A commonly heard argument at the moment, especially from liberal mainstream economists, is that unions may have been useful at one time but that’s no longer the case. Now, they need to be replaced.
The latest version is from Mark Thoma:
Unions may have been the answer at one time, but the world has changed since the 1970s. In today’s increasingly globalized world where private-sector companies can easily move production to escape unions, where unionized jobs are disappearing because of technological change, and where states are passing laws to reduce power the power of organized labor, unions are losing their influence (the difficulty of moving government services to other states or other countries helps explain why public unions have tended to outlast their private-sector counterparts). And it hasn’t helped that the political environment, beginning with the Reagan administration in the 1980s in particular, has become increasingly unfriendly.
So, what’s the alternative? For Thoma, it’s the government:
The only institution powerful enough to protect workers now is government. By providing the things unions once fought for on behalf of workers, government can help to correct inequities and reduce the insecurity workers face. Ensuring that working-class households have the health and dental care they need, security in old age, a safe place to work, insurance against job loss, higher education that is essentially free, and the benefits of a tax policy that redistributes income so economic gains are shared more equitably would go a long way toward remedying what workers have lost since the 1970s.
That sounds nice but what Thoma doesn’t understand is that government policies to protect workers have only been achieved because of the union movement. That’s true in the past, and that will certainly be in the case for the foreseeable future.
Certainly, unions have to change and adapt. That includes creating more international connections in order to deal with the global movement of capital. But that’s an argument for a strong, more vibrant union movement, not the end of unions as a key institution to protect workers from the punishments meted out by employers.
Prof. Thoma is, among the mainstream economists, one of those I trust to have good intentions.
Maybe he should consider the idea of international unions or federations of national unions.
Another possibility is to include minimal industrial relations and environmental requirements to states members of WTO.
But, as a theoretician and a professor of history of economic thought, Prof. Thoma personally could make an enormous contribution to the debate: he could think outside the square imposed by his own formation. A good starting point is his lectures on Marx.
[…] I’ve had my differences with Thoma (e.g., here and here) but I also know I couldn’t do a good portion of this blog without the links and […]