Unions do more than fight for pay, pensions
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From the Chicago Sun Times, Tuesday, March 2, 2011. See http://www.suntimes.com/news/
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Unions do more than fight for pay, pensions
By Robert Bruno
The intense debate unfolding in Midwestern state legislatures and, more loudly, outside of their marble chambers is not about fiscal sanity. As real as soaring state budget deficits are, the central issue bringing thousands of spirited Americans to Wisconsin is an assault on collective bargaining.
If Gov. Scott Walker had simply accepted the state workers' union concessions on health care and pension contributions, the once proud heartland of progressive politics would not today be the site of a working-class upsurge. Who could have imagined a few weeks ago such a grass-roots uproar over something of which most Americans know very little and have too little appreciation?
Collective bargaining in the private sector has been the law of the land since it was enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The law protects the collective rights of most private-sector workers to act as a group to negotiate in good faith and secure decent wages, benefits, and working conditions. Since the 1950s all but 10 states have adopted some form of collective bargaining rights for public-sector works.
The right to have a legitimate say in how your labor is treated is not a union right, but rather, a human right that belongs to all workers.
Wages and benefits are unquestionably the core issues that animate the collective bargaining process, and union workers - whether from the private or public sector - are better rewarded for their work than unorganized employees. But what is rarely addressed in nearly all of the popular stories and rhetoric about collective bargaining is that it is a very dynamic and flexible tool for problem solving. We hear about the rancor over health care and pension payments for union workers, but never a word is uttered about the way that collective bargaining can be used to restructure work, increase efficiency or design productivity enhancements.
For example, in the early 1980s New York City and the Sanitation Workers Union negotiated a productivity bargaining agreement that reduced truck crew size from three to two and included a shift bonus for crew workers. Reducing the crew size created the incentive to adopt cost-saving equipment improvements (such as automated side-loading trash containers and the standardization of trash bins) and rules for how work would get done (such as the requirement that bins be placed at curbside). The agreement introduced measures that substantially reduced the amount of labor that was required to do sanitation pickup and disposal.
Nor is there any mention of how collective bargaining can identify training needs, integrate socio-technical systems, reduce turnover, lower workplace tensions or create a mechanism for joint problem-solving. Collective bargaining serves both employees and employers by providing a means to raise shared interests, lower production and service costs, reach out to consumers and taxpayers, improve product quality and services, and when necessary, reduce labor costs. Collective bargaining can work so effectively that it can even keep public bodies from financial insolvency.
Despite Walker's misguided call to withdraw bargaining rights from state employees on the grounds that it somehow shares responsibility for the state's fiscal crisis, the truth is that the citizens of Wisconsin have already "benefitted" from the process. It was through collective bargaining that the state employee unions agreed to pony up more for health care and pension benefits. They did so without strikes, service disruptions, public rallies or sit-ins.
In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and in thousands of municipalities across this country, the collective bargaining process has worked creatively to address not just well-funded but underfunded pensions, not just teacher retention but teacher evaluations, and not just job security but job retrenchment.
Collective bargaining is not always easy, pretty, logical, or without abuse, but neither employers nor workers have ever found a more effective and democratic way to promote the interests of multiple constituencies.
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Robert Bruno is a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois.
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