Unions are not the answer
Nicholas Kristof commits many sins of reasoning and evidence in his Feb. 28 column, “The decline in unions has exacted price.”
First, he states, “A full-time construction worker earns $10,000 less per year now than in 1973 … One reason is probably the proportion who are unionized has fallen in that period from more than 40 percent to just 14 percent.” I’ll propose another reason: the number of cheap, immigrant laborers now in the construction industry.
He then makes two other outrageous claims that had me snorting coffee through my nose. First: “But unions also lobby for programs like universal prekindergrarten that help create broad-based prosperity.” I wonder if they also create a boatload of newly minted, dues-paying union members as well. Second: “They are pushing for a higher national minimum wage, even though that would directly benefit mostly nonunionized workers.” The key word here is “directly.” Indirectly, a higher minimum wage is a huge cudgel during contract negotiations where the union side can claim they need higher pay because the minimum wage is so high; they must have greater compensation.
Kristof also states, “The peak years for unions were the 1940s and 1950s, which were also some of the fastest-growing years for the United States ever …” Did he miss World War II? That little episode left Europe, the Soviet Union and Japan smoking ruins with all infrastructure and manufacturing capability nearly destroyed. If you wanted to buy something, it had to be made in America, since there was nowhere else to make it.
The real reason union membership is in decline is because people, given a choice, think joining a union is a bad idea. The evidence for that is in a recent Washington Post article bemoaning the “devastation” of union labor in Wisconsin, particularly in the public sector. In that state, you no longer can be forced to join a union. The result? Union membership has decreased by 70 percent.
There is definitely income inequality in this country, and the idea of a company CEO making 400 times what the average worker in that company earns makes the blood boil. But unions are not the answer, and they probably never were.
John Manning
Canonsburg