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Labor & Worker Rights Tue Feb 10 2009
"Waah, I won't become fantastically richer by opening another restaurant."
Sorry, that's a little harsh, and not very reasonable, but I'll admit it was my first reaction when reading this Crain's Chicago piece about the likely "targets" of new union organizing drives if the Employee Free Choice Act (or EFCA) is passed and made law.
I understand that by opening a new restaurant, Glen Keefer would be creating jobs. But the way the free marketeers and their conservative enablers talk about "job creation" they make it seem like a charitable act. "I guess I'll create some jobs for the little people, rather than make gold coin angels on the marble floor of my portico."
But, of course, the reason people "create jobs" is because they generate profits for themselves with every job they create. They don't create jobs as some kind of favor; they ask people to come work for them in order to profit off those people's work. There's no getting around that; there's no way to "spin it" or "narrative it." That's a stone-cold, irrefutable fact. In the private sector, you create jobs to make a profit off the person's labor, not because you are a Dickensian aristocrat with a heart of gold.
Keefer goes on to quote directly from Cliched Management Union-Busting Arguments:
"We don't need a third party in between us and our employees who is extracting money from our employees for services that, frankly, they don't need," says Mr. Keefer, who says his workers get health care benefits and paid vacation time. "A third party could disrupt our working relationship and would raise costs for our employees and for us."
First of all, who cares what you need? This isn't about you. This is about the employees who are motivated enough by your mistreatment of them to undertake an organizing drive, an invariably painful and difficult (but highly rewarding) process.
Second, the union is not a "third party." The union is the employees themselves, who now, protected by a contract, can't be cuffed around, be forced to work off the clock, or cloy for the boss' favor to avoid being mistreated. Of course, this argument would be easier to make if some of the biggest unions in the country had more democratic control by rank-and-file membership. But there is more democracy in almost every union in this country than there is any workplace.
Finally, union contracts generally don't raise costs over the long term, and for many industries they actually stabilize or lower costs, due to lower burnout, lower turnover, and higher productivity (yes, union workers are more productive, whatever the zombie corpse of Reaganomics wants to tell you). It's never been about higher costs or third parties or whatever -- its about employers wanting always to be able to treat their employees arbitrarily. Without the constant threat of a loss of job, with the evaporation of systems of favoritism, employers lose their control over employees.
The Crain's story also mention Shirley Brown, a support staffer at suburban Westlake Hospital who has been working to organize a union at her hospital and across Resurrection Health Care for 6 years.
"Give us a choice and a voice....You should not be subjected to fear, harassment and intimidation because we want a voice," says Ms. Brown, 50, who's worked at Westlake for 13 years.
Tell it.
Good Luck / February 10, 2009 2:26 PM
You make a strong case for never opening up a business at all. Or growing an existing business.
If there is more democracy in labor unions, then why do they need to resort to a decidedly undemocratic tactic of taking away the right to a secret ballot in order to achieve their aims?
Isn't it funny how socialism has to be forced compliance?