Guest Column: The Need for Unions - Now, More Than Ever

Download the September 2008 issue in PDF format

Courtesy of The UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education’s Work, Money and Power: Unions in the 21st Century

Our national security is threatened as a result of the decline of unions. 

When collective bargaining was not just the law of the land on paper, but widely recognized as the best model for conflict resolution between labor and capital, it had a leveling effect on income distribution. 

Fewer people were very poor or very rich, and most working families were not only able to get by, but could expect to advance beyond their parents’ economic position.

With collective bargaining losing ground, a less equitable economy has emerged. 

Employers are proposing casual labor– without benefits, without job security, without a secure retirement—as a desirable norm for everyone (except, of course, for themselves).  Corporations exert a growing and almost unchecked power, even while corruption and enormous scandals have rocked Wall Street. 

An “every man for himself” mentality is being encouraged by those in power. 

Non-union workers are urged to feel envious of union members, and to hate them for their higher wages, better benefits, and comparatively better-off position.

If the enemies of labor are successful in destroying union power entirely, the result will not only be greater insecurity for millions of people. 

Over time, without the stability between labor and capital that collective bargaining brings, we can expect to see the kind of social explosions that rocked the country in the 1930s, before the New Deal.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  Throughout history, workers have struggled to find an effective voice for their interests in the workplace and as citizens, often against well-funded, reactionary forces determined to prevent working people from taking their rightful place in society. 

Workers’ organizations have thrived, fallen on hard times, and risen again.  Some fights, like the one for the eight-hour day, have had to be waged again and again.

The union advantage continues to give workers an incentive to fight back against employers unwilling to pay decent wages, even with all the obstacles to organizing that workers face today. 

In February 1999, in the largest union representation victory in many decades, the Service Employees International Union won bargaining rights for 74,000 Los Angeles County home-care workers. 

Nearly 17,000 Cingular workers have joined the Communications Workers of America since 2004.
The higher standards of union workplaces, and access through collective bargaining to fair, open rules for conflict resolution, provide an important alternative for workers who wonder what they can do about unfair bosses. 

And union values, summed up in the slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all,” continue to inspire workers to seek improvement in their lives by trusting in the power gained when they stand together.