For some time, union membership has been steadily declining. In the United States, after peaking at 34.8% for employees in 1954 (28.3% for all employees), union membership has fallen to 10.3% for employees in 2019 (and slightly less for all employees) . the lowest level in over 75 years. In Australia, union membership has fallen from over 50 percent in 1976 to just 14 percent in 2016. And in the United Kingdom, union membership was over 13 million workers at its peak in 1979; by 2014 it had dropped to 6.4 million, less than half of its peak level, and about the same level as just before World War II. In many other liberal capitalist democracies, the level of unionization is also steadily declining.
Part of this decline is due to unions' success in creating better working conditions and wages for all. Joining a union now seems less urgent than before. This is partly due to changes in the respective economies, where a large number of unionized heavy industry jobs have moved to less united countries, and the jobs that remain are in industries that are harder to organize. Local outsourcing has also played a role, with what used to be high-paying, unionized jobs being taken over by smaller, exploitative, non-union contractors. So have the technological advances in automation that have made many well-paid union jobs obsolete.
But this decline in union membership is also the result of decades of relentless attacks from the political right on the very idea of unionization—attacks that are steadily increasing in both frequency and strength, especially in the US. Union membership is now becoming so small that unions may soon lose their ability to adequately protect workers from economic and personal abuse if they have not already done so. They may even lose their relevance as a political force.
Over the same period, we have also seen a sharp rise in the share of income going to the top 1% and a prolonged stagnation in real wages for everyone else. Unsurprisingly, studies show that declining union membership rates explain a good part of this phenomenon. These trends were then reinforced by the Great Recession of 2008. This caused a sharp rise in unemployment not only in the US, but also in other liberal capitalist democracies. And as unemployment declined over the next decade, employers replaced high-paying permanent union jobs with good benefits with low-paying temporary non-union jobs with no benefits at all. Now that unemployment is rising again due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the lack of unions is also threatening public health. The vast majority of essential workers are not unionized and in many cases are being asked to work without proper protective gear, testing and physical distancing measures. The creation of a union has always been presented as part of the right to free association. That is, the workers claim that they have the right to join trade unions; employers say no. But even when employers recognize the right of workers to unionize, they tirelessly put up obstacles to those who would like to do so. Employers are also trying to deprive trade unions of the funds they need to operate.
Trade unionists respond by emphasizing that unionization contributes to the common good. That is, they claim that unions raise wages, improve working conditions, reduce income inequality, suppress envious discrimination, and so on. Anti-union forces deny these claims, but these denials do not stand up to the vast majority of empirical evidence. A more successful anti-union argument is that forced unionization is a violation of workers' rights, as is a ban on voluntary unionization. They argue that this is a violation because the right to freedom gives workers the opportunity to refuse to join a union if they do not want to. Employers then lobby workers to vote against unionization or refuse to join even if union is accepted.
But the claim that freedom protects workers from forced unionization is wrong. Workers do not have to go through a political campaign and vote to form a union before the employer is required to recognize the union and deal with it. Trade unions are the main institution of a just society. And as a basic institution, their existence is not mandatory. They are subject to regulation like any other.
a basic institution, but the workers of every firm must have a union, just as every community must have a government if it is to be just. Accordingly, with the exception of very small businesses, firms should be unionized, whether or not the firm's employees have voted for unionization.
This does not mean that all firms will become so-called "closed shops" - enterprises where only existing union members can be hired. Instead, the firms will be "union shops". Hiring will be the same as it is now, and workers won't need to be union members to get a job. However, after being hired, the worker automatically became a member of the relevant trade union.
This may seem like a radical position, but it is not. Remember that capitalist societies reject the idea of centralized economic planning. Instead, they rely on the free market price mechanism to ensure that the economy allocates resources, including human resources, efficiently. But the free market does not work within the firm. In the firm, resources are used, as in the socialist economy as a whole, centrally. Each firm has a strict hierarchical structure. Although shareholders can influence how the firm is run (although only large shareholders have real influence; others simply have to choose whether to accept or sell their shares and move on), the firm functions as a mini-socialist dictatorship. Except that in a socialist society the guiding principle of running a firm is the common good. In a capitalist society, by contrast, the guiding principle is the good of the individual firm, presumably meaning the maximization of its profits.
