Unions in America: When did the narrative change?

Great Debates
1

I have never been in a union and I am ambivalent about them for the most part. However, I feel that many Americans view unions very differently than they did even a generation ago and I wonder why.

One can make a legitimate case that in these times, unions are no longer necessary, or at least are not in a great many industries or places where workers do have leverage over most employers. One can point out that strengthened laws in the country and many states adequately protect most workers in most industries. However, I don’t see people merely voicing the opinion that unions are outdated and unnecessary - they say that unions are actually bad.

In the past even when unions were viewed more favorably, there were concerns about corruption, but those kind of complaints were different: Those charges were levied at the top of the union hierarchies, whereas today the productivity of the union members come under fire.

Unions were looked at as places where workers had someone to look out for them. Nowadays, the narrative has changed and there seems to be a much larger number of Americans who view unionized workers as the problem.

They are considered pampered, lazy, and unanswerable for disciplining from poor job performances. They will strike at the drop of a hat. They should just be happy to have a job in our lousy economy.

And it’s not just the more famous union-busting techniques employed by the Scott Walkers of the world - go to any online story that discusses how a place has voted in a union and comments will complain about how bad the employees will be under the union.

Which isn’t to take away from the union busting that elected officials have been involved with: In the recent past, teachers were viewed as almost saints who had to go to school for much longer than the average american while making considerably less money than most. Bust a couple of teacher’s unions and suddenly teachers are overpaid and you are stick with tenured bad teachers. How did we reach the point where teachers are the problem in this country?

In the past, organized labor was a populist movement that inspired solidarity across gender and race. Folk songs canonized fictional and semi-fictional accounts of unions forming and union busting. Whereas today, you have giant corporations such as Wal-Mart notoriously squashing any attempts for employees to organize and there is hardly a whimper from the public.

When did the unionized employee become such a pariah in this country? Are unions really a place for lazy workers who don’t want to be accountable for performance rather than a place where workers have a fair voice? Can unions get back to being the good guys again? If so, how?

2

Are you sure that the unionized employee is such the pariah that you put forth, or is just so among certain loud populations? You may be correct, but I’m not familiar with the available data from polls.
That said, even if you aren’t quite right there, I think most would agree that there is an increasing trend in disapproval. As for answering your question, I’ll need to think a bit more on it.

3

I’d put the tipping point as President Reagan’s 1980s no-nonsense treatment of the air traffic controllers’ strike, for which maybe a third of the public vilified him but most approved of. This was around the same time that Thatcher was sticking it to coal unions and the like, again with majority (but hardly universal) public support.

I see these events as the culmination of a gradual shift from the high point of unionism, which I associate with FDR and Woody Guthrie…late 30s, then.

4

When the union’s powers eclipsed management (as in the auto industry), things got bad. Basically, when the union starts dictating how much they will work, management has no choice but to relocate-where there are no unions. That is what Detroit has no auto plants anymore-they are all in places like Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc.

5

In many industries, unionization had the effect of making American workers uncompetitive. The automobile industry is a textbook example. Over time, pay and benifits for (unionized) auto workers became so lavish, that the domestic car makers had trouble making money even when their cars were selling well. And when a recession hit, they lost fortunes. In the end, it drove General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and Ford very nearly so. Fortunately, GM and Chrysler came through bankruptcy in good shape, and have gotten their labor costs under control.

Other industries were not so lucky. The garment industry, for example. Almost no clothing is made in the US anymore.

6

Actually, there are still auto plants in Michigan, Ohio, and other “Rust Belt” states, but it’s worth noting that these are all older plants, and any plant built in the last few decades is almost certainly in the South.

7

That’s news to the people working at the new GM plant in Lansing. It quite certainly is not in the South, thank you.

8

Yes, but of course GM is now funded with 10s of billions of taxpayer money. When that was not the case, they went bankrupt.

Which is a nice way of summarizing the OP question.

The narrative changed when unions became less important for balancing the equation between (1) workers and (2) owners, and more of a tool for extracting money from taxpayers by force via public-sector employee collusion with politicians.

9

The taxpayer money is being paid back. Any wages that are being negotiated between the unions and GM are their business, not yours and it is GM’s money, not the taxpayers’.

Public sector employees are just as entitled to negotiate wages as anyone else. If they want to form a union to do so, it isn’t any of your business.

10

I’ll tell you what: You get the government to give me $10B, and I’ll pay it back in a few years, too.

