heart of the union movement), there's been an all-out assault on the very existence of unions in the public sector, a troubling trend when you consider that public-sector workers are now the majority of the unionized workforce.
So, what do we do? Do we quit and accept that unions are declining? Or do we keep throwing ourselves at the goal of increasing unions and union membership, all while fighting off the conservative hordes?
I don't think either choice is acceptable, and I think that we need to start dedicating ourselves to a new goal: enshrining worker protections into law and state constitutions.
I've lived in Michigan and California, and been a union member in both states. What I can tell you from my experience is that California was a much better working environment. Here's why.
As an UFCW member in Michigan, my pay was incredibly minimal, and while my healthcare was very good, we gave away a lot of our rights to keep good healthcare. The company jerked us around more and more as time went on, inventing new rules and procedures to make it easier to fire us. One was the automated timecard penalty system. If you punched in more than two minutes late, even if it was by mere seconds, you were automatically written up by the computer. Didn't matter if the punchclock malfunctioned (which they would), or if the time on the punch clock didn't match any other timekeeping device (which happened often), you'd get written up. Get enough writeups and you'd be fired. It was tyranny by computer, and a lot of people, myself included, got in trouble (because customers don't understand when you're on break, they just want help, and you can't ignore them) for repeated infractions. Our union reps said they were fighting it, but we'd given up our right to strike for that precious healthcare. It made us toothless.
There were many other problems I had with my experience as an UFCW worker, but that is the standout one. The other one I had was being denied promotion in place of someone with more seniority but far less skills: she couldn't even pass the skills test after FOUR TRIES. I passed mine the first time. She still got the promotion because of seniority rules (which is one of those things about unions that a lot of people despise, and which hurts unions in the public's eyes).
Meanwhile, in California, I had both good pay AND good benefits as an SEIU member. But the thing is, even when I wasn't a union member, I still had some great guarantees. The state of California has codified into law protections against unpaid overtime, overtime pay for any shift over eight hours, filing of all timesheets with the state to verify that all time was paid, and that any timeclock changes were signed off on by manager and employee, mandated breaks and lunches, mandatory disability insurance, minimum wage above the federal rate, and more. It was incredible. Even working in jobs without union membership, I had basic work rights protected for me. I didn't need a union to give me work rights. The state guaranteed them.
Now, you say, that sounds great, but how do you stop someone like Scott Walker or John Kasich from overturning those laws? Well, this is where we get into the next step: the lawmaking. The best step is constitutional amendment. This is a difficult step in some states, easy in others. Right now, Michigan is voting this fall on codifying bargaining rights into the Constitution. It appears it will win. That's great, but we need to codify work protections into the Constitution. Those are at the backbone of union rights. As an alternative, write any such union laws so that they don't sunset and that it requires a supermajority to overturn them. Build protections in to make it next to impossible to remove them from law.
The downside to unions, beyond the damage already done to their standing in this nation, is that they negotiate contracts, and that they are human. What I mean by that is that they are susceptible to pressures. Pressures of outside opinion, pressures of membership, pressures of being constantly assaulted by corporate America. And as they would with any human, those things get to you. They make it harder for you to stick to your principles. And so it makes it easier to get rid of the rights that union workers have, rights that we ALL should have.
We're looking at this the wrong way. If a company bullies a union into giving back some of its rights, it's not big news, except to those affected. But if we enshrine worker protections into law, and politicians try to take them away, EVERYONE will know about it. It'll be big news. It'll be court-challengeable. And most importantly, it will help us all.
I'm not saying we should abandon unions, or discard them. They still have merit. I'm just saying we need to change our focus, change the conversation, and change the lives of all American workers.