Being an employee is a serious threat to freedom
So what? So, the justification offered for allowing firms to form in a capitalist society, despite the internal central planning that this entails, is that it saves a lot of what economists call "transaction costs." These are the costs that would otherwise be incurred in negotiating each individual business venture with all relevant participants, thus allocating resources both internally and externally using the pricing mechanism. This would mean that no one could be called an employee - everyone would be an independent contractor, could accept or refuse any task and bargain about the price every time something in a particular business enterprise needed to be done. This, in turn, would require countless lengthy individual negotiations, leaving the business planner with only limited ability to plan how the product would be designed, built, sold, serviced, and delivered over time. By adopting a strict hierarchical structure, we eliminate all the costs and delays associated with participating in these repetitive negotiations, as well as the uncertainty associated with not knowing what human resources are available in the medium and long term and at what cost. This leaves more resources for the actual production of things, making them cheaper and more accessible to more people. This improves the overall standard of living. and the uncertainty associated with not knowing what human resources are available in the medium and long term and at what cost. This leaves more resources for the actual production of things, making them cheaper and more accessible to more people. This improves the overall standard of living. and the uncertainty associated with not knowing what human resources are available in the medium and long term and at what cost. This leaves more resources for the actual production of things, making them cheaper and more accessible to more people. This improves the overall standard of living.
Although some transaction costs are reduced by the recognition of the firm as the main business institution, this also entails a "social cost". These are costs that are incurred during the production process but are usually more indirect, intangible and difficult to monetize. For example, few relationships are as fraught with opportunities for abuse, exploitation, and mental, physical, and economic domination as employer-employee relationships. In other words, being an employee is a serious threat to freedom. Just ask any worker what he fears most - the possibility that his manager, for one completely arbitrary reason or another, will fire him or do something to make his working life more physically or mentally taxing, less financially profitable and, in any case, an event that is more difficult psychologically. So it's ironic that right-wing politicians claim
that forced (what I call general) unionization infringes upon the freedom of the workers. This is similar to those protesting lockdowns and social distancing measures, effectively claiming they have the right to infect themselves and others if they choose. But this is not the kind of freedom that liberal capitalist democracy was created to protect.
To insist that all workers join a union is a violation of what philosophers call "negative freedom," that is, man's interference with man's ability to do what he would otherwise be able to do. But every liberal capitalist democracy interferes with everyone's negative freedom every day in a myriad of ways. If I could beat you, steal your stuff, trick you, enslave you, or even kill you if I wanted to, I would have more negative freedom and you would have more if you could do these things too. But that would make social life impossible. Motto: "Live free or die", not "Live free and die or kill others".
Therefore, anyone who thinks clearly understands that simply interfering with someone's negative freedom is not tantamount to a violation of rights, which you have the absolute power to prevent in a free society. Negative freedom is not a political theory, it is not a theory about what goals we can pursue and how to prioritize competing goals. This is an analytic theory - it tells us that the interference of other human agents in our ability to act is different from the interference of things or animals or the laws of physics, and states that when such interference occurs, it must be justified. . He doesn't tell us what a justification is or how strong that justification should be. To do this, we need a political theory that describes the goals that we can pursue without interference.
There are a number of theories that do this, but the most relevant one here is called "republican liberty". This theory is based on how philosophers understood freedom as far back as the ancient republics of Greece and Rome. They thought that one is not free if one submits to the arbitrary will of another. Being a slave is the most extreme example of the absence of republican freedom, given the absolute subordination of the slave to the will of the master. But the point is not only in cases of absolute submission - even a single case of submission to the arbitrariness of another is a violation of republican freedom.
Given the degree to which workers lack autonomy and are dependent on the arbitrary and capricious decisions of their employer, republican freedom is at stake when it comes to employer-employee relationships. Without a union, workers are exposed to all sorts of arbitrariness. Union employees have some protection against this. As long as the firm remains the basic institution of our economy—and I am not suggesting that this should change—union formation is a necessary countermeasure against the threat to republican freedom that the firm poses. Forced unionization is not a violation of the kind of freedom we really care about when we talk about freedom in a liberal capitalist democracy.
Every society must have a basic structure. He must decide which economic, legal, political and educational system he wants to use. Once he makes this choice, he must infuse these systems with basic institutions. These are the institutions that implement the basic structure. They prepared the ground for ordinary social and political life. They cannot guarantee justice - this requires significant post-institutional regulation - but they can be designed in such a way as to maximize the chances of achieving justice. This is what is required to ensure "background fairness".
Once we have accepted capitalism as our economic system, it becomes clear that the basic form of business organization must be the firm. Thus, it is a basic institution. But since the firm also puts workers' republican freedom at risk, we cannot rely solely on post-institutional regulation to eliminate that risk. History shows us that without unions, workers are too often exploited, abused and arbitrarily treated, even when laws exist to prohibit such misconduct. Given the costs, delays and risk of going to courts, the deterrent effect of these post-institutional legal prohibitions is not enough. A just society must do more to prevent a firm from using its power to threaten the freedom of its employees. This means that we need to recognize that trade unions are as basic an institution as the firm itself.