Unions perform an important function in a free market. Workers can benefit tremendously from collective bargaining. But, as has been noted, unions can force companies to be uncompetitive. This poll offers some insight into public opinion. It appears the most negative view held by a majority of people is that unions “mostly hurt” non-union workers, even if they “mostly help” union members.

11

So why don’t people get off their ass and organize? They’re like “Waaahhhh! People who belong to unions get better benefits than meeeeeeeeee!!! Waahhhh!”

12

It used to be almost everyone I knew had a union job. Now they all work at Walmart and Starbucks. So A) for the average worker, unions just aren’t as visible as they once were.

B ) Unions used to be considered inclusive and helpful. If you had the gumption, you’d go be an apprentice, get some skills, and have a decent job. Nowadays, they’re considered exclusionary. Our special union guys will keep their jobs at the expense of everyone else. You can’t join the union because there isn’t enough work, but no one who isn’t in a union can work around here without us picketing and calling for boycotts.

Also, there’s C) The whole “seniority over merit” thing.

13

For me, it’s this. The idea that public sector employees NEED unions is a fiction that the unions repeat over and over again until people believe it.

For example, last year, the union told us that the town was going to raise our health insurance costs. But thank god we were in a union, because they fought that… and they were only raised a little. But I did the math. Even if the town had increased our health insurance costs by the amount the union said they would (which wasn’t guaranteed by the way), I would still be paying less for health insurance than I do for my union dues.

Oh, and speaking of union dues. Union reps are always going on and on about how much they help the little guy. But the way the due scale is set up, someone making $25,000 a year has to pay something like $18 every pay period for dues. But someone making $75,000 a year only has to pay like $19 every pay period.

The people who run unions are criminals, plain and simple.

14

That’s as may be. But nowadays the criticism falls almost entirely on the rank-and-file. Why mkght that be?

15

Those people must not be in unions. Because the majority of the rank-and-file know that it’s all a scam.

16

nm…

17

I can only speak for myself, but my perception of unions is that they are trying to monopolize labor, and I consider union members overpaid (although not lazy or incompetent). That said, I have rarely met anyone who is actually in a union.

Rob

18

If people’s attitudes towards teachers unions have shifted, it may be because the actually facts surrounding the issue have changed. A couple generations ago, America’s public education system was the envy of the world, and there were no teachers unions. Today our public education system is notorious for its failures, and most places have teachers unions, as well as unions for other public employees. Those unions stifle any attempt at improvement, bloat budgets with expensive pensions, and generally make sure that nothing gets better in our public schools. The facts are sufficiently obvious that even liberal publications are saying them straightforwardly.

Moreover, if the public has turned against public sector unions in general, that may be because public sector unions have caused financial disaster in so many places. The state of California is in a permanent financial disaster. Several California cities have gone bankrupt, while others including Los Angeles will go bankrupt over the next few years. Detroit is a basket case and other city governments in Michigan have been taken over by the state after being unable to meet obligations. Numerous other cities and states around the country are heading for disaster or taking drastic action to balance budgets. The common thread in every single case is that the government is spending more than it can afford on pay and pensions for its unionized employees. Everybody, even liberals can see that if you spend too much on that, you have to cut spending elsewhere. Everybody, even the smarter liberals, knows that higher taxes won’t solve the problem. (Many of the disaster areas such as Detroit and California have some of the nation’s highest taxes.) The public demand that something be done to stop the public sector unions before they ruin yet more states and cities is entirely logical. Who would want their city to end up like Stockton?

19

It’s my understanding that the NEA has been around for 150+ years. And that least by mid-20th century the majority of teachers were unionized. Do you have a cite for the claim that the great public education system of “a couple of generations ago” was non-union?

20

And the union folks are all ‘Wahhhh, I don’t have a job any more because the cost of my labor caused the business to move to a place where they can afford to hire people. Wahhhhhh!’ Why don’t the workers just move?

Believing that the union can dictate wages and benefits without consequences is rather quaint. It doesn’t work that way anymore, companies will just move.

Unions served a valuable purpose at one point. These days, as far as I can tell, they do more harm than good.

Slee

An aside, I have worked with some union folks in my present job and it sucks. Not because the employees are bad but because of the rules foisted upon the workers by the union. Want to move a piece of equipment 5 feet that weighs 20 pounds and will take 2 minutes? Can’t do that, there is a guy who is supposed to do that and doing it yourself would break the rules. So, call the guy and wait an hour or so until he shows up. In the mean time, sit back and relax because you can’t do anything else until the guy who has to move the equipment shows up. Seriously.