Ask Auntie Pinko
December 4, 2003

Dear Auntie Pinko,

It was with great interest I read Bob's concern about the rise of unionism and the fall of education. Private and contracted education seem to be on the rise. It is my observation that contract employees are not represented by unions, only themselves. Contract labor lacks the workplace niceties, such as insurance, guaranteed work hours, paid time off, and other things that salaried employees take as guaranteed rights. Do you think the rise of contract labor will begin to push the working person back to the pre-union days? Do you think he may get the answer to his question in the near future?

Mike
Slidell, LA

Dear Mike,

I wish I knew! The dynamics of the capital/labor relationship are changing rapidly, and even experienced specialists in the subject disagree about what it will look like ten years from now. It looks to me as though the tendency to contract many professional, skilled, and semi-skilled labor functions isn't going to decrease any time soon. But it also looks as though there is a resurgence of interest in unionizing less-skilled labor (especially in the service industries).

Unions, as they are currently configured, seem to function best when they represent the interests of unskilled workers - those who have the least leverage in the employment marketplace. There will always be a need for workers to do the hard, unpleasant drudgery that keeps our lives comfortable and convenient. Most of these jobs require little in the way of special abilities, education, or advanced training. Employers are basically looking for two things: reliability and low cost. Unless the labor market is very, very tight indeed, individual workers have almost no leverage.

Jobs that require more education, training, and/or skill give workers a little more leverage. But as many doctors trapped in the treadmill of modern third-party payer systems can attest, even very high levels of skill and education are no guarantee of quality working conditions. I'm not sure, though, that a high rate of union representation at all levels would address the fundamental problems in our economy.

In Auntie's opinion, the fundamental problems go back to an inadequate infrastructure of basic services. The three highest costs in an American household's budget are housing, health care, and transportation - and the rate at which these costs are rising keeps getting larger. The economic restructuring of the last thirty years has left the private sector less willing to increase worker compensation in proportion to these cost increases, removed many of the constraints that forced them to do so in the past, and decreased the public sector's ability to fill the gap.

Now, I don't think it's necessarily fair (or effective) to require employers to bear the entire burden of these rising costs. But the costs will continue to spiral out of control, and place greater burdens on all of us, if they are not effectively addressed. The secondary costs of the affordable housing shortage, of inadequate medical care for millions, of an economy dependent on inefficient, costly, resource-depleting transportation, are enormous, and affect every one of us. Only the very wealthy can afford to insulate themselves from the ugly effects of this infrastructure breakdown.

Workers - the ones most affected by the breakdown - are increasingly squeezed between the rising costs and the effects of economic restructuring that have eliminated their leverage and decimated the public sector's ability to address the problems. Unions will not solve this problem.

Only voters can solve this problem, Mike. Only voters can refocus our leadership on the pain that out-of-reach housing, health care, and transportation costs inflict on everyone. Only votes can counterbalance the disproportionate influence of capital's endlessly flowing cash. If labor organizes across all lines of professional, skilled, and unskilled; union and non-union, across all industries and economic sectors, to bring these priorities back to the top of the agenda, we have hope.

We need to distribute the costs of economic restructuring fairly among both labor and capital, and support a public sector that assures affordable, accessible housing, health care, and transportation. This would decrease the costs employers are expected to meet through payrolls and contracts, reducing their labor costs, making them more competitive and efficient. And it would increase workers' leverage, giving them greater choice of opportunities and flexibility to negotiate the conditions that employers can control.

Thanks for asking Auntie Pinko, Mike!

View Auntie's Archive

Do you have a question for Auntie Pinko?

Do political discusions discombobulate you? Are you a liberal at a loss for words when those darned dittoheads babble their talking points at you? Or a conservative, who just can't understand those pesky liberals and their silliness? Auntie Pinko has an answer for everything.

Just send e-mail to: [email protected], and make sure it says "A question for Auntie Pinko" in the subject line. Please include your name and hometown.