There is a ceiling to what any rational union would require. There is no gender that employers won't fall below
There is already an old precedent for this.
nt in Germany and other Nordic countries. There, as part of what these countries call "co-determination", unionization was the dominant economic phenomenon for almost the entire post-war period. And although the level of the trade union movement is declining even there, it remains high in comparison with other liberal-capitalist countries. In these countries, unions even get seats on many corporate boards. Given the very impressive economic performance of these countries, the argument that union expansion in other liberal capitalist countries will slow down their economic activity is not credible.
The approval of general unionization also does not mean widespread economic upheaval. Workers will not constantly strike, and firms will not be forced to pay such high wages and provide such large benefits that enterprises will quickly go bankrupt. Remember, unions have an incentive to be realistic in their demands. If their demands are excessive, the firm will go bankrupt and all workers represented by the union will lose their jobs. There is a natural ceiling on what any rational union would require. On the contrary, there is no limit below which employers would not fall in their attempts to get more work for lower wages and fewer benefits. The more they can exploit their workers, the more profit they can make - at least that's what many firms do. On practice,
Note, however, that when I talk about general unionization, I am only talking about the basic functions of unions. These include: the right of workers to bargain collectively with their employer; monitor the employer's compliance with applicable norms and rules, as well as the terms of the collective agreement; represent individual workers in disciplinary proceedings brought against them by their employer; and lobby the government to pass laws, rules and regulations that advance the interests of their workers. These basic functions do not include the right to strike. It's not a core feature, it's something that can be traded or forfeited in exchange for other benefits.
Note also that I have not addressed the question of whether the same rules regarding general unionization in the private sector should apply to the public sector, especially civil servants who provide basic services. I believe the same rules should apply, but I don't have space here to argue for it.
Finally, note that universal unionization will not solve all practical questions about how this will be implemented and what unions can and cannot do. All sorts of rules will be needed - about how unions can go about their business, how they will compete to represent the employees of particular firms, and so on. But again, these are post-institutional rules. All major institutions are subject to such rules, and as long as these rules do not undermine any of the essential functions of the unions, these rules may be determined in accordance with the normal political process or through negotiations between the union and the employer. The rejection of unions deprives workers of the very freedom that liberal capitalist democracy was created to protect. By recognizing trade unions as a fundamental institution, we will ensure that they cannot be taken away. Only then can the workers justifiably consider themselves free.
Ba what about the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association - wouldn't their general unionization violate them? First of all, it should be noted that these are derivative rights, that is, they follow from our general concept of freedom and are not independent of it. These are just applications of our general concept of freedom to specific activities. As such, they cannot be broader than the fundamental concept of freedom from which they are derived. Thus, if our consideration of general freedom supports the recognition of universal unionization, this conclusion cannot be changed by considering the role of special freedoms such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.
However, lawsuits based on these particular concepts are popular, and their derivative nature does not prevent anyone from bringing them forward to successfully fight unionization through the courts. So let's take a look at them. The freedom of speech argument is an attack on the ability of unions to raise dues to fund their activities. Unions must represent all employees, even non-members, so workers who wish to freeride have an incentive to opt out of joining, as they receive the same services whether they join or not. To prevent this, most states have rules requiring non-members to pay "agency fees" - basically the same fees as everyone else.
the rest, minus a small amount, to cover the costs of their representation. The argument against freedom of speech is that the forced payment of such a fee is a form of coercion to speak,
We wouldn't assume that taxpayers support everything the government does just because they pay for it.
But this is nonsense. Freedom of speech can be violated when we prohibit anyone from spending money to fund a particular point of view, as the US Supreme Court controversially ruled decades ago. But this does not mean, despite the fact that the court has now also ruled that the forced payment of agency fees is a violation of free speech. In the first case, the money is used to say what the participants want to say, so preventing this means they will not be able to make their views public. But in the last case, when someone is forced to pay a fee, what exactly was that person supposed to say? The communicative meaning of forced payment is ambiguous at best. Indeed, the mere fact that an agency fee is known to be coercive means that its payment is unlikely to be construed as an expression of an individual worker's beliefs. We wouldn't assume that taxpayers support everything the government does just because they pay for it. If forced payment were forced speech, then taxation and every duty collected by the state would be inadmissible.
When it comes to freedom of association, the problem is this: freedom of association means the freedom to associate with whoever you want; this does not include the right not to communicate with those with whom you do not communicate. You may not declare yourself as non-Australian, American, Texan or Californian if you otherwise meet the relevant criteria for inclusion in these groups. You can cut your ties if you wish, and this may exclude you from this group, but as long as the ties remain, you remain a member of it. A person does not need to get a job if he does not want to, but if he voluntarily becomes an employee, he automatically becomes a member of a trade union. No right to free association precludes